Political Self Interest Quotes

#1. When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.

Ron Paul

#2. When men organize themselves into groups, and they make rules based on common or self-interest, it's always tangled and political.

Andrew Dominik

#3. Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate.

John L. Lewis

#4. It doesn't serve an American interest. It really doesn't really serve Israeli interests - it serves the interests of the political party that's getting the votes of the settlers on the West Bank.

Chris Matthews

#5. political life came to be dominated by a pattern of interest-group politics that the era's political scientists came to call "pluralist," a form of democracy marked more by competition among organizations and lobbyists than by a sense of the public interest.

Ira Katznelson

#6. You don't want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel. I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.

John Irving

#7. Political realists see the world as it is: an arena of power politics moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, where morality is rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest.

Saul D. Alinsky

#8. John Kerry's newfound interest in fiscal discipline is a political gimmick that defies his 20-year record in the Senate and stands in stark contrast to his reckless and expansive promises of new government spending on the campaign trail.

Steve Schmidt

#9. It [9/11 event] transcended the political and moved into the metaphysical. There was a kind of cosmic, demonic quality of mind at work here, which refused to have any interest in dialogue and political organization and persuasion.

Edward Said

#10. What I've found is that there is a tremendous interest in these issues, across the political spectrum, sort of left-right terms we used to describe people don't really hold here exactly.

Robert McChesney

#11. Filmmaking became a possible way for me to combine my interest in photography and in gathering stories, as well as my interest in journalism and political science and international relations.

Joshua Marston

#12. We've gotta restore the American people's confidence in the ethics process by ensuring that political self-interest can no longer prevent politicians from enforcing ethics rules.

Barack Obama

#13. I have friends, political scientists, sociologists, who all share an interest at least in certain kinds of science fiction.

Paul Krugman

#14. The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interest, where any chosen emphasis supports some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial, or national or sexual.

Howard Zinn

#15. Our nation, which possesses greater resources than any other, is rent, from center to circumference, with party strife, political intrigues, and sectional interest; our counselors are panic stricken, our legislators are astonished, and our senators are confounded.

Joseph Smith Jr.

#16. Is Christianity just another special-interest group, clawing for political power? Or, even if Christians are acting as God's spokesmen, must Christians always conduct themselves politically as if Christianity were just another special-interest group? Do Christians conduct evangelism this way?.

Gary North

#17. Political scientists after World War II hypothesized that even though the voices of individual Americans counted for little, most people belonged to a variety of interest groups and membership organizations - clubs, associations, political parties, unions - to which politicians were responsive.

Robert Reich

#18. And thirdly, the FDA occasionally does some genuine public good with whatever energies it has left over after serving the vested political and commercial interest of its first two activities.

G. Edward Griffin

#19. There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism.

Louis-Ferdinand Celine

#20. I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.

Robert Harris

#21. The Constitution was the expression not only of a political faith, but also of political fears. It was wrought both as the organ of the national interest and as the bulwark of certain individual and local rights.

Herbert Croly

#22. Judo should be free as art and science from any external influences, political, national, racial, and financial or any other organized interest. And all things connected with it should be directed to its ultimate object, the benefit of Humanity

Kano Jigoro

#23. In FY 2006, interest payments alone on the national debt cost us $406 billion ... What a waste ... That $406 billion is pathetically squandered on interest, just because we lacked the discipline to pay our bills when due.

Bill Press

#24. The separation of religion from the practical affairs of society is a convenient doctrine for those who fear that social change would threaten of modify their own political and social self-interest.

William Stringfellow

#25. There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.

James Madison

#26. I say us - obviously I don't vote as I believe democracy is a pointless spectacle where we choose between two indistinguishable political parties, neither of whom represent the people but the interest of powerful business elites that run the world.

Russell Brand

#27. Political and social history are in my view two aspects of the same process. Social life loses half its interest and political movements lose most of their meaning if they are considered separately.

F. M. Powicke

#28. Once a bureau is created, its staff becomes a tenacious political interest group, well placed to defend its budget and to make a case for expanding its activities.

Robert Higgs

#29. Unfortunately, the media, which are not at all reluctant to act in their own self-interest, have succeeded in equating reform in the public mind with further restrictions on just about everyone else's freedom of political speech.

James L. Buckley

#30. There's no secret about my ambition, I do not want to go into the House of Commons. My only real political interest is in London and if one day I'm in a position to run for mayor, then terrific.

Trevor Phillips

#31. The philanthropic tradition is older than democracy, older than Christianity, and older than higher education. It gives form and purpose to personal and social life that cannot be provided by the self-interest of economic enterprise or required by the mandate of political institutions.

Robert L. Payton

#32. Consider, for instance, the recent war in Vietnam in which the United States was driven not by any realistic economic or political interest but by the overwhelming need to defeat atheistic communism.

Ernest Becker

#33. Politicians will pander to special-interest groups eager to gain at the public expense.

Donald J. Boudreaux

#34. Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? ... And just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us.

Milton Friedman

#35. The limitations imposed by democratic political practices makes it difficult to conduct our foreign affairs in the national interest.

Dean Acheson

#36. Political debate is of no interest to me. What I want are practical solutions.

Carole Bouquet

#37. Enough to using Texas as a political laboratory for testing far-right ideas. Enough to using Texas as a workshop for fattening the wallets of their special interest friends and supporters. And enough of politicians listening only to each other, rather than real Texans.

Wendy Davis

#38. Good will, that curious product of consciousness, of leisure and energy to spare and share. That thing we put out against the forces of interest. That extra thing. Religions and nations and political parties have taken it and used it as coinage, have said you must only give it in exchange for value.

Naomi Mitchison

#39. Politicians look for interests not people

Bangambiki Habyarimana

#40. Political liberty involves every citizen without exception in the examination and study of his most sacred interest. It aggrandizes the spirit, ennobles the mind, and establishes among all of them a sort of intellectual quality which makes for a people who are both glorious and powerful.

Benjamin Constant

#41. The diseased pride [of artistic individualists] was not even conscious of a public interest, and would have found all political terms utterly tasteless and insignificant. It was no longer a question of one man one vote, but of one man one universe.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#42. The political topicality of my October paintings means almost nothing to me, but in many reviews it is the first or only thing that arouses interest, and the response to the pictures varies according to current political circumstance. I find this rather a distraction.

Gerhard Richter

#43. This we must say, that everything is economics and economic interest as mere satisfaction of physical needs had, have and always will have a subordinate role in a normal human, that beyond this sphere must be differentiated from an order of higher values, political , spiritual and heroic.

Julius Evola

#44. We do not know whether Melville's work is of universal interest because we have not reached the end of history yet, despite the best efforts of some of our political leaders.

Terry Eagleton

#45. Even today with the public's growing interest in food and diet issues, politicians rarely include food as part of their political platforms.

Jose Andres

#46. Career politicians do not have the courage to prioritize spending and say no to demanding special interest groups who do not reflect the best interests of the country.

Tom Coburn

#47. It's a rarity when someone takes a political risk in Washington today in the public interest.

Arlen Specter

#48. A figure who receives money from abroad for his political work, and thus serves some foreign interest, cannot be a politician in Russia.

Vladimir Putin

#49. What is true of Mr. Mill's influence on the women's-suffrage question is true also of the other political movements in which he took an active interest.

Millicent Fawcett

#50. The national interest is predetermined by geopolitics or the history of a country. Important political leaders never just followed their interests - they were concerned about the interests of their people.

Joseph Nye

#51. The one instrument that has relative political autonomy is monetary policy. Central banks do not need to go to Congress to get approval for an interest rate hike.

Mohamed El-Erian

#52. But I'm not interested in politics. I lose interest the microsecond it ceases to be emotional, when something becomes a political movement. What I'm interested in is emotions.

Bjork

#53. It would seem, then, to be the part of political wisdom to found government on property; and to establish such distribution of property, by the laws which regulate its transmission and alienation, as to interest the great majority of society in the protection of the government.

Daniel Webster

#54. Interest yourself in public affairs as a duty of citizenship, but do not surrender your faith to those who discredit and debase politics by scoffing at sentiment and principle, and whose political activity consists in attempts to gain popular support by cunning devices and shrewd manipulation.

Grover Cleveland

#55. Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest - forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.

Hannah Arendt

#56. 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

#57. Politics and self-interest have been so uniformly connected, that the world, from being so often deceived, has a right to be suspicious of public characters.

Thomas Paine

#58. I mean what does a democracy depend on? A democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest, in any given circumstance.

Aldous Huxley

#59. I actually think that self-interest is overrated as an all-purpose guide to political motive. It leaves out something at least as powerful and immovable - individual psychology.

George Packer

#60. A sense of messianic purpose makes the national interest almost indistinguishable from the political interests of the president.

Ron Suskind