What Interests You Most Quotes & Sayings

That digression business got on my nerves. I don't now. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all ... lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most ... I like it when somebody gets excited about something. — J.D. Salinger

It is essential that a child's life not be ruled by the adult's need for efficiency. Efficiency is the enemy of infancy. It is too costly in terms of the child's emotional economy. It drains the child's resources, prevents growth, stifles interests, and may lead to emotional meltdowns. Children need opportunities to experiment, struggle, and learn without being rushed or insulted. Anxiety — Haim G. Ginott

Learning to listen, letting people finish their sentences, and most of all, the habit of noticing the difference between what people say and how they say it. {on the habits of psychoanalytic training and practice applied to fiction writing} The gap between what people tell you and what's really going on is what interests me. — Amy Bloom

What most people underestimate, he suggests, is how much time they spend on small tasks and small diversions that are of little consequence: ten minutes here, twenty minutes there. Over the course of a day it adds up to more time than you might think. If all those bits of time are devoted single-mindedly to what really interests - or obsesses - you, Marshall suggests, a big window opens. — Timothy Appleby

Unlike other countries, we're not skeptical at all when it comes to EU expansion. In fact, we are in favor of admitting Ukraine and Turkey. In this sense, one can hardly say that we are focusing unilaterally on our own national interests. Austria, for example, has held up the negotiations for Turkey's admission to the EU. Why am I against deeper involvement in the EU? There are several reasons for that. — Lech Kaczynski

I think what interests me the most is when the two things are developed at the same time, which certainly feels natural for the way of working when there is no dialogue. You sort of depend on the music to be that, especially when there's lyrics in the music. — Matthew Barney

He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is.
Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy? — P.D. James

A masterly analysis of how political interests, economic circumstances, development strategies, and local history have shaped what are surprisingly different versions of the welfare state across the developing world. The authors combine fine-grained country analyses with intelligent use of data, and explain and extend the theory and literature on the modern welfare state. The book is both scholarly and readable. — Nancy Birdsall

Self persuasion was a concept much loved by evolutionary psychologists. I had written a piece about it for an Australian magazine. It was pure armchair science, and it went like this: if you lived in a group, like humans have always done, persuading others of your own needs and interests would be fundamental to your well-being. Sometimes you had to use cunning. Clearly you would be at your most convincing if you persuaded yourself first and did not even have to pretend to believe what you were saying. The kind of self-deluding individuals who tended to do this flourished, as did their genes. So it was we squabbled and scrapped, for our unique intelligence was always at the service of our special pleading and selective blindness to the weakness of our case. — Ian McEwan

What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, 'Write what you know.' It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one. — Annie Proulx

Structure your presentation so that you appeal to the different interests of the different decision-makers involved. — Brian Tracy

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. — James Madison

There are two aspects to the life of every man: the personal life, which is free in proportion as its interests are abstract, and the elemental life of the swarm, in which a man must inevitably follow the laws laid down for him.
Consciously a man lives on his own account in freedom of will, but he serves as an unconscious instrument in bringing about the historical ends of humanity. An act he has once committed is irrevocable, and that act of his, coinciding in time with millions of acts of others, has an historical value. The higher a man's place in the social scale, the more connections has with others, and the more power he has over them, the more conspicuous is the inevitability and predestination of every act he commits. "The hearts of kings are in the hand of God." The king is the slave of history. — Leo Tolstoy

As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read, the corruption of the schools would not matter so much if the Press were free. But the Press is not free. As it costs at least a quarter of a million of money to establish a daily newspaper in London, the newspapers are owned by rich men. And they depend on the advertisements of other rich men. Editors and journalists who express opinions in print that are opposed to the interests of the rich are dismissed and replaced by subservient ones. — George Bernard Shaw

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

Carol would not be a bad one to [settle down] with. She's pretty and bright, and maybe this is what love is. She's good company: her interests broaden almost every day. She reads three books to my one, and I read a lot. We talk far into the night. She still doesn't understand the first edition game: Hemingway, she says, reads just as well in a two-bit paperback as he does in a $500 first printing. I can still hear myself lecturing her the first time she said that. Only a fool would read a first edition. Simply having such a book makes life in general and Hemingway in particular go better when you do break out the reading copies. I listened to myself and thought, This woman must think I'm a government-inspected horse's ass. Then I showed her my Faulkners, one with a signature, and I saw her shiver with an almost sexual pleasure as she touched the paper where he signed. Faulkner was her most recent god[.] — John Dunning

