Self-Serving Quotes

The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers — common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons.

Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.

With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.

Self-interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of characters, even that of disinterestedness

Philanthropy can have a very strong selfish component.

Majority of minds are warped into the belief of the only person worth helping is themself.

There's a hustling, but also a self-centred vibe you can get from people in Delhi.

There are hundreds and hundreds .... We've had the policy of protecting members and not exposing them, but we've taken a lot of abuse. There are members on the bandwagon of anti-spending, but they come and get their share.

Donald Trump is a fraud. Listening to him talk about how he's going to put American first again, he's spent his entire career putting his own profits first.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

Folks say I'm egotistical. Hell, I don't even know what it means.

When Nietzsche praises egoism it is always in an aggressive or polemical way, against the virtues, against the virtue of disinterestedness (Z III "Of the three evil things"). But in fact egoism is a bad interpretation of the will, just as atomism is a bad interpretation of force. In order for there to be egoism it is necessary for there to be an ego.

When I'm writing, I can always play around with tense. I can always make past present. I can always kind of manipulate, and I can always be delusional in a way that's completely self-serving. With film, it's like, the camera can't really lie. It can manipulate to a certain extent.

Getting an advantage at the expense of somebody else—that really is what graft is.

He [Martin Van Buren] is an artful, cunning, intriguing, selfish, speculating lawyer, who, by holding lucrative offices for more than half his life, has contrived to amass a princely fortune, and is now seeking the Presidency, principally for sordid gain, and to gratify the most selfish ambition.

You should never bury someone to forward your own personal interest. And I would never do that to anyone else on the planet.

Self-interest is not only a legitimate but a fundamental cause for national policy—one which needs no cloak of hypocrisy.

Instead of respecting things, we want to use them for ourselves and if it is difficult to use them, we want to conquer them.

In essence, Trump thinks everything should be about him, for him, for his benefit and glorification - and he can't comprehend, and doesn't care about, anything that isn't.

My incentive in starting Vanguard, I'm very blunt about this, it was my means of preserving my career. That's a very selfish thing.

As a rule, I think they are quite impossible. Geniuses talk so much, don't they? Such a bad habit! And they are always thinking about themselves, when I want them to be thinking about me.

I think there are people, and I do not mean this to be disparaging, there are people like Jay Mohr and Jeremy Piven where they just give you that vibe, 'This guy's going to play someone a little venal.'