Word: self-interest
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...collective wisdom behind all such statements envisions human nature as existing in and requiring for its survival the most delicate array of balances between religion and science, reason and emotion, democracy and aristocracy, the individual and the group, self-interest and general welfare; that is, all the balances that found their way into the Constitution's basic text. On the whole, that original, unamended text is a model Enlightenment tract, carefully checking and balancing as if in imitation of the moderate universe in which 18th century Europe trusted. One of the framers, John Dickinson, even saw the proposed relationship between...
...also wishes you a love of animals, which you feel strongly already; he hopes that tenderness lasts and grows. Animals, too, draw people out of excessive self-interest, their existence a statement of need. A dog's eyes search your face for a mystery as deep as God, asking nothing and everything, the way that music operates. He hopes that you always love music, even the noisy boredom you clamp to your ears these days, while he harbors the prayer that in later years will follow Vivaldi and Bix Beiderbecke. If you learn to love jazz, you will have...
WHEN SECRETARY OF STATE George C. Marshall announced his monumental plan for post-war European recovery at Harvard's 1947 commencement, he was taking a risk. He gambled that his appeal to America's enlightened self-interest would overcome the reluctance of a public whose sentiments were increasingly averse to economic commitments abroad. Today, 40 years later, West German President Richard von Weizsacker will take his place on the steps of Memorial Church to address the Class of 1987. His presence reflects the enduring success of Marshall's plan...
LOOKING BACK, my fondest memories are for the times when I tweaked Harvard authorities, out of self-interest, stupidity, or at the behest of the "imp of the perverse" that whispers in all our ears from time to time...
...Just as the 1980s were a re- enactment of the 1950s, the Eisenhower time was a re-enactment of the Harding- Coolidge time of the 1920s. So at 30-year intervals -- Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, F.D.R. in '33, Kennedy in '61 -- we have a swing from private interest, from self-interest, to public purpose." By Schlesinger's calculation, the cyclical change now beginning should reach full momentum around...