“It was the work of opportunists, crooks, thugs for their own self-gain and interest.”

— Kamisese Mara

Attributed to him posthumously by his friend, business tycoon Hari Punja[citation needed]

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Kamisese Mara 20

President of Fiji 1920–2004

Lindsey Davis book Time to Depart

Time to Depart

“Gain upon gain, and interest to boot!”

Aeschylus (-525–-456 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Source: Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), line 437 (tr. G. M. Cookson)

“Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Ce que les hommes ont nommé amitié n'est qu'une société, qu'un ménagement réciproque d'intérêts, et qu'un échange de bons offices; ce n'est enfin qu'un commerce où l'amour-propre se propose toujours quelque chose à gagner.
Maxim 83.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

“It will be shown during the course of this pamphlet that this slogan [A general Election to kick out the Tories and to elect a Labour Goverment committed to Socialism] is opportunist and that in this instance there is nothing to choose between the revisionists and the Trotskyites; that they both are opportunists; that they are not Marxists but petty-bourgeois democrats with near-Marxist phraseology; that they both betray the interests of the working class and serve the interests of the bourgeoisie by acting as the conductors of bourgeois influence into the proletariat; and that differences of opinion and battles of words between them are of no more importance than the usual jealousy between two department managers in the same store.”

Harpal Brar (1939) British politician

Source: Harpal Brar, Social democracy - The enemy within (London 1995), pg. 139-40.

“If self-interest is obvious, it is not really your very own; it has been generalized, perhaps artificially.”

Harvey Mansfield (1932) Author, professor

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)
Context: Self-interest, when simple, is universal; I would do the same as you. I would be propelled toward an obvious good, or toward a good I thought obvious. If self-interest is obvious, it is not really your very own; it has been generalized, perhaps artificially.