Self Aggrandizement Quotes

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community. For too long as a nation, we have been lulled by the anthem of self-interest. For a decade, led by Ronald Reagan, self-aggrandizement has been the full-throated cry of this society: "I've got mine, so why don't you get yours" and "What's in it for me? ~ Joe Biden

That kind of pursuit is not beneficial to mankind: art for self aggrandizement at the cost of love. ~ Anuradha Bhattacharyya

Perhaps our behavior becomes more understandable, however, when we remember that just like self-aggrandizement, self-criticism is a type of safety behavior designed to ensure acceptance within the larger social group. Even though the alpha dog gets to eat first, the dog that shows his belly when snarled at still gets his share. He's given a safe place in the pack even if it's at the bottom of the pecking order. Self-criticism serves as a submissive behavior because it allows us to abase ourselves before imaginary others who pronounce judgment over us - then reward our submission with a few crumbs from the table. When we are forced to admit our failings, we can appease our mental judges by acquiescing to their negative opinions of us. ~ Kristin Neff

Self-aggrandizement and lust for power, the maelstrom of baser instincts - disfigured people. ~ Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann

The passion of self-aggrandizement is persistent but plastic; it will never disappear from a vigorous mind, but may become morally higher by attaching itself to a larger conception of what constitutes the self. ~ Charles Horton Cooley

Putting words onto paper - when it is done as an honest act of search or connection, rather than as an act of manipulation, performance, self-aggrandizement or self-protection - is a holy act. ~ Pat Schneider

I come from a place where everyone has great power, by your standards, and they steadfastly refuse to use it for self-aggrandizement ... anywhere ... ever. ~ J.Z. Colby

By aggrandizing one's own abilities and achievements, the grandiose person remains out of touch with who they truly are and as such, remains prone to crossing the boundaries of others. ~ Steven Franssen

Dan looked small in the corner, hunched over and broken. What was bizarre, what had angered her so, was that she had tried to do a story on Dan Mercer and his "good works" about a year before her sting showed his true predilections. Before that, Dan had seemed to be that rarest of beasts - the honest-to-God do-gooder, a man who truly wanted to make a difference and, most shockingly, a man who didn't couple that desire with self-aggrandizement. She ~ Harlan Coben

The most important thing about the gentleman was that he was an idealist ... He was bred up to a code of self-restraint which taught resistance to pragmatic temptation. He was definitely a man of sentiment, who refused to put matters on a basis of materialism and self-aggrandizement. ~ Richard M. Weaver

Being with her was like being backstage during an amateurish, ridiculous play. ~ Nathanael West

Gradually it became known that the new race had a definite purpose, and that purpose was to chart and possess the whole country, regardless of the rights of its earlier inhabitants. Still the old chiefs cautioned their people to be patient, for, said they, the land is vast, both races can live on it, each in their own way. Let us therefore befriend them and trust their friendship. While they reasoned thus, the temptations of graft and self-aggrandizement overtook some of the leaders. ~ Charles Alexander Eastman

When we dare to speak in a liberatory voice, we threaten even those who may initially claim to want our words. In the act of overcoming our fear of speech, of being seen as threatening, in the process of learning to speak as subjects, we participate in the global struggle to end domination. When we end our silence, when we speak in a liberated voice, our words connect us with anyone, anywhere who lives in silence. Feminist focus on women finding a voice, on the silence of black women, of women of color, has led to increased interest in our words. This is an important historical moment. We are both speaking of our own volition, out of our commitment to justice, to revolutionary struggle to end domination, and simultaneously called to speak, "invited" to share our words. It is important that we speak. What we speak about is more important. It is our responsibility collectively and individually to distinguish between mere speaking that is about self-aggrandizement, exploitation of the exotic "other," and that coming to voice which is a gesture of resistance, an affirmation of struggle. ~ Bell Hooks

