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

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
Milton Friedman

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
John Steinbeck

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