Quotes about interest
page 56

Warren Farrell photo

“Boys who are not interested in school almost always have an interest that can be catalyzed into future employment if it is pursued via hands-on experience.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 87

Mikhail Gorbachev photo
Mary Church Terrell photo
Helena Roerich photo
Milton Friedman photo

“Now, when anybody starts talking about this [an all-volunteer force] he immediately shifts language. My army is 'volunteer,' your army is 'professional,' and the enemy's army is 'mercenary.' All these three words mean exactly the same thing. I am a volunteer professor, I am a mercenary professor, and I am a professional professor. And all you people around here are mercenary professional people. And I trust you realize that. It's always a puzzle to me why people should think that the term 'mercenary' somehow has a negative connotation. I remind you of that wonderful quotation of Adam Smith when he said, 'You do not owe your daily bread to the benevolence of the baker, but to his proper regard for his own interest.'”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

And this is much more broadly based. In fact, I think mercenary motives are among the least unattractive that we have.
Source: The Draft: A Handbook of Facts and Alternatives, Sol Tax, edit., chapter: “Recruitment of Military Manpower Solely by Voluntary Means,” chairman: Aristide Zolberg, University of Chicago Press (1967) p. 366, based on the Conference Held at the University of Chicago, December 4-7, 1966, also in Two Lucky People, Milton and Rose Friedman, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 380.

Dorothy Thompson photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo
John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
Aldous Huxley photo

“I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.”

Source: Brave New World (1932), Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Dan Hartman photo

“Creativity is an interesting thing…You can sit back, have a glass of wine, watch some television…and get a terrific idea of what you want to do…The great thing about being at home is that as soon as you get an idea you can put a mike at the piano and record it. That way you don’t lose the vibes, and you don’t have to worry about finishing before the studio’s next booking arrives…”

Dan Hartman (1950–1994) American singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, record producer

Source: On how he intended the “The Schoolhouse” to work for the artist in “Hartman’s Little Schoolhouse Haven for Aspiring Musicians” https://books.google.com/books?id=_CMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT66&dq in Billboard (1981 Aug 15)

Rebecca West photo
Annie Besant photo
Don Feder photo

“A civilization of life is one that embraces life, caring for families, supporting children and the elderly. A civilization of death authorizes the killing of unborn human beings, condones the killing of the elderly and encourages people to live only in their own interest. A culture of life is the one with eternal and timeless values.”

Don Feder (1946) writer; Media consultant

Is Formal Marriage Out of Fashion? Interview with Communications Director of the World Congress of Families Don Feder https://youth-time.eu/don-feder-communications-director-of-the-world-congress-of-families/ (November 15, 2014)

David Lynch photo

“When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. I wasn't even curious. It sounded like a waste of time.
What got me interested, though, was the phrase "true happiness lies within."”

At first I thought it sounded kind of mean, because it doesn't tell you where the "within" is, or how to get there. But still it had a ring of truth. And I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.
The First Dive, p. 3
Catching the Big Fish (2006)

Richard Feynman photo

“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?"”

I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
Source: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 239, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=48m10s

Stephen Robson photo
Isaac Mashman photo
Celeste Ng photo

“I have an interest in the outsider…In fiction you’re not often writing about the typical, you are interested in outliers, the points of interest. Part of it comes from feeling I was the only Asian or person of colour … another part comes from my personality: I’m an introvert, and my usual survival mode in a large group is to stand by a wall and watch everybody.”

Celeste Ng (1980) American novelist

On her writing interests in “Celeste Ng: ‘It’s a novel about race, and class and privilege’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/04/celeste-ng-interview-little-fires-everywhere in The Guardian (2017 Nov 4)

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Daniel Kash photo
James Clear photo

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”

James Clear (1986) American author and speaker

Source: https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1059504530130395136

“I was in school studying civil engineering. A guy approached me on the street and said that I had a interesting look-very exotic. He told me I should try to be in the industry.”

