Motive Quotes - Page 11

• Tis e'er the wont of simple folk to prize the deed and o'erlook the motive, and of learned folk to discount the deed and lay open the soul of the doer.

  John Barth

  Simple, Soul, Deeds

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• The power generated of ten minds for good is superior to that of ten thousand minds acting on a lower motive. But it is a silent power. It moves in mysterious ways. It is noiseless. It makes no show of open opposition. It uses no methods of effort through tongue or arm or physical force.

  Prentice Mulford

  Moving, Effort, Mind

  Prentice Mulford (2012). “Your Forces And How To Use Them (Complete Annotated Edition)”, p.203, Jazzybee Verlag

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• In the motive lies the good or ill.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lying, Ill

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• Obviously, Jews gain certain advantages by promoting the Holocaust idea. It inspires tremendous financial aid for Israel. It makes organized Jewry almost immune from criticism. Whether the Holocaust is real or not, the Jews clearly have a motive for fostering the idea that it occurred. Not only do they have a motive, but they have the means with the media domination they now hold.

  David Duke

  Real, Mean, Israel

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• Magnanimity will not consider the prudence of its motives.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Generosity, Prudence, Magnanimity

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

  Paul Valery

  Settlement, Treaties, Ought

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• 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.

  Dalai Lama

  Helping Others, Black, Violence

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• When one has extensively pondered about men, as a career or as a vocation, one sometimes feels nostalgic for primates. At least they do not have ulterior motives.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Careers, Sometimes

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• Education-whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people-consists in creating motives.

  Simone Weil

  Education, Children, Creating

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• What a country wants to make it richer is never consumption, but production. Where there is the latter, we may be sure that there is no want of the former. To produce, implies that the producer de_sires to consume; why else should he give himself useless labor? He may not wish to consume what he himself produces, but his motive for producing and selling is the desire to buy. Therefore, if the producers generally produce and sell more and more, they certainly also buy more and more.

  John Stuart Mill

  Country, Giving, Wish

  John Stuart Mill (2007). “Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy”, p.46, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The men who made the Industrial Revolution are usually pictured as hardfaced businessmen with no other motive than self-interest. That is certainly wrong. For one thing, many of them were inventors who had come into business that way.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Men, Self, Way

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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• It is possible to work across the aisle in Washington, but it's hard. And I think it's been made worse by the kind of 24-hour news cycle, the fact that everything is on TV before you can work things out quietly. I think it's the intensity of information that makes it feel more difficult to get things done. But I didn't leave with a bitter taste about the politics. The one thing that I would say is, I do think there is an unfortunate tendency to turn political differences, or policy differences, into critiques of one another's character or motives, and that's unfortunate.

  Condoleezza Rice

  Character, Thinking, Political

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• The media are doing this, not because they have a sinister motive, but because they love to feel that they are influencing events. That's why they hate politicians so much, because politicians have direct power and they do not.

  Ben Aaronovitch

  Hate, Media, Events

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• Liberals and leftists have been dismissing inconvenient facts by attacking motives for generations. In the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, Soviet spies and abettors attacked the motives of their accusers because the fact of their guilt was undeniable. In the 1960s, over a thousand psychiatrists who'd never even met Barry Goldwater signed a petition saying the GOP candidate was too mentally unstable to be president.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Guilt, Spy, President

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• It is because of the hasty and superficial conversation with God that the sense of sin is so weak and that no motives have power to help you to hate and flee from sin as you should.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Hate, Helping, Sin

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• 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.

  Lajos Kossuth

  Country, Queens, Government

  Lajos Kossuth (1851). “Authentic Life of ... Louis Kossuth ... With a full Report of his Speeches delivered in England ... To which is added his Address to the People of the United States of America”, p.77

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• The good opinion of our fellow men is the strongest, though not the purest motive to virtue.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Fellow Man, Opinion

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.365

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• Man sees your actions, but God your motives.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Men, Action

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• For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, they arrive at their conclusions, largely inarticulate. Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none; but sometimes in a smoking room, one learns why things were done.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Science, Self, Views

  Rudyard Kipling, M.M. Kaye (2002). “Rudyard Kipling: The Complete Verse”, Kyle Cathie Limited

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• A man's motive in the small actions of daily life, like resting a moment on his pitchfork in the sun and listening intently, may be the most important thing about that man.

  Haniel Long

  Men, Listening, Important

  Haniel Long (1950). “A letter to St. Augustine: after re-reading his confessions”

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• The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people [during World War II] who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.

  Simone Weil

  Morning, War, Eight

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• The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them.

  John Stuart Mill

  Advantage, Concessions, Privileged

  John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor Mill (1970). “Essays on Sex Equality”, p.214, University of Chicago Press

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• I really have no ulterior motive in taking on certain roles. I have no larger issue that I really want to show people. I'm an actor, that's all. I just do what I do.

  Sally Field

  Issues, People, Roles

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• What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Believe, Pretext

  Miguel de Unamuno (2012). “Tragic Sense of Life”, p.261, Courier Corporation

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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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