How quickly people changed, with their interests, their feelings. Well-made phrases replaced by well-made phrases, time is a flow of words coherent only in appearance, the one who piles up the most is the one who wins. — Elena Ferrante

I believe that global common interests are a good foundation for finding solutions together. — Vladimir Putin

Lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. — J.D. Salinger

In Confucian thought, individuals practice moral virtue both by restraining themselves and pursuing their own interests. This is a dual push-and-pull process. In today's China, the latter is taken care of by capitalism and commerce. The former, however, needs to be taken care of by the rule of law. Otherwise, the system of governance is corrupted by unrestrained individual desires and selective enforcement of 'virtue' or law. — Patrick Mendis

I always thought that there was going to be life after baseball, and so I designed that in my life I would have other interests after baseball that I would be able to step into. And I didn't realize the grip that baseball had on me and on my family. — Nolan Ryan

Love is the degree to which you are willing to sacrifice your own interests for those of another. It doesn't matter what sex you are. It doesn't matter who you are, or were. It only matters that you care more for someone else than you do for yourself. It's when you eat minlatta with tarragon oil even when you hate pasta because someone with you enjoys it. It's when you value being alone more than anything but agree to move in with someone because they need you. And believe this, Ellis Rogers, for I am quite certain that love is most certainly when you push away the one person in all the world you want to be with because you think your thoughts would cause them pain. — Michael J. Sullivan

America should find its interests in ways which are more consistent with the interests of other countries, which are things that are good for us but also good for others. That will make Americans exporters of hope again, not exporters of fear. — Joseph Nye

What interests me is starting businesses on our own, finding ideas that we can support, and simply investing in invention. — Barry Diller

We really think highly of the executives at SBC. And Microsoft is one of the great companies of the 21st century. It is in all of our best interests to work together. In this new wave of technology, you can't do it all yourself; you have to form alliances. — Carlos Slim

Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath. — Erik Larson

The only constitutional exception to the power of making treaties is, that it shall not change the Constitution. ... On natural principles, a treaty, which should manifestly betray or sacrifice primary interests of the state, would be null. — Alexander Hamilton

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible. — Richard Feynman

I don't have a Madonna-sized fan base, so I can actually e-mail and talk to everyone that e-mails me because I am totally appreciative, and I like my fans! They seem to have the same interests as me. They are kind of nerdy and cool - and have good taste, obviously. — Jill Sobule

The problem is, we live in a society where all that interests us is power and money. So we don't have any interest in our children, and what we leave for our children is not important. — Sebastiao Salgado

We're taught to talk about the world as a world of as states conceived as unified, coherent entities. If you study international relations (IR) theory, there's what's called "realist" IR theory, which says there is an anarchic world of states and states pursue their "national interest." It's in large part mythology. There are a few common interests, like we don't want to be destroyed. But, for the most part, people within a nation have very different interests. The interests of the CEO of General Electric and the janitor who cleans his floor are not the same. — Noam Chomsky

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go. — Charles Bukowski

Proactive giving is what you do when you've found your passion. It expresses your values, interests and concerns. It engages not just your dollars, but also your mind, time, skills and networks - the philanthropic equivalent of leaning in, rather than leaning back. Most importantly, proactive giving is something you want to do. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

No matter how lonely and isolated and starved for connection you are, there's always the possibility in the online world that you can find a place to be accepted, or discover a friendship that's started with the smallest of interests but could last a lifetime. — Felicia Day

What are friends, anyways? You pick some people you have similar interests with, and you hang out and talk. You give each other pep talks and listen to each other's problems. I could replace most of Courtney's job duties as best friend with a book of inspirational slogans and a journal. — Dalya Moon

If you look at capitalism and patriarchy, they're both such hierarchical, competitive, oneupmanship systems. They've trained us all [to think] that power means having all the goods or having the most money or having the most attention or having the most fame. That's not the power that interests me. Actually, the deconstruction of that power is what interests me. — Eve Ensler

What I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. I mean you can't help it sometimes. What I think is, you're supposed to leave somebody alone if he's at least being interesting and he's getting all excited about something. I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice. — J.D. Sallinger

I think the most important thing you can do is to keep drawing no matter what. And to not be afraid of drawing whatever interests you. If there is something that you want to draw, to make, then I think you should pursue it and not let anybody tell you that you can't do it. — Brian Selznick