Thuy Trang (1973–2001) Vietnamese actress (1973-2001)

Power Rangers Unlimited: Thuy Trang Interview https://myriahac.tripod.com/id8.html (December 24, 1994)

Ron English photo

“Death is more interesting from a distance.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Death and the Eternal Forever (2014)

William Morris photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo

“The goal towards which the advance will probably be made at an accelerated pace, is that in the direction of which the legislation of the last quarter of a century has been tending—the intervention, in other words, of the State on behalf of the weak against the strong, in the interests of labour against capital, of want and suffering against luxury and wealth.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

‘The Revolution of 1884’, The Fortnightly Review, No. CCXVII, New Series (1 January 1885), quoted in T. H. S. Escott (ed.), The Fortnightly Review, Vol. XXXVII, New Series (1 January – 1 June 1885), p. 9
1880s

William Ewart Gladstone photo

“I did not like acting. I wasn’t very good and wasn’t interested in being good but I was interested in helping people that were good.”

Nicole Jaffe (1941) Talent agent, actress

Super ‘70s and ‘80s: “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!”—Nicole David (Jaffe) https://www.noblemania.com/2011/10/super-70s-and-80s-scooby-doo-where-are_10.html (October 10, 2011)

Peter Singer photo

“We do not have to make self- sacrifice a necessary element of altruism. We can regard people as altruists because of the kind of interests they have rather than because they are sacrificing their interests.”

Source: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015), Chapter 9: Altruism and Happiness (p. 103)

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo

“Now the English nation is able to make war, but it will only do so where its own interests are concerned. We are a simple and practical nation, a commercial nation; we do not go in for chivalrous enterprises or fight for others as the French do.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Remarks to Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (10 March 1839), quoted in Memoirs of Prince Adam Czartoryski and His Correspondence with Alexander I, Vol. II, ed. Adam Gielgud (1888), p. 340
1830s

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Felix Adler photo
Elizabeth Blackwell photo

“The subject of love is always of the most absorbing interest to the younger and more active portion of a people; sexual passion, in its ennobling or debasing form, exercises irresistible attraction.”

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) England-born American physician, abolitionist, women's rights activist

p. 10 https://books.google.com/books?id=7VlHAQAAMAAJ&q=irresistible#v=snippet&q=irresistible&f=false
Essays in Medical Sociology (1899)

Richard Crossman photo
Trevor Noah photo
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington photo
Richard Price photo
Richard Price photo
Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg photo

“If war is forced upon us, we shall fight and, with God's help, not perish. But to conjure up a war ourselves without having our honor or vital interests imperiled, this I would consider a sin against Germany's destiny, even if human foresight would predict a total victory.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Letter to the Kaiser (6 March 1912), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), pp. 59–60

Fabien Cousteau photo
Fabien Cousteau photo
Michael Parenti photo
Clay Shirky photo
Chanakya photo
Michael J. Sandel photo
Chulpan Khamatova photo

“My kids don't watch my movies. They are not interested. They do not want to perceive mom as such.”

Chulpan Khamatova (1975) Russian actress

As quoted in "Правила жизни Чулпан Хаматовой" in Esquire https://esquire.ru/rules/6929-chulpan-khamatova/#part0

Nima Arkani-Hamed photo

“... nature has very few good ideas — it recycles them in subtle and interesting ways, over and over again — and it's our job to understand how that works.”

Nima Arkani-Hamed (1972) American-Canadian physicist

[A Conversation with Nima Arkani-Hamed: The Power of Principles, Physics Revealed (Part II), April 2, 2021, Ideas Roadshow, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzSDZ_EPiXk] (quote at 51:12 of 52:41)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Chiang Kai-shek photo

“I would rather have no offspring than sacrifice our nation's interests.”

Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) Chinese politician and military leader

The Generalissimo's son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the revolutions in China and Taiwan, Jay Taylor, 2000, Harvard University Press, 74, 0674002873, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=_5R2fnVZXiwC&pg=PA59&dq=chiang+sacrifice+son&hl=en&ei=nQW9TLK5MoT68Aaw9uAC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=chiang%20son%20i%20would%20rather%20have%20no%20offspring%20than%20sacrifice%20our%20%20interests&f=false,

Joe Armstrong photo

“Everything is interesting, everything does connect, but anything don't work.”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

The How and Why of Fitting Things Together

Prevale photo

“The basic elements that make a person more or less interesting are: intelligence and character.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Gli elementi fondamentali che rendono più o meno interessante una persona sono: l'intelligenza e il carattere.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“The individual who takes advantage of the power he has to impose exclusively the interests to his advantage, is a failure absolutely devoid of courage and value.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) L'individuo che approfitta del potere che ha per imporre esclusivamente gli interessi a suo vantaggio, è un fallito assolutamente privo di coraggio e valore.
Source: prevale.net

Richard Feynman photo

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. […] We know nothing about them because of the survivorlship bias.””

