Conflict Of Interests Quotes & Sayings

A basic conflict is thus arising over Europe between the interests of Atlantic sea-power, which demand the preservation of vigorous and independent political life on the European peninsula, and the interests of the jealous Eurasian land power, which must always seek to extend itself to the west and will never find a place, short of the Atlantic Ocean, where it can from its own standpoint safely stop. — Henry Kissinger

He might have remained a Judicial were it not for a growing schism that began to eat away at the department's long-held and nonpartisan mandate to keep the galaxy free of conflict. On the one side stood Tarkin and others who were committed to enforcing the law and safeguarding the Republic; on the other, a growing number of dissidents who had come to view the Republic as a galactic disease. They detested the influence peddling, the complacency of the Senate, and the proliferation of corporate criminality. They saw the Jedi Order as antiquated and ineffectual, and they yearned for a more equitable system of government - or none at all. As the clashes between Republic and Separatist interests escalated in frequency and intensity, Tarkin would find himself pitted against many of the Judicials with whom he had previously served. The galaxy was fast becoming an arena for ideologues and industrialists, with the Judicials being used to settle trade disputes or to further corporate agendas. — James Luceno

MOST OF THE NATIONS OF the Middle East can be divided into those with long histories and no oil, and those that have lots of oil and very little history. With a few notable exceptions, both groups share a common feature: they were cobbled together by outsiders. The borders of the modern Middle East were drawn by Europeans after the First World War with no regard for the interests or backgrounds of the people who inhabited it. — Richard Engel

If I, taking care of everyone's interests, also take care of my own, you can't talk about a conflict of interest. — Silvio Berlusconi

What in fact could two men talk about, beyond a certain age? What reason could two men find for being together, except, of course, in the case of a conflict of interests, or some common project? After a certain age, it's quite obvious that everything has been said and done. How could a project as intrinsically empty as two men spending some time together lead to anything other than boredom, annoyance, and, at the end of the day, outright hostility? While between a man and a woman there still remained, despite everything, something: a little bit of attraction, a little bit of hope, a little bit of a dream. — Michel Houellebecq

It is impossible to anticipate all of the misdeeds engendered by the universal conflict of human passions. They multiply at a compound rate with the growth in population and the interlacing of particular interests that cannot be directed with geometrical precision towards the public utility. — Cesare Beccaria

The roles I'm interested in or have been interested in, you know, it's going to get down to conflict. Drama is conflict - conflict of interests. — Ben Foster

The forces of blind life that work across this hilltop are as irresistible as she said they were, they work by a principle more potent than fission. But I can't look upon them as just life, impartial and eternal and in flux, an unceasing interchange of protein. And I can't find proofs of the crawl toward perfection that she believed in. Maybe what we call evil is only as she told me that first day we met, what conflicts with our interests; but maybe there are such realities as ignorance, selfishness, jealousy, malice, criminal carelessness, and maybe these things are evil no mater whose interests they serve or conflict with. — Wallace Stegner

The possibility of an ideal society became impossible from the moment of creation, the moment of the "humanization of man." From that moment on, man has been faced with eternal conflict, disquiet, dissatisfaction, drama. "Get you down, all (you people) with enmity between yourselves" (Quran, 2:36). The ideal society is a monotonous and infinite succession of depersonalized generations which bring forth, produce, consume, and die, and so on to the "wrong" eternity. The fact of creation and of God's interference in the human existence made this "mechanism" impossible and illusory; hence, the fanatic opposition of all utopias to God and religion. So, while prophets of utopia proclaimed society and its interests to be the supreme value, God wanted that role to be man's. He gave freedom in order to make this world a temptation and to affirm man and his soul as the highest value. — Alija Izetbegovic

A class cannot exist in society without in some degree manifesting a consciousness of itself as a group with common problems, interests and prospects - although this manifestation may for long periods be weak, confused, and subject to manipulation by other classes. — Harry Braverman

Those who wait for God are pilgrim souls that have no tie that will hold them when the definite command is issued; no prejudices that will paralyze their effort when in some strange coming of the light they are commanded to take a pathway entirely different to that which was theirs before; having no interests either temporal or eternal, either material or mental or spiritual, that will conflict with the will of God when that will is made known. — G. Campbell Morgan

