Related:

• It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.
  We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own neccessities but of their advantages....
• Never appeal to a man's "better nature." He may not have one.
  Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage....
• This system will self-destruct in five minutes.
• To some lawyers, all facts are created equal. -- Felix Frankfurte
• Never appeal to a man's "better nature." He may not have one.
  Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage. -- Lazarus Long...
• Or, I may not feel that my belief-system needs to be self-consistent in a post-Goedelian epoch.
  -- Dan'l Danehy-Oake...
• It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill, or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing.
  It dehumanizes those who achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy notions....
• Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to the inherent unreliability of the system in which they are used.
  -- Tom Gibb...