"Wide hats and narrow minds" https://books.google.com/books?id=-lWtVSZoqWkC&pg=PA776 New Scientist 8 March 1979, p. 777. Reprinted in The Panda's Thumb, p. 151 https://books.google.com/books?id=z0XY7Rg_lOwC&pg=PA151.

Maximilien Robespierre photo

“When will the interests of governments be amalgamated with those of the people? Never!”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Note found in his notebook, after his death
Misc Quotes

Roh Moo-hyun photo
Suraj Sani photo

“Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. Now that I am experiencing these things with you in real life, It’s as if these fairy tales left out the most interesting parts of their stories.”

Suraj Sani (1996) Nigerian writer, Spoken word artist

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10937455-nothing-could-have-prepared-me-for-the-reality-of-the/

Cui Jian photo

“To be the person stand behind the camera observing other people is really interesting, it gives me a great sense of freedom.”

Cui Jian (1961) Chinese rock musician of Korean descent

"The Long March of Cui Jian" in SBS (December 2015) https://www.sbs.com.au/news/feature/long-march-cui-jian

Bhaskar Sunkara photo
Lynn Shelton photo

“As a filmmaker, I really am most interested in humans and their deep desire to connect to each other. How do they get through their own lives? Where have I come and where am I now? And where do I want to go from here? It’s all of those humanistic questions.”

Lynn Shelton (1965–2020) American film director, screenwriter, film editor, actress and film producer (1965-2020)

Cinema76 - Interview with Sword of Trust Director Lynn Shelton - 16 July 2019 https://www.cinema76.com/home/2019/7/16/interview-with-sword-of-trust-director-lynn-shelton - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210727191014/https://www.cinema76.com/home/2019/7/16/interview-with-sword-of-trust-director-lynn-shelton

Opal Tometi photo

“I was interested in giving folks like black, poor people who’ve been marginalized, brutalized, an opportunity to have more visibility. Before seven years ago, we could barely get the news to talk about police violence, let alone police death.”

Opal Tometi (1984) Nigerian–American writer, strategist and community organizer

How the movement that’s changing America was built and where it goes next, By Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone, (16 June 2020)

Bowinn Ma photo

“Right now, the region is more interested in looking at options for rapid transit than they are for more lanes on those bridges, especially given that our local road networks can't quite handle more volume of traffic. People on the North Shore want choice.”

Bowinn Ma (1985) Canadian politician

North Shore News https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/ironworkers-bridge-sees-start-of-two-year-maintenance-project-3462200, Ironworkers bridge sees start of two-year maintenance project, February 26, 2021

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Anna Deavere Smith photo

“I do believe that character is a process, that truth is a process, and I am not interested in winning and losing…”

Anna Deavere Smith (1950) American actress, playwright and professor

On character building in “Wearing the Words: An Interview with Anna Deavere Smith” https://tricycle.org/magazine/wearing-words-interview-anna-deavere-smith/ in the Buddhist Review (Fall 1994)

John Desmond Bernal photo
Richard Wolf photo
Hu Shuli photo

“Revealing the truth to the public requires layers of checking and multiple source verification. Good journalism can safeguard interests and foster changes of rules.”

Hu Shuli (1953) Chinese journalist

As quoted in "HU SHULI: The Hard-Earned Right to Report" in Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (14 November 2016) https://www.rmaward.asia/rmtli/hu-shuli-the-hard-earned-right-to-report/

Frithjof Schuon photo

“Theological perspective is characterized extrinsically by its concern with defending conceptual and moral interests, whereas pure metaphysics sets forth the nature of things, while being aware of aspects and points of view.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2019, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, World Wisdom, 12, 978-1-93659765-9]
Miscellaneous, Theology

Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo

“The greatest of British interests is peace.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the Circus, Anlaby Road, Hull (8 March 1899), quoted in The Times (9 March 1899), p. 6
Leader of the Opposition

“Renaissance art has always been my favourite subject. The realism involved in it is a challenge for me not only as an artist but also as a priest. Subjects involving human beings have always been my core area of interest.”

