Quotes for All
Time and again our best and brightest have alerted society to looming problems, but our persistent pattern has been to ignore the warnings and suffer the consequences. The pathetic refrain of recent years –‘Nobody saw this coming’–is always a self-serving lie. Eugene Linden
A letter is not a dialogue or even an omniscient exposition. It is a fabric of surfaces, a mask, a form as well suited to affectations as to the affections. The letter is, by its natural shape, self-justifying; it is one’s own evidence, deposition, a self-serving testimony. In a letter the writer holds all the … Read more
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
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
The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth. Franklin D. Roosevelt
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
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
You can’t defend the indefensible. Anything you say sounds self-serving and hypocritical. Diane Abbott
You have a certain objectivity, as a member of the audience, and you can come away maybe being provoked into a certain discourse or a certain arena of questioning, regarding how you would deal with things that your character has to deal with. Whereas when you’re doing a film, once you start asking, What would … Read more
[Oliver North is a] document-shredding, Constitution-trashing, Commander in Chief-bashing, Congress-thrashing, uniform-shaming, Ayatollah-loving, arms-dealing, criminal-protecting, résumé-enhancing, Noriega-coddling, Social Security-threatening, public school-denigrating, Swiss-banking-law-breaking, letter-faking, self-serving, election-losing, snake-oil salesman who can’t tell the difference between the truth and a lie. Chuck Robb