Donna Leon Quotes

It's when someone has an agenda of their own for the record that it doesn't work for me.

I don't think it's good to interact with people with a certain agenda in mind.

Look, at the end of the day, we do what we do because it suits us.

Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interests or profit. They seek service for themselves

People only speak to get something. If I say, Let me tell you a few things about myself, already your defenses go up; you go, Look, I wonder what he wants from me, because no one ever speaks except to obtain an objective. That's the only reason anyone ever opens their mouth, onstage or offstage. They may use a language that seems revealing, but if so, it's just coincidence, because what they're trying to do is accomplish an objective.

I've done everything for the wrong reasons. All the good works people credit to me are nothing because I did them expecting God to repay me. I thought if I worked hard enough, God would have to give me what I wanted. The truth is I've never served the Lord at all. I was always serving myself.

Of course I want to be good, but that may not be to your advantage.

People do things with terrible motivations and those motivations are selfish and self-interested and financially driven.

Everybody has an agenda.

Most politicians make decisions based on their own best interest rather than the greater good.

Let me tell you, there's very few places where I don't have an agenda.

In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.

It's good to be authentic, to help other people, but if it's not helping other people, then don't do it.

If I can do something about it and won't because I want to hog the limelight, then I really have no right to talk about women's empowerment.

Gratitude, in most men, is only a strong and secret hope of greater favors.

We're selfish to some degree, that's not a criticism and it doesn't mean that we are all narcissists. But in any situation our minds naturally evolve to what's in it for me? How does this affect me? Can this benefit me? Can this harm me? Then we might move on from that and have a more altruistic point of view about things but that's almost always our initial response.

The last end of every maker, as such, is himself, for what we make we use for our own sake; and if at any time a man make a thing for the sake of something else, it is referred to his own good, whether his use, his pleasure, or his virtue.

I declare my belief that it is not your duty to do anything that is not to your own interest. Whenever it is unquestionably your duty to do a thing, then it will benefit you to perform that duty.

Altruism accrues little benefit to those lying cold in the gutter.

It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths, to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of good will.

That what appears to be egoism so often isn't.

All our acts, reasoned and unreasoned, are selfish

People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.

Human beings need to watch out for reasonless niceness too. It's never reasonless and its reason's not usually nice.

I know that this is sport first and business second, and people have to do what's right for them.