As readers, we sense when the game is being played for real and when something else is afoot: pride, showmanship, the pursuit of power, self-aggrandizement, revenge, making money. Not that there's anything wrong with any of that, but I dislike closing a book with the sense that I've been had. ~ Stacey D'Erasmo

You have to stay out of the game. It's deadly and no one ever wins. Everyone is a loser. Even seeming wins are short-lived and have the taste of bitterness mixed in with the satisfaction of personal gain. The ego is exclusive by nature. While the spirit seeks to include, the ego is unashamedly manipulative in its culling of people. The intention of self-aggrandisement is barely even covered over. The soul does not see people in terms of what it can gain. It seeks to share. It seeks to create by extension of its own and others' true nature. The ego is extremely changeable. It has no stability. Constantly guarding against attack and looking out for its own advantage, its perceptions and thus feelings towards others are ever-shifting. This creates unhappiness. The more we veer away from our true nature, the more unhappy we feel. When we align with our better self, we feel happy again. And so the process continues until the spaces between happiness are not as long and arduous. The presence or absence of personal peace is our barometer. It will guide us even if we are not sure of the way. ~ Donna Goddard

I had never thought much of genealogy. A lot of wasted time collecting the names of the dead. Then stringing those names, like skulls upon a wire, into an entirely private and thus irrelevant narrative, lacking any historical significance. The narcissistic pastime of nostalgic bores. ~ Joshua Ferris

The three branches of government number considerably more than three and are not, in any sense, 'branches' since that would imply that there is something they are all attached to besides self-aggrandizement and our pocketbooks ... Government is not a machine with parts; it's an organism. When does an intestine quit being an intestine and start becoming an asshole? ~ P. J. O'Rourke

So much misinformation has been published and broadcast over the years about Jimi's short but spectacular life by people with an interest only in self-aggrandizement, that a few years ago I finally decided to break my silence of twenty years and record my version of events. This is not just a story about Jimi, but it's about me, and others who I knew in those early days and who are no longer with us, like Keith Moon, Brian Jones and Chas Chandler, and it's about what it was like to live in those extraordinary times. ~ Kathy Etchingham

To base your self worth relative to others is to play a losing game. If you are at the bottom, you will be filled with self-loathing. If you are at the top, you will be filled with self-aggrandizement and ego. This will most certainly be one of your greatest obstacles to achieving whatever degree of mastery you are capable. ~ Chris Matakas

We have developed a culture of self-interest, self-gratification, self-aggrandizement, and utter selfishness. We have institutionalized and disseminated these values as never before in human history. ~ Michael C. Hill

I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist ... Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

If we are nothing, there is nothing at all to serve as a barrier to our boundless expression of love. Being nothing in this way, we are also, inevitably, everything. 'Everything' does not mean self-aggrandizement, but a decisive recognition of interconnection; we are not separate. Both the clear, open space of 'nothing' and the interconnected mess of 'everything' awakens us to our true nature. ~ Sharon Salzberg

The whole fabric of our religion is based on superstitious belief in lies that have been foisted upon us for ages by those directly above us, to whose personal profit and aggrandizement it was to have us continue to believe as they wished us to believe. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

By the former of these (canon law), the most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own order. ~ John Adams

A vast amount of psychiatric effort has been, and continues to be, devoted to legal and quasi-legal activities. In my opinion, the only certain result has been the aggrandizement of psychiatry. The value to the legal profession and to society as a whole of psychiatric help in administering the criminal law, is, to say the least, uncertain. Perhaps society has been injured, rather than helped, by the furor psychodiagnosticus and psychotherapeuticus in criminology which it invited, fostered, and tolerated. ~ Thomas Szasz

They will endure. They are better than we are. Stronger than we are. Their vices are vices aped from white men or that white men and bondage have taught them: improvidence and intemperance and evasion-not laziness: evasion: of what white men had set them to, not for their aggrandizement or even comfort but his own. ~ William Faulkner

