Even wisdom has to yield to self-interest.
Pindar

For scholarship - if it is to be scholarship - requires, in addition to liberty, that the truth take precedence over all sectarian interests, including self-interest.
John Charles Polanyi

For the state by its nature claims sovereignty, the right to an unlimited development of power, determined only by self-interest. It is by nature anarchistic.
Christian Lous Lange

Friendship without self-interest is one of the rare and beautiful things of life.
James F. Byrnes

I was induced to establish several orders of merit, from conviction that emulation, well directed, becomes a useful servant; and, that the latent genius of some youth is more easily brought into action this way, than by the more sordid gratification of self-interest.
Joseph Lancaster

If Congress does its job in this regard, the residents of Puerto Rico will be empowered to act in their own self-interest and express their future political status aspirations accordingly.
Dick Thornburgh

It's not a choice between war and peace. It's a choice between war and endless war. It's not appeasement. I think it's better even to call it American self-interest.
Michael Scheuer

My commitment to the security and future of Israel is based upon basic morality as well as enlightened self-interest. Our role in supporting Israel honors our own heritage.
Gerald R. Ford

Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.
Charles Baudelaire

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge.
John Perry Barlow

Prejudice and passion and suspicion are more dangerous than the incitement of self-interest or the most stubborn adherence to real differences of opinion regarding rights.
Elihu Root

Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
Henri Frederic Amiel

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. Only reverance can restrain violence - reverance for human life and the environment.
William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

The kind of society which we still have is maybe, in some cases, getting worse. Competition is becoming a virtue. Intense competition drives people to go more and more into self-interest. Even to see other folks as competition.
Major Owens

The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld