Top 100 Quotes About Self Serving
#1. And if redemption was self-serving, coming as it did ribbon-tied to what he wanted most in life? For once, Akiva's shame wouldn't rise to the bait. He wanted what he'd always wanted, and he'd better just say it, his own worries and fears be damned.
Laini Taylor
#2. Work is not a curse of God but one of the benefits of living on this earth. Finding the work you love is not a self-serving goal; it is a required component of fulfilling your true calling.
Dan Miller
#3. If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family. And that makes you at home in that world and not fearful. So really it's very self-serving.
Susan Sarandon
#4. Is it not the artist who - like our dreams - dissolves the pretenses that hide us from ourselves, disclosing both our self-serving fantasies and our unsuspected potentialities?
Dorothy Norman
#5. The myth of the self-made man, has to be profoundly hypocritical: it is the self-serving demonstration that a lie is the truth
Che Guevara
#6. Each day, a new crisis, a new massacre, a new threat of extinction, disease, internecine conflict, meteorological catastrophe... Behold man. Violent, self-serving and ruthless when in power; exploited, miserable and diseased when not.
Meg Rosoff
#7. It's not in the interests of the self-serving government to educate the masses to the point where they are smart enough to see through the bullshit - because then people will be too smart to vote for them again.
Christina Engela
#8. If you don't allow for self-serving bias in the conduct of others, you are, again, a fool.
Charlie Munger
#9. Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers. I wanted to watch what my actors were doing and how they were telling the story.
Paul Bettany
#10. I never saw men act with such ignorance, violence and self-serving malice as when energised by a just cause.
Joe Abercrombie
#11. Self-serving-pride (swamaan) means to take precaution against being insulted.
Dada Bhagwan
#12. Self-sacrifice is one of a woman's seven deadly sins (along with self-abuse, self-loathing, self-deception, self-pity, self-serving, and self-immolation).
Sarah Ban Breathnach
#13. The inside operation of Congress - the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building - is a story of such monumental decadence that I believe if people find out about it they will demand an end to it.
Bella Abzug
#14. I am convinced that in order for you, as a patient, to be protected, it has to be transparent, evidence-based, objective information. Not self-serving information. Not pharma-driven information. Not ad-driven information. It is transparent, objective, evidence-based information.
Patrick Soon-Shiong
#15. We will not let ourselves be intimidated by the number and violence of attacks against women; nor be fooled by the self-serving praise showered on the "real woman"; nor be won over by men's enthusiasm for her destiny, a destiny they would not for the world want to share.
Simone De Beauvoir
#16. The assertion that Americans love violence and bathe in it daily is a self-serving lie promulgated by fundamentalist religious types and America's propaganda-savvy gun-pimps. It's believed by people who don't read novels, play video games, or go to many movies
Stephen King
#17. I invest because I love helping entrepreneurs and watching them learn and succeed. In my opinion your motives are driven by self serving factors around ego satisfaction and "making a buck". My motives and values are very different.
Ron Conway
#18. just a short trip to any French territory in the Pacific is enough to convince even the most casual observer that the French are among the most self-serving, manipulative, trivial-minded, obnoxious, cynical, and corrupting nations on the face of the earth.
Paul Theroux
#19. As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith.
Mark Hatfield
#20. To live without love for others is to live in aridity, to be self-serving and fruitless. To live without understanding is to live without sense or purpose. To live without awareness is to live as the deaf, blind and dumb in a world of vibrant light and sound.
Belsebuub
#21. In the ignorant state, there is a 'limit' for good qualities, it is known as the self-pride. Self-serving pride (swa-maan) is the limit of virtues in the realm of ignorance.
Dada Bhagwan
#22. Of course the self-serving bias is something you want to get out of yourself. Thinking that what's good for you is good for the wider civilization and rationalizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on this subconscious tendency to serve one's self is a terribly inaccurate way to think.
Charlie Munger
#23. A narcissist, even in pretty packaging, was still a self-serving bastard, the pretty face might fool for a moment, but the ugly truth deep down comes as a bigger blow, the narcissist wants to remain in control by keeping you confused, anxious, scared and apologetic.
V. Theia
#24. As coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives, incompetence and self-serving.
John Stossel
#25. The United Nations has come under the control of outlaw nations and self-serving special interest groups.
Ginny Brown-Waite
#26. The writer ultimately tires of the subject's self-serving story, and substitutes a story of his own.
Janet Malcolm
#27. Representative government is artifice, a political myth, designed to conceal from the masses the dominance of a self-selected, self-perpetuating, and self-serving traditional ruling class.
Giuseppe Prezzolini
#28. Even wondered about the difference?
Autobiography: The usually self-serving accounts of personal accomplishments by a public figure.
Memoir: The usually self-serving accounts of someone whose only accomplishments are often self-pity and vindictiveness.
Raul Ramos Y Sanchez
#29. You can't defend the indefensible - anything you say sounds self-serving and hypocritical.
Diane Abbott
#30. In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless universe beyond.
Alberto Manguel
#31. Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men.
Heinlein Robert A.
#32. I like when there are complicated relationships, that there's a little bit of self-serving parts of it as well as a devotion to a person, and that there's a mixture of both in there. It's just I think that's a little more true to life. It's not always purely one way or the other.
Lisa Kudrow
#33. The evolutionary struggle for survival is really a self-serving series of blows and stabs, and yet it can lead to extremely social animals like dolphins, wolves or, for that matter, primates.
Frans De Waal
#34. awareness of a problem does not mean much - particularly when you have special interests and self-serving institutions in play.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#35. One's past is not one's destiny, and it is self-serving to pretend that it is. If henceforth I were miserable, it would be my own fault: and I vowed never to waste my substance on petty domestic conflict.
Theodore Dalrymple
#36. Lost in the barrage of images and self-serving analysis are the economic and social causes of the conflict.
Michel Chossudovsky
#37. I think in your home, you should only use colors that you look good in. It's a little self-serving but think if it as you're on a stage. Not with any pressure, but you want to showcase yourself.
Bryan Batt
#38. She would thrust these thoughts away, miserable and horrified, wondering if there was any lower limit to the human spirit at its nasty, calculating, self-serving worst, not wanting to know.
Stephen King
#39. When you meet silent and inscrutable people, don't tell them what you are thinking. When you meet irritable and self-serving people, be careful what you say.
Zicheng Hong
#40. We have to replace our focus on personalities with a focus on ideas so that the opinionated and self-serving pronouncements and forms of cyber-bullying are replaced by thoughtful dialogue and open-minded conversation.
Anthony Carmona
#41. Lies can be verbal or nonverbal, kindhearted or self-serving, devious or bald-faced; they can be lies of omission or lies of commission; they can be lies that undermine national security or lies that make a child feel better. And each type might involve a unique neural pathway.
Robin Marantz Henig
#42. A lot of presidential memoirs, they say, are dull and self-serving. I hope mine is interesting and self-serving.
William J. Clinton
#44. One is our tendency to give higher credences to propositions that we want to be true. This can show up at a very personal level, as what's known as self-serving bias:
Sean Carroll
#45. Kindness is weak when you use it in a self-serving manner. Self-serving kindness is thin - people can see right through it when a kind leader has an agenda.
Travis Bradberry
#46. Gaia wasn't ruthless and self-serving like Caine; she was evil, like Drake. A psychopath. A mad and terrible beast.
Michael Grant
#47. The power to regulate the value of money does not involve a power to dilute the value of money by inflation, an absurd and self-serving rendering.
Thomas Woods
#49. Pure generosity is when you help the ingrate. Every other form is self-serving.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#50. I'm a cold-hearted bastard. I'm insular, I'm jaded, a workaholic, I'm ruthless and I'm self-serving. I don't do forever, I rarely even do "I'll call you tomorrow". And just because I'm here now it does not mean if you ask me to stay I will.
Ally Blake
#51. I'm suspicious of dreams in books too. Because they're boring and too self-serving.
Jill Alexander Essbaum
#52. Acts 16:9 is the meddler's motto, simultaneously selfless and self-serving, generous but stuck-up. Into every generation of Americans is born a new crop of buttinskys sniffing out the latest Macedonia that may or may not want their help.
Sarah Vowell
#53. Read at least one book a month. This is self-serving, obviously. It's a proven fact that people who read buy more books than people who don't read. In truth, I wish you'd read ten books a month, or at least buy that many.
Randy Pausch
#54. By its very nature, hard-line ideology is self-serving and self-perpetuating; its primary goal is to survive - and that precludes everything.
Queen Rania Of Jordan
#55. Love yourself not in some egocentric, self-serving sense but love yourself the way you would love your friend in the sense of taking care of yourself, nourishing yourself, trying to understand, comfort, and strengthen yourself.
Frederick Buechner
#56. At the core, our motives are always self-serving, Kate. Altruism is a fog created by sly minds seeking to benefit from the energy and skill of others. Nothing more.
Ilona Andrews
#57. I used to believe the government was the answer to all our problems. But the ... government, I've concluded, is now aninsufferable jungle of self-serving bureaucrats.
Chet Huntley
#58. Increasingly, people perceive no difference between the narcissistic self-serving reporters asking questions, and the narcissistic self-serving politicians who evade them.
Michael Crichton
#59. Self-serving biases and self-centered agendas are cotton jammed in the ears of our conscience. Even if truth shouts, we can't hear it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#60. 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.
Jose Antonio Vargas
#61. The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#62. Once you start rummaging around in the realm of the unverifiable there is considerable room for creativity, and accusations of sorcery are often blended with self-serving motives. Tribal people, anthropologists have shown, often single out despised in-laws for allegations of witchcraft, a convenient
Steven Pinker
#63. People had an illogical, self-serving rationale when it came to interpreting the behavior of others.
Marisha Pessl
#64. The real story of our times is seldom told in the horse-puckey-filled memoirs of dopey, self-serving presidents or generals, but in the outrageous, demented lives of guys like Lenny Bruce, Giordano Bruno, Scott Fitzgerald - and Paul Krassner. The burrs under society's saddle. The pains in the ass.
Harlan Ellison
#65. It would be incredibly presumptuous and self-serving of me to believe that Facebook was the end of history. The only way it could possibly be the end of history is if it becomes some sort of artificial super intelligence that takes over the world.
Sean Parker
#66. Pretty is a self-serving situation in which it's all about you. People who are pretty are superficial, but they are not beautiful. Beauty requires more depth.
Diane Keaton
#67. Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests.
James C. Collins
#68. For me right now I think being the world number one is a bigger deal than being the world champion because I think it shows better who plays the best chess. That sounds self-serving but I think it's also right.
Magnus Carlsen
#69. If people are to develop any deep spirituality today, and especially if men are to develop spiritually, they need to be liberated from self-serving worldviews.
Richard Rohr
#70. [E]mpathy - not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance - is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#71. Flatterers should be mistrusted, especially when they praise the dead. To seek a place in society is self-serving, but to seek one in history affects everyone.
Bauvard
#72. The world has been tragic since the day Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. From that moment murder, mayhem and war entered the scene and we are still suffering the consequences of a man-driven, self-serving, short-sighted environment.
Louie Giglio
#73. Inquisitiveness is self-serving, Johanna. -Marcus Eaton
Veronica Roth
#74. I think people are inherently self-aggrandizing, pleasureseeking, unempathetic, self-serving, greedy and lustful.
Park Dietz
#75. I do not trust self-serving misinformation coming from corporations and their media trolls. I do not trust politicians who are taking millions from those corporations, either. I trust people. So I make my music for people, not for candidates.
Neil Young
#76. Selfishness is the controlling force of sinful living. It is this motive which pulsates through the natural mind, emotions and will - self-pleasing, self-serving, living for self.
