Motive Quotes - Page 10

• I invest because I love helping entrepreneurs and watching them learn and succeed. In my opinion your motives are driven by self serving factors around ego satisfaction and "making a buck". My motives and values are very different.

  Ron Conway

  Self, Entrepreneur, Ego

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• The true worth of a soul is revealed as much by the motive it attributes to the actions of others as by its own deeds.

  Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

  Soul, Deeds, Action

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• Skilled work, of no matter what kind, is only done well by those who take a certain pleasure in it, quite apart from its utility, either to themselves in earning a living, or to the world through its outcome.

  Bertrand Russell

  Work, Done, World

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• The common ground where the activities of God and man become one is the motive of perfect love; for in the last resolve love is the essence of God's nature. When he thinks, love is his thought; when he wills, love is the product of his will. To the degree, therefore, that man thinks and wills the good--to the degree that he realizes love in his finite dealings--he interfuses himself with God.

  Frank C. Lockwood

  Love Is, Men, Thinking

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• Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

  Anna Brownell Jameson

  Fear, Evil, Principles

  Anna Brownell Jameson (1877). “A commonplace book of thoughts, memories and fancies, original and selected”, p.72

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• Of all the vices incident to man, lying is the most mean, most contemptible; it evinces a very weak, depraved heart, which shrinks at the exposure of motives and of actions.

  Josiah Bartlett

  Lying, Heart, Mean

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• The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation; but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our: good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive.

  Richard Whately

  Hands, Action, Admiration

  Francis Bacon, Richard Whately (1858). “Essays: With Annotations by Richard Whately”, p.535

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• The attendant on William Rufus, who discharged at a deer an arrow, which glanced against a tree and killed the king, was no murderer, because he had no such design. And, on the other hand, a man who should lie in wait to assassinate another, and pull the trigger of a gun with that intent, would be morally a murderer, not the less though the gun should chance to miss fire.

  Richard Whately

  Kings, Lying, Gun

  Richard Whately (1860). “Introductory Lessons on Morals, and Christian Evidences”, p.38

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• Reason can no more influence the will, and operate as a motive, than the eyes which show a man his road can enable him to move from place to place, or that a ship provided with a compass can sail without a wind.

  Richard Whately

  Moving, Eye, Men

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• I read, with a kind of hopeless envy, histories and legends of people of our craft who "do not write for money." It must be a pleasant experience to be able to cultivate so delicate a class of motives for the privilege of doing one's best to express one's thoughts to people who care for them. Personally, I have yet to breathe the ether of such a transcendent sphere. I am proud to say that I have always been a working woman, and always had to be.

  Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

  Writing, Class, People

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• It is a horrible demoralizing thing to be a lawyer. You look for such low motives in everyone and everything.

  Katharine Tynan

  Looks, Lawyer, Lows

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• To tell one comprehensive story of how it has happened that what is is, one which shall hold true, come what may, now-after - a story that whatever comes shall perfectly continue or confirm: such is the ideal motive of religions.

  Laura Riding

  Religion, Stories, May

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• The earth has been cultivated before it has been divided; the cultivation itself having been the only motive for a division, and for that law which secures to every one his property. For the first persons who have employed themselves in cultivation, have probably worked as much land as their strength would permit, and, consequently, more than was necessary for their own nourishment.

  Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune

  Law, Land, Division

  "Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth". Book by Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (§ 2), 1766.

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• Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Long, Doubt

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.244, Graphic Arts Books

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• This part of being a man, changing the way we parent, happens only when we want it to. It changes because we are determined for itto change; and the motive for changing often comes out of wanting to be the kind of parent we didn't have.

  Augustus Napier

  Men, Parent, Style

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• I am not fighting machinery as such, but the madness of thinking that machinery saves labor. Men save labor until thousands of them are without work and die of hunger on the streets. I want to secure employment and livelihood not only to part of the human race, but for all. I will not have the enrichment of a few at the expense of the community. At present the machine is helping a small minority to live on the exploitation of the masses. The motive force of this minority is not humanity or love of their kind, but greed and avarice.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Fighting, Men, Thinking

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• It is not the bigness of anything in this kind that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat. 'Tis likely enough that there may be means invented of journeying to the Moon; and how happy they shall be that are first successful in this attempt.

  John Wilkins

  Mean, Successful, Moon

  "A Discourse Concerning a New World and Another Planet". Book by John Wilkins, Book 1, Chapter 14, p. 238-239, 1640.

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• A relationship with Christ changes your heart. It's not about your head. It changes your heart. Jesus comes to live in your heart, and even if a person does good works, but they do them without Christ, most of the time, their motives are wrong for why they do them.

  Joyce Meyer

  Jesus, Heart, Doe

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• I don't see much of a future for this planet. I think it's a cursed planet. The boundaries we've drawn between nations and the profit motive - those two factors have, in my opinion, brought us to the point where almost nothing can stop the utter destruction of the environment and all our earthly life-support systems.

  George Carlin

  Thinking, Two, Support Systems

  Interview with Sam Merrill, reprints.longform.org. January 1982.

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• In this state of total consumerism-which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves-all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.

  Wendell Berry

  Meaningful, Thinking, Ideas

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.85, Counterpoint

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• The saving of labour of the individual should be the object and honest humanitarian considerations, and not greed, the motive.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Greed, Saving, Honest

  Mahatma Gandhi (1994). “The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and Writings”, p.177, Grove Press

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• We need not seek a cause or a motive or a purpose for that which is, in its nature, eternally self-existent and free.

  Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

  God, Self, Needs

  Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Daniel E. Bassuk (1987). “Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity: the myth of the god-man”, Humanities Press Intl

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• Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism?

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Military

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• Who is sure of their own motives can in confidence advance or retreat.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Inspirational, Faith, Retreat

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• The guiding motive of mankind should be charity towards men, charity towards all animals.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Animal, Men, Charity

  Swami Vivekananda, Swami Adiswarananda (2006). “Vivekananda, World Teacher: His Teachings on the Spiritual Unity of Humankind”, p.85, SkyLight Paths Publishing

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