The history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other. — John William Draper

Rather than comparing [war] to art we could more accurately compare it to commerce, which is also a conflict of human interests and activities; and it is still closer to politics, which in turn may be considered as a kind of commerce on a larger scale. — Carl Von Clausewitz

When it's time to focus in and play ball during the season, 100% of my focus is on that. When it's the offseason and I've got time to be away and I can do other interests - they don't conflict. I'm good at compartmentalizing. I can put everything in its appropriate box at the time and open it up when I need to at a later time. — Larry Fitzgerald

The need for justice grows out of the conflict of human interests. That is to say, if there were no conflict of interests among mankind we should never have invented the word justice, nor conceived the idea for which it stands. — Thomas Nixon Carver

My position as regards the monied interests can be put in a few words. In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run, identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand; for property belongs to man and not man to property. — Theodore Roosevelt

I had been allowed to believe in man's innate goodness for the twenty-two years of my life, and I had hoped to carry the belief with me to my grave. I wanted to think that all people could have what they wanted, that there was no inherent conflict between competing interests, and that, if tragedies had to happen, they were not something mere human beings could control. — Charlotte Rogan

Both rich and poor nations have a common stake in policies that put the globe on a sustainable development path. The conflict is less between poor and rich countries than between the broad interests of people and the narrow interests of extractive industries. We need to find our way towards some kind of global regime that reduces emissions of the greenhouse gases, but well-off nations need to transfer the technology to make this possible, rather than viewing this shift as one more opportunity for private industry to profit. — Robert Kuttner

Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests. — Arthur C. Clarke

Faith is not in conflict with reason, nor is it a substitute for reason. Faith chooses the grade of significance or Level of Being at which the search for knowledge and understanding is to aim. There is reasonable faith and there is unreasonable faith. To look for meaning and purpose at the level of inanimate matter would be as unreasonable an act of faith as an attempt to "explain" the masterpieces of human genius as nothing but the outcome of economic interests or sexual frustration. — Ernst F. Schumacher

The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

War is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others. — Carl Von Clausewitz

Confusing being mortal with being threatened can occur in any realm. The fact that something could go wrong does not mean that we are in danger. It means we are alive. Mortality is the sign of life. In the most intimate and personal of arenas, many of us have love and trusted someone who violated that trust. So when someone else comes along who intrigues us, whose interests we share, who we enjoy being with, with whom there could b some mutual enrichment and understanding, that does not mean that we are being violated again. Experiencing anxiety does not mean that anyone is doing anything to us that is unjust. — Sarah Schulman

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict. — Ludwig Von Mises

As Solomon himself had remarked, 'We can be sure of talent, we can only pray for genius.' But it was a reasonable hope that in such concentrated society some interesting reactions would take place.
Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests. So far, the conflict had produced worthwhile results in sculpture, music, literary criticism and film making. It was still too early to see if the group working on historical research would fulfil the hopes of its instigators, who were frankly hoping to restore mankind's pride in its own achievements.
Painting still languished which supported the views of those who considered that static, two dimensional forms of art had no further possibilities. It was noticeable, though a satisfactory explanation for this had not yet been produced that time played an essential part in the colony's achievements. — Arthur C. Clarke

I believe that the fundamental proposition is that we must recognize that the hostilities in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia are all parts of a single world conflict. We must, consequently, recognize that our interests are menaced both in Europe and in the Far East. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Were there no contrariety of interests, nothing would be more simple and easy than to form and preserve free institutions. The right of suffrage alone would be a sufficient guarantee. It is the conflict of opposing interests which renders it the most difficult work of man. — John C. Calhoun

We must work to resolve conflicts in a spirit of reconciliation and always keep in mind the interests of others. We cannot destroy our neighours! We cannot ignore their interests! — Dalai Lama

As such people achieve influence within the organization, whenever there is a conflict between their own interest and the interest of the organization, their interests will win out. — Robert Shea

All conflicts can be resolved. Wars and conflicts are not inevitable. They are caused by human beings. There are always interests that are furthered by war. Therefore those who have power and influence can also stop them. Peace is a question of will. — Martti Ahtisaari

