“I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, to someone else.”

Source: The Blind Assassin

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Do you have more details about the quote "I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something …" by Margaret Atwood?
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Margaret Atwood 348
Canadian writer 1939

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“In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.”

Source: Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 97.
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“Do Something Nice for Someone Else — and Don't Tell Anyone About It”

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“I think artists do need to do work with no contract, because what we're motivated by is not money. We're motivated by a need to express ourselves and to get our ideas out.”

Nina Paley (1968) US animator, cartoonist and free culture activist

"Copying Is Not Theft: Against Copyright Tyranny (by Nina Paley)" (25 March 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2p_BAjC7C8#t=25m21s<!-- Retrieved 27 February 2013 -->
Context: You don't deserve to be paid because you choose to do something that somebody else may, or may not, want. If you want to be paid for your work, you negotiate that beforehand. Otherwise I would just be walking around talking. Here I am talking now. "You owe me money", right? … It's up to you whether or not you want to do work with no contract. I think artists do need to do work with no contract, because what we're motivated by is not money. We're motivated by a need to express ourselves and to get our ideas out. That's the motivation. It turns out that when people like it they frequently will support you if you give them a means, but this is not a contract.

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“In America, we like everyone to know about the good work we're doing anonymously.”

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“The public be damned. What does the public care for railroads except to get as much out of them for as small a consideration as possible? I don't take any stock in this silly nonsense about working for anybody's good but our own, because we are not. When we make a move, we do it because it is in our interest to do so, and not because we expect to do somebody else good. Of course, we like to do everything possible for the benefit of humanity in general, but when we do, we first see that we are benefiting ourselves. Railroads are not run on sentiment, but on business principles and to pay, and I don't mean to be egotistic when I say that the roads which I have had anything to do with have generally paid pretty well.”

William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885) American philanthropist

Quoted in Clarence P. Dresser, "Vanderbilt in the West" New York Times (9 October 1882). Dresser's account has Vanderbilt denying that he ran a particular passenger express service for the public benefit, but rather to drive down prices of a competing Pennsylvania Railroad service. By some accounts Dresser fabricated the interview except for the first sentence, which Vanderbilt said in refusing to give an interview. See "Reporter C. P. Dresser Dead", New York Times (25 April 1891).
Disputed

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