The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves. — Marcel Duchamp

The person best suited to look out for your interests is you. The more you depend on yourself, the more positive control you have over every aspect of your life.
Take personal responsibility for who you are, what you do, and how you live. You are the only person who knows what is best for you. And you are the one who is most able to achieve it!! You have GREATNESS within you! — Les Brown

My advice for aspiring writers is go to New York. And if you can't go to New York, go to the place that represents New York to you, where the standards for writing are high, there are other people who share your dreams, and where you can talk, talk, talk about your interests. Writing books begins in talking about it, like most human projects, and in being close to those who have already done what you propose to do. — Walter Kirn

And how do you explain to your wife that you don't have all the answers, and that you might not know what you are doing, and that you are afraid you are going to fail? How do you admit that you are most afraid that, one day, she'll walk - and replace you with an educated, professor-type guy, who shares her same interests, schedule, and the way she was used to living, especially when all of your friends, your business associates, even your own damned brother, are all just waiting for you to mess up so they can have a shot at taking her away from you? How do you look the woman you love in her eyes and tell her that? — Leslie Esdaile

But what I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. I mean you can't help it sometimes. — J.D. Salinger

You may think that tax policy sounds like the most boring topic in the world. That is precisely what most governments, corporations, and special interests would like you to think, because tax policy is where much of society and the economy gets shaped. It is also where well-informed citizens can achieve socioeconomic revolutions with astonishing speed and effectiveness - but only if they realize how much power they might wield in this domain. If citizens don't understand taxes, they don't understand how, when, and where their government expropriates money, time, and freedom from their lives. They also don't understand how most governments bias consumption over savings, and bias some forms of consumption over other forms, thereby distorting the trait-display systems that people might otherwise favor. — Geoffrey Miller

There might be a lot of physical chemistry within a couple, but without the compatibility of life philosophy and interests then the relationship will likely not be long-lasting. — John Friend

Human existence is a brutal experience to me ... it's a brutal, meaningless experience - an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, terrible experience, and so it [salvation] is what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most. — Woody Allen

Oh my God, does art engender humanity? It awakens your humanity. But humanity has nothing to do with political theory. Political theory is in the interests of one group of humanity, or one ideal for humanity. But humanity-my heavens, that's what proper art renders. We have a paradox. Going into the deepest aspects of inner space connects you with something that is the most vital for the outer realm. — Joseph Campbell

Live your passion. What does that mean, anyway? It means that when you get up for work every morning, every single morning, you are pumped because you get to talk about or work with or do the thing that interests you the most in the world. You don't live for vacations because you don't need a break from what you're doing - working, playing, and relaxing are one and the same. You don't even pay attention to how many hours you're working because to you, it's not really work. You're making money, but you'd do whatever it is you're doing for free. — Gary Vaynerchuk

It's very important, no matter what you may do professionally, to keep alive some of the healthy interests of your youth. Children's play is not just kids' stuff. Children's play is rather the stuff of most future inventions. — Fred Rogers

You just try to find something that interests you, and particular something that interests you that's gonna consume you the way that these big movies just really eat you up. — Tony Gilroy

It is in the highest interests of the devil to persuade the world that religious people are disagreeable. — Hubert Van Zeller

The great power of the Internet is it allows people who don't know each other ... to connect with people with shared interests. The shared interests might be that 'I have a kid with leukemia.' Or, 'I'm a Nazi.' It gives marginalized people more power. — Howard Rheingold

I love to hear about ordinary people's lives and interests and what motivates them. — Jane Clayson

My interests are guitars, cars, and vacation. I've been playing guitar all my life. My dad was a professional guitarist, but I'm terrible, which lets me off the hook, so I just play for myself. — Josh Hartnett

The use of force stands in need of control by a public neutral authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice. Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state; in relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will have to be some international parliament. — Bertrand Russell

A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person. — Timothy Keller

Golf is a game, and talk and discussion is all to the interests of the game. Anything that keeps the game alive and prevents us being bored with it is an advantage. Anything that makes us think about it, talk about it, and dream about it is all to the good and prevents the game becoming dead. — Alister MacKenzie

[T]he vanity of the contents" of individual experience is scrutable as an inessential trapping drawn into a matter by vested interests " ... since it is at the same time the vanity of the self that knows itself to be vain — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Boston fans - and New York fans are the same - it doesn't matter what you do outside of baseball, they don't forgive or forget that you play in pinstripes and they don't care about your interests off the field. — Bronson Arroyo