The red robe means the protecting garment that the pure soul must wear for its life in the world. It identifies its wearer, through kinship of the same red blood, with the interests and the welfare of his fellows, in whose cause he is fighting. It is the outer personality which must bear the stress of the conflict and receive the bruises and stains that come from contact with the world. But beneath all the soul must remain unsullied. — Sylvester Baxter

As the great naturalist Charles Darwin saw clearly, individual and collective interests often coincide, as in the invisible hand narrative. But he also saw that in many other cases, interests at the two levels are squarely in conflict, and that in those cases, individual interests generally trump. That simple observation suggests that market failure is often the result not of insufficient competition (the traditional charge from social critics on the Left), but of the very logic of competition itself. — Bob Frank

Do business managers have a commitment to anything more than the success of their company and to making money? It would be hard to say that they do. Indeed, many business leaders deny that there is any conflict between self-interest and the interests of all. — Peter Singer

The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility. To be objective, to use one's reason, is possible only if one has achieved an attitude of humility, if one has emerged from the dreams of omniscience and omnipotence which one has as a child. Love, being dependent on the relative absence of narcissism, requires the developement of humility, objectivity and reason.
I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person's reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs and fears. — Erich Fromm

Within Hobbes' depiction of the motives for conflict ... there is a problematic in which the grave threat that human beings pose to other human beings is not constituted simply by the structures of human passions, interests, and desires, nor by the addition of a self-deceptive and egotistical desire for recognition and proof of one's perhaps illusory power. In this moment, it is the very rationality of other humans, reason in the broad sense, understood as roughly equal to oneself in both capacity and structure, that poses such a threat — Gregory B. Sadler

Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, any claimed or implied conflict of 'the public interest' with private intersts means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interest and wishes of others. — Ayn Rand

The primary conflict, I think, is between people whose interests are with already well-established economic activities, and those whose interests are with the emergence of new economic activities. — Jane Jacobs

Each of us has interests which conflict the interests of everybody else ... 'everybody else' we call 'society'. It's a powerful opponent and it always wins. Oh, here and there an individual prevails for a while and gets what he wants. Sometimes he storms the culture of a society and changes it to his own advantage. But society wins in the long run, for it has the advantage of numbers and of age. — B.F. Skinner

The roots of interpersonal conflict are often an excessive concern for oneself, and an inability to pay attention to the needs of others. It is sad to see how often people ruin a relationship because they refuse to recognize that they could serve their own interests best by helping others achieve theirs. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Giving reasons during conflict to justify or defend a viewpoint is just as manipulative as giving reasons to attack that viewpoint. Neither of these routes is an honest assertive I want that can lead to a workable compromise of interests to quickly resolve the conflict. — Manuel J. Smith

A common strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie's concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism, which was defined to refer only to the organized and politically motivated killing of civilians by killers not wearing the uniforms of soldiers. I recognized that if this was to be the single most important priority of our species, then the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage. This, I reasoned, was why America felt justified in bringing so many deaths to Afghanistan and Iraq, and why America felt justified in risking so many more deaths by tacitly using India to pressure Pakistan. — Mohsin Hamid

In the nearer term, the likeliest source of risk is a conflict between China and the U.S. These are now the two largest economies in the world, and the combination of their economic interdependence, the sharp differences in their political and economic values, and the growing divergence in their interests makes this relationship potentially dangerous for everyone who might be affected by it - which means pretty much everyone. — Ian Bremmer

There would be no need for political power in the Marxist sense of the organized power of one class used to oppress another. Nor, given Marx's idea that communism would come first to the most industrially advanced societies, and would be international in character, would there be any need for the state in the sense of an organization existing to defend the nation against attacks from other nations. Relieved from oppressive conditions that bring their interests into conflict, people would voluntarily co-operate with each other. The political state resting on armed force would become obsolete; its place would be taken by 'an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all' (CM 238). — Anonymous

What we see in a democracy governed by "representatives" is not a government "for the people" but an organized conflict of interests that only results in the setting up of unstable balances of power. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

An artist's early work is inevitably made up of a mixture of tendencies and interests, some of which are compatible and some of which are in conflict. — Bridget Riley

If you look at military and intelligence positions from the 1950s, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been against American national interests. — Abdallah II Of Jordan

There is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical? — Ayn Rand