Motive Quotes

Profit per se is not my motive.

Black Power If the motive is good, and there are no other possibilities, then seen most deeply it [violence] is nonviolence, because its aim is to help others.

When a man resists sin on human motive only, he will not hold out long.

It is a good motive, fame and money, as it is tangible and measurable. Being an artist is neither measurable nor tangible and certainly not a way to become rich.

Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or calorie, or lightening.

Help your sister's boat across the water, and yours too will reach the other side. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

Ambition is vital, but dangerous: it is a keen motive and a driving force, but over what edge can it drive the artist?

Never mistake motive for action.

Religion is a great force - the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours.

Clarity, clarity, surely clarity is the most beautiful thing in the world, A limited, limiting clarity I have not and never did have any motive of poetry But to achieve clarity.

..the establishment of Civil and Religious Liberty was the Motive that induced me to the field of battle.

An action is essentially good if the motive of the agent be good, regardless of the consequences.

The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive.

It is motive alone that gives real value to the actions of men, and disinterestedness puts the cap to it.

To follow implies not only the denying of one's own clarity, investigation, integrity and honesty, but it also implies that your motive in following is reward.

That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?

Motives reveal why we do what we do, which is actually more important to God than what we're doing.

Too great a preoccupation with motives (especially one's own motive) is liable to lead to too little concern for consequences.

I suspect it is for one's self-interest that one looks at one's surroundings and one's self. This search is personally born and is indeed my reason and motive for making photographs.

Where there is no emotion, there is no motive for violence.

Distrust your judgment the moment you can discern the shadow of a personal motive in it.

The profit motive promotes economic growth by creating better products at cheaper prices.

I keep renaming my motives, but continue doing the same things.

When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.

There is plenty of room to make a profit in a zero-carbon economy; but the profit motive is not going to be the midwife for that great transformation.

Effort plus motive equals result.

The only treaties that ought to count are those which would effect a settlement between ulterior motives.

Never fear to bring the sublimest motive to the smallest duty, and the most infinite comfort to the smallest trouble.

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right.

Example is a motive of very prevailing force on the actions of men.

My great crime in the world is blunder I will get into scrapes without intention or any bad motive.

Turning corporations loose and letting the profit motive run amok is not a prescription for a more livable world.

If there was no other motive in view [except] to have the privilege of reading over our journals and for our children to read, it would pay for the time spent in writing it.

Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.

Actions whose motives he cannot understand that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit.

The eternal ambiguity of human motives and memory.

We do things when it is our time to do them. They do not occur to us until it is time; they cannot be resisted, once their time has come. It's a question of time, not motive.

But if we never acted except when we were certain our motives were pure, we would never act at all.

For me, boviscopophobia is an even stronger motive than semi-agoraphobia for staying on the ship when we're in port.

Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.

One must know ones enemy as he is, not as one, for whatever motives, wishes him to be.

The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.

Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a science of the search for food.

The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.

Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a reasonable motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for that of reason and conscience.

Extend the sphere and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.

It is the man that makes the motive, and not the motive the man.

In my opinion, the form of Government may be different in different countries, according to their circumstances, their wishes, their wants. England loves her Queen, and has full motive to do so.

Above all, ascribe no decent motives to the federal government. Always and everywhere, it is the enemy of truth.

We live in an age where in politics, people can't disagree with each other without good faith being questioned, there is always an ulterior motive - in it for the money, advance a career.