Nude figures, Mizo bishop's tribute to God https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/Nude-figures-Mizo-bishops-tribute-to-God/articleshow/4834560.cms?referral=PM (July 29, 2009)

“Humans become violent when they feel their interest are threatened.”

Galas scowled. “They were never threatened! Parliament is a rumor mill staffed by trough-fed clods who abuse the tongue of their birth every time they open their mouths. They all gabble at once and confuse one another mightily, and when this confusion is committed to paper they refer to it as ‘policy.’”
Source: Ventus (2000), Chapter 17 (p. 246)

John Stuart Mill photo
Sheyene Gerardi photo
John Maynard Keynes photo
Chay Yew photo

“The dramaturgy of audiences and communities is crucial: how they think, how they hear stories, how they relate to the theatre…That was an interesting curve. Not having lived in the Midwest, I found that it’s segregated, it’s tribal.”

Chay Yew (1975) Singaoprean playwriter

On connecting with audiences in “Artistic director Chay Yew: ‘Audiences come here wanting a dialogue about America’” https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/interviews/2019/artistic-director-chay-yew-audiences-come-here-wanting-to-have-a-dialogue-about-america/ in The Stage (2019 Aug 5)

“The outsiders. I’m interested in the people that don’t necessarily fit and the thing that gives you permission to be uncomfortable. I like dark work because you’re forced to learn about certain things…”

Dael Orlandersmith (1959) American actress and writer

On the themes that she favors in “Dael Orlandersmith on ‘Until the Flood’” https://www.theintervalny.com/interviews/2018/02/dael-orlandersmith-on-until-the-flood/ in The Interval (2018 Feb 1)

Yingluck Shinawatra photo
Émile Banning photo

“A people needs air, broad horizons, an ideal which charms its imagination and makes its heart beat; reduce it to household calculations, to the politics of party interests, it will disintegrate and corrupt itself.”

Émile Banning (1836–1898) academic, civil servant

Source: All the King's Men' A search for the colonial ideas of some advisers and "accomplices" of Leopold II (1853-1892). (Hannes Vanhauwaert), Emile Banning (1836-1898): The Don Quichotte of the ‘liberal civilization’ in Congo, A romantic associate of Leopold II. http://www.ethesis.net/leopold_II/leopold_II.htm#_ftn194 CROKAERT, P. Brialmont, 23.

Haruki Murakami photo

“I’m not particularly interested in collecting things, but there’s one sort of running motif in my life: despite my basic indifference, objects just seem to collect around me, of their own volition.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: Haruki Murakami official FB profile https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=440734884083102&set=a.294927818663810

Bhumibol Adulyadej photo

“I do some things that are within my rights and then they see that it is something that is all right. So they begin to understand that I am doing things not for my own enrichment or my own interest. It is for the whole country.”

Bhumibol Adulyadej (1927–2016) King of Thailand

Source: "King Bhumibol's Reign" in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/21/magazine/king-bhumibol-s-reign.html (21 May 1989)

“When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan I took interest and had a desire to travel there.”

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith (1965) One of Al-Qaeda's official spokesmen

Source: Kronos US v Sulaiman Abu Ghayth Statement https://kronosadvisory.com/Kronos_US_v_Sulaiman_Abu_Ghayth_Statement.1.pdf (1st March 2013)

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“Once you asked me about crime nowadays - I said any such interest pathological - maybe prompted by the endless sickening television programmes of your time - never able to watch more than few minutes myself... disgusting!”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Source: 1990s, 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997)

Jiang Qing photo

“Sex is engaging in the first rounds. What sustains interest in the long run is political power.”

Jiang Qing (1914–1991) Chinese political figure and wife of Mao Zedong

Her statement in an interview.
Source: "Suicide of Jiang Qing, Mao's Widow, Is Reported" in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/05/obituaries/suicide-of-jiang-qing-mao-s-widow-is-reported.html (5 June 1991)

Albert Einstein photo

“I’m a magnet for all the crackpots in the world, but they are of interest to me, too. A favourite pastime of mine is to reconstruct their thinking processes. I feel genuinely sorry for them, that’s why I try to help them.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: (October 15, 1953) as quoted by Johanna Fantova in Conversations with Einstein https://ysfine.com/einstein/fantova/fantova.html