Walter J Chantry
#77. Memory is more of a self-serving dynamic revision machine: you remember the last time you remembered the event, and without realizing it, change the story at every subsequent remembrance.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#78. Every policy is shaped by two forces: background analysis and foreground politics. The political forces are loud, self-serving and, in the case of energy policy, well known.
Donella Meadows
#79. It was self-serving politicians who convinced recent generations of Americans that we could all stand in a circle with our hands in each other's pockets and somehow get rich.
Paul Harvey
#80. In short, I do not believe the cynical liberal claim that the details of conservative political policies are just due to a self-serving ultrarich conspiracy, though the interests and finances of the ultrarich are certainly engaged.
George Lakoff
#81. The sages may have been self-serving, like the rest of us, but that doesn't mean they weren't sages.
Robert Wright
#82. Because you are the product of an educational system which recycles historical facts written by the victors whose perceptions are often skewed and self-serving.
Ednah Walters
#83. Personally, I'd like to see the word genre taken out back and shot, a bullet in the back of its head, if it's going to be so overloaded with meanings it's just gibberish skewed to self-serving doublethink.
Hal Duncan
#84. New Labour was the most short-sighted, self-serving, incompetent, useless, and ineffective government that Britain has ever known. Make no mistake, Labour's economic policies were a national security liability.
Liam Fox
#85. David Halberstam often wrote about the powerful, but his real sympathies lay with ordinary people. He was very uncomfortable with bigfoot Washington journalism - he thought it was lazy and self-serving.
Jonathan Yardley
#86. Keep a journal of disappointments, failures, and self-destructive actions. It's important to write this down because these are the kinds of things your self-serving bias will want to forget or minimize.
Richard O'Connor
#87. Inside of every being there is a constant war being raged. The part that tell us to do what is right and what is decent and the part of us that is self-serving. The part that wants what it wants regardless of who is hurt getting it.
Kinley MacGregor
#88. So the highest and the happiest of endeavors is to be a philosopher ? Doesn't it seem self-serving for a philosopher to make that claim?
Irvin D. Yalom
#89. The most self-serving thing one can do is live their life selflessly. Selflessly give your experience. Selflessly give your knowledge. Selflessly give your time. Selflessly give whatever it is you have to give. And the world will rise to meet you.
Steve Harper
#90. But there's no way round it-commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. We're not supposed to be embraced in that way. When you look at how society rewards so many of the wrong people, it's hard not to view financial reimbursement as a badge of self-serving mediocrity.
Banksy
#91. But in the darkness of her room he was reminded that helplessness was often a portal to God, because rarely did the fragile, self-serving human pray for things in his complete control.
Rene Gutteridge
#92. That is the honest nature of friendship. That is when it becomes sincere, and not self-serving.
R.A. Salvatore
#93. Leadership is never an avenue to be self-serving but,a platform to render great service to people.
Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
#94. In mythology and religion, no less than in other spheres of life there is much in the way of self-serving interests, deceitfulness, mindlessness, and vices.
Luis E. Navia
#95. Dissect your motives deeper! You will find that no one has ever done anything wholly for others. All actions are self-directed, all service is self-serving, all love self-loving.
Irvin D. Yalom
#96. Literary criticism is generally bunk. Nonsense. Usually based on self-serving post-intellectual bullshit.
John Fante
#97. The history of psychiatry rewrites itself so often that it almost resembles the self-serving chronicles of a totalitarian and slightly paranoid regime.
J.G. Ballard
#98. In the worldly life, self-serving pride (swa-maan) is considered a good quality and arrogant pride (abhimaan) as a bad quality.
Dada Bhagwan
#99. The phrase "Rest in peace" seems incredibly self-serving. It basically means, "Stay in your grave. Don't haunt me." The opposite would be "Fitfully toss" or "Go jogging.
Jenny Lawson
#100. Misogyny is simply a symptom of how stupid and self-serving we all are. As is racism. As is any outlook that lumps people into pejorative categories (like 'neckbeards'), that urges or insinuates hatred of people based on simplistic identifications.
R. Scott Bakker
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