When you're part of something special, you have to cherish it and defend it against many outside distractions and temptations. But nothing is more potent or deceptive than the competing interests or another great opportunity. In those moments when priorities clash, always stay guided by your values, not your perceived necessities. Necessities exist in a state of mind that will not last, whereas values are transcendent and enduring. — Adam Braun

Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play. — Carl Orff

Things don't always happen the way we planned. As we learn to trust in God's plan, we will see that He has our best interests at heart. — Dan Ellis

Communities don't think, don't believe, don't want, don't have needs, don't have interests and don't make decisions. Only individuals have minds that generate desires and needs - and only individuals can make choices and decisions. — Harry Browne

The only thing that mattered was that the quarter century or so he had remaining would be his life, to live out as he chose and in his own best interests. Nothing took precedence over that: not work, not friendships, not relationships with women. Those were all components of his life, and valuable ones, but they did not define it or control it. That was up to him, and him alone. — Ken Grimwood

Many strikes and similar disturbances might be avoided if the employers would cultivate the habit of getting nearer to their employees, of consulting and advising with them, and letting them feel that the interests of the two are the same. — Booker T. Washington

People with power do not regulate their behavior as much. They become egocentric and preoccupied with their own self-interest, which eclipses their awareness of the interests of others. — Dean M. Schroeder

In a business that has exploited and ignored our people I have only found dead-ends. We need romantic comedies, gross-out and mockery comedies, horror and thrillers, teen movies and love-stories. All these and more will be a positive step towards the future of Native Americans in the world and film industry; an industry that that offers us not only the chance to play the parts of heroes, love interests and warriors, but also of villains, dorks and dangerous, brokenhearted products of circumstance. — Misty Upham

Most of the time our inner voice tries to guide us to 'Truth' but we, out of our own vested interests, wish to continue living in our own self-created illusions because it suits our purpose or fulfils our needs. — Kapil Kumar Bhaskar

As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow. — Anselm Kiefer

You were going into the Light city without a pass?" Ethan said. "That's a crime."
"I guess we don't know each other that well yet," Carwyn observed. "It's possibly time to talk about some of my hobbies and interests. One of my hobbies is crime. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I firmly believe this ... that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest. — Benjamin Franklin

We should do our best to satisfy your interests in stories and books and the world. There are libraries. — Neil Gaiman

A translation needs to read convincingly. There's no limit to what can go into it in terms of background research, feeling, or your own interests in form and history. But what should come out is something that reads as convincing English-language text. — Jonathan Galassi

Always we must bear in mind that law has to be substituted for power, that care must be taken to serve the interests of law. — Fredrik Bajer

Some interests have got a footing on the earth which we have not made sufficient allowance for. — Henry David Thoreau

What really interests me about capturing and suspending movement is that I get to experience something invisible and inaudible, as elusive and fleeting as thought itself, and give it form ... Maybe my paintings are all just little fragments of the Cosmic Dance suspended in time. — James Nares

The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world, to the sole disposal of a magistrate, created and circumstanced, as would be a president of the United States. — Alexander Hamilton

Unlike the Medicare provisions, which were brought in by negotiation between the two principal parties, 'Obamacare' was the initiative of a single party, did not have the consent of the opposition and was concealed within 2,000 pages of legislative jargon that was never properly explained either to the public or to the members of Congress. Not surprisingly, therefore, the legislation has led to a polarization of opinion and a breakdown in the political process, each side claiming to represent the interests of the people, but neither side convinced that 'the people' includes those who did not vote for it. — Roger Scruton

Let us remind our leaders that there is no place for personal interests in politics. — Mohith Agadi

The good is not a category that interests me. — Rem Koolhaas

The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. — Rutherford B. Hayes

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree. — Thomas Jefferson

There's a pattern here. In summing up the language of matter, space, and time, I concluded that they are measured by human goals, not just by a scale, a clock, and a tape measure. Now we see that the fourth major category in conceptual semantics, causality, also cares about our intentions and interests. — Steven Pinker

To live charitably means not looking out for our own interests, but carrying the burdens of the weakest and poorest among us. — Pope Francis

I mean those people who are interested in good government will certainly contribute in order to make certain there's some counter-balance to those whose interests in good government is less. — Stephen Breyer

To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it. — Robert Louis Stevenson