Historically, large-scale global trade has served two functions: 1) the exchange of goods between willing sellers and buyers described in Econ 101 textbooks; 2) as a tool of state aggrandizement, in which the private parties are stand-ins for governmental interests. ~ Charles C. Mann

If we fail to meet the challenge of either Soviet or Western imperialism, then no amount of foreign aid, no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further setbacks to our course and to our security. ~ John F. Kennedy

Moreover, he objected, "I have never done an official act with a view to promote my own personal aggrandizement, and I don't like to begin now. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Evangelism is related to church growth, related but in no way synonymous. In speaking of evangelism, one must speak of church growth, but only at the end of the dramatic process, and not any sooner. Evangelism is never aimed at institutional enhancement or aggrandizement. It is aimed simply and solely at summoning people to new, liberated obedience to the true governor of all created reality. . . . "Church growth" misserves evangelism, however, when the church is allied with consumerism, for then the church talks people out of the very obedience to which the news summons us.25 ~ Scott J. Jones

I have much power. In the days to come I will grow stronger, and I would hate for you to find yourself on the wrong side of that which cannot be avoided." "Hyperbole and mystic aggrandizement, you mean? ~ Katie MacAlister

In fact, this figure [five million "murdered" Gentiles] is too high if one is counting victims who were targeted exclusively for racial reasons, but too low if one counts the total number of victims the Nazi regime killed outside military operations.
(...)
Wiesenthal's aggrandizement of his role in the Eichmann capture is far less disturbing and historiographically significant than another of his inventions. In an attempt to elicit non-Jewish interest in the Holocaust, Wiesenthal decided to broaden the population of victims - even though it meant falsifying history. He began to speak of eleven million victims: six million Jews and five million non-Jews. Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer immediately recognized that this number made no historical sense. Who, Bauer wondered, constituted Wiesenthal's five million.

--The Eichmann Trial, page 8 ~ Deborah E. Lipstadt

The object of every free government is the public good, and all lesser interests yield to it. That of every tyrannical government, is the happiness and aggrandizement of one, or a few, and to this the public felicity, and every other interest must submit. ~ Marcus Junius Brutus The Younger

War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement ~ James Madison

Is the consideration of a little dirty pelf, to individuals, to be placed in competition with the essential rights & liberties of the present generation, & of millions yet unborn? shall a few designing men for their own aggrandizement, and to gratify their own avarice, overset the goodly fabric we have been rearing at the expence of so much time, blood, & treasure? and shall we at last become the victems of our own abominable lust of gain? Forbid it heaven! forbid it all, & every state in the union! by enacting & enforcing, efficatious laws for checking the growth of these monstrous evils, & restoring matters in some degree to the pristine state they were in at the commencement of the War. Our cause is noble. It is the cause of Mankind! and the danger to it springs from ourselves - Shall we slumber & sleep then while we should be punishing those miscreants who have brought these troubles upon us, & who are aiming to continue us in them? While we should be striving to fill our Battalions - and devising ways and means to appreciate the currency - On the credit of which every thing depends? I hope not - let vigorous measures be adopted - not to limit the price of articles - for this I conceive is inconsistent with the very nature of things, & impracticable in itself - but to punish speculators - forestallers - & extortioners - and above all - to sink the money by heavy Taxes - To promote public & private Œconomy - encourage Manufacture ~ George Washington

Ever since his first ecstasy or vision of Christminster and its possibilities, Jude had meditated much and curiously on the probable sort of process that was involved in turning the expressions of one language into those of another. He concluded that a grammar of the required tongue would contain, primarily, a rule, prescription, or clue of the nature of a secret cipher, which, once known, would enable him, by merely applying it, to change at will all words of his own speech into those of the foreign one. His childish idea was, in fact, a pushing to the extremity of mathematical precision what is everywhere known as Grimm's Law - an aggrandizement of rough rules to ideal completeness. Thus he assumed that the words of the required language were always to be found somewhere latent in the words of the given language by those who had the art to uncover them, such art being furnished by the books aforesaid. ~ Thomas Hardy