Motive Quotes - Page 16

• God alone is perfectly and consistently just. We forget; God remembers. We see an action; God sees a motive. This qualifies Him as the best recordkeeper and judge.

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Christian, Judging, Religion

  Charles R. Swindoll (2005). “Day by Day with Charles Swindoll”, p.385, Thomas Nelson

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• In later years, it was common, and I was guilty in this respect, to question the motives of those who joined the new British armies at the outbreak of the Great War, but it must, in their honour and fairness to their memories, be said that they were motivated by the highest purpose, and died in their tens of thousands in Flanders and Gallipoli, believing that they were giving their lives in the cause of human liberty everywhere, including Ireland.

  Sean Lemass

  Memories, War, Believe

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• If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

  Edward Bernays

  Thinking, Small Numbers, Knowing

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• Why would the apostles lie?....Liars always lie for selfish reasons. If they lied, what was their motive, what did they get out of it? What they got out of it was misunderstanding, rejection, persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Hardly a list of perks!

  Peter Kreeft

  Life Changing, Liars, Lying

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• 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.

  George Oppen

  Beautiful, World, Clarity

  George Oppen (2008). “New Collected Poems”, p.193, New Directions Publishing

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• We are not wise enough, pure enough, or strong enough to aim and sustain such a single motive over a lifetime. That way lies fanaticism or failure. But if the single motive is the master motivation of God's calling, the answer is yes. In any and all situations, both today and tomorrow's tomorrow, God's call to us is the unchanging and ultimate whence, what, why, and whither of our lives. Calling is a 'yes' to God that carries a 'no' to the chaos of modern demands. Calling is the key to tracing the story line of our lives and unriddling the meaning of our existence in a chaotic world.

  Os Guinness

  Wise, Strong, Motivation

  Os Guinness (2003). “The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life”, p.170, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• The motive of art comes to us not from what exists, but from the notion that there is something higher, something nobler, something richer, and that what exists corresponds only partially to all of this.

  Abraham Kuyper

  Art, Notion, Higher

  "Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art".

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• One desire has been the ruling passion of my life. One high motive has acted like a spur upon my mind and soul. and sooner than that I should seek escape from the sacred necessity that is laid upon me, let the breath of life fail me. It is this: That in spite of all worldly opposition, God's holy ordinances shall be established again in the home, in the school and in the State for the good of the people; to carve as it were into the conscience of the nation the ordinances of the Lord, to which Bible and Creation bear witness, until the nation pays homage again to God

  Abraham Kuyper

  Passion, Home, School

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• If you wait until your motives are pure and unselfish before you do something, you will wait forever.

  Timothy Keller

  Motivational, Success, Waiting

  Timothy Keller (2008). “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism”, p.221, Penguin

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• All human life is sunk deep in untruth; the individual cannot pull it out of this well without growing profoundly annoyed with his entire past, without finding his present motives (like honor) senseless, and without opposing scorn and disdain to the passions that urge one on to the future and to the happiness in it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Passion, Past, Annoyed

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1984). “Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.37, U of Nebraska Press

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• What a compelling motive we have for prayer, for preaching, for soul winning when we learn that every responsible human being who leaves this world without a definite change in heart immediately lifts his eyes in Hell, tormented in flame!

  John R. Rice

  Christian, Prayer, Heart

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• There are only two feelings, Love and fear:
  There are only two languages, Love and fear:
  There are only two activities, Love and fear:
  There are only two motives, two procedures,
  two frameworks, two results, Love and fear,
  Love and fear.

  Michael Leunig

  Two, Feelings, Language

  Michael Leunig (2006). “When I Talk to You: A Cartoonist Talks to God”, p.45, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• Discipline, it has been suggested, is the means of human spiritual evolution. What provides the motive, the energy for discipline? This force I believe to be love. I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.

  M. Scott Peck

  Spiritual, Believe, Mean

  M. Scott Peck (2002). “The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth”, p.81, Simon and Schuster

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• Men's hearts are being searched...it is a tremendous sifting time, not only of actions but of inner motives. Nothing can escape the all-searching eye of God.

  Frank Bartleman

  Heart, Eye, Men

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• The characteristic of a disciple is not that he does good things, but that he is good in his motives, having been made good by the supernatural grace of God.

  Oswald Chambers

  Grace, Doe, Good Things

  Oswald Chambers (2011). “My Utmost for His Highest Classic Edition”, p.421, Discovery House

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• First of all; Frank was the BOSS. We didn't question any of his motives or decisions at the time.

  Jimmy Carl Black

  Fog, Decision, Boss

  Jimmy Carl Black Interview by Stephen Moore in Munich, Germany, www.stevemoorebooks.com. March 29, 2000.

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• I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.

  Benjamin F. Wade

  Heart, Mind, Bears

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• Ardent desire for knowledge, in fact, is the one motive attracting and supporting investigators in their efforts; and just this knowledge, really grasped and yet always flying before them, becomes at once their sole torment and their sole happiness. Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery which is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel.

  Claude Bernard

  Knowledge, Science, Men

  Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.239, Courier Corporation

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• To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations. . . . For the maxim lacks the moral import, namely, that such actions be done from duty, not from inclination.

  Immanuel Kant

  Work, Vanity, Self

  Immanuel Kant (2012). “Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals”, p.14, Courier Corporation

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• The ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression of the peasants by the landlord class forced them into numerous uprisings against its rule.... It was the class struggles of the peasants, the peasant uprisings and peasant wars that constituted the real motive force of historical development in Chinese feudal society.

  Mao Zedong

  Real, War, Struggle

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.11, Lulu.com

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

  E. B. White

  Writing, Murder, Obscenity

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• The horror of Gandhi's murder lies not in the political motives behind it or in its consequences for Indian policy or for the future of non-violence; the horror lies simply in the fact that any man could look into the face of this extraordinary person and deliberately pull a trigger.

  Mary McCarthy

  Lying, Men, Extraordinary Person

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• The wind, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear. Before the era of steam-engines, windmills were tried for draining mines; but though they were powerful machines, they were very irregular, so that in a long tract of calm weather the mines were drowned, and all the workmen thrown idle.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Country, Powerful, Wind

  William Stanley Jevons (1866). “The coal question: an enquiry concerning the progress of the Nation, and the probable exhaustion of our coal-mines”, p.144

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• Everyone is motivated a little or a lot to do something or nothing. Motivation is the internalized drive toward the dominant thought of the moment. By definition, motivation is "motive in action."

  Denis Waitley

  Motivation, Definitions, Littles

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• There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.

  Thomas Jefferson

  President, May, Virtuous

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin”, p.477

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