Motive Quotes - Page 25

• Fear is the deep motive of abstract art - fear of a repellent civilization which is dominated by the power of things. ... who can be surprised if, more sensitive than the others, the artist is terrified by the power things have acquired over us?

  Storm Jameson

  Art, Civilization, Sensitive

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• The pure in heart are slow to credit calumnies, because they hardly comprehend what motives can be inducements to the alleged crimes.

  Jane Porter

  Heart, Credit, Crime

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.2

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• Even the wisdom of God hath not suggested more pressing motives, more powerful incentives to charity, than these, that we shall be judged by it at the last dreadful day.

  Francis Atterbury

  Powerful, Lasts, Charity

  Francis Atterbury (1774). “Sermons and Discourses on Several Subjects and Occasions”, p.110

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• A business society, therefore, always has in its children a large group of individuals who cannot make money and who do not understand (or want to understand) the profit motive. In short, they are subversives.

  Margaret Halsey

  Children, Business, Groups

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• Think not you are charitable if the love of Jesus and His brethren be not purely the motive of your gifts. Alas! you might not give your superfluities, but "bestow all your goods to feed the poor;" you might even "give your body to be burned" for them, and yet be utterly destitute of charity, if self-seeking, self-pleasing or self-ends guide you; and guide you they must, until the love of God be by the Holy Ghost shed abroad in your heart.

  Hugh Reginald Haweis

  Jesus, Heart, Thinking

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• Neither pleasure nor pain should enter as motives when one must do what must be done.

  Julius Evola

  Pain, Done, Pleasure

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• Evidence of defendants' lavish lifestyles is often used to provide a motive for fraud. Jurors sometimes wonder why an executive making tens of millions of dollars would cheat to make even more. Evidence of habitual gluttony helps provide the answer.

  Alex Berenson

  Dollars, Answers, Lavish Lifestyle

  "Ideas & Trends: Overcompensating; In Fraud Cases, Guilt Can Be Skin Deep" by Alex Berenson, www.nytimes.com. February 29, 2004.

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• I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.

  Elizabeth George

  Character, People, Shapes

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• I believe that any individual who has spiritually awakened in our time, to the degree that he or she finds a higher and deeper motive for living, is going to be driven to fight the good fight in one way or another... And in order to fight the good fight, we have to engage, we have to get into the ring, not just stand outside it and be philosophers.

  Andrew Cohen

  Believe, Fighting, Order

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• In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail.

  William Ellery Channing

  Motivation, Opponents, Wells

  William Ellery Channing (1839). “Remarks on the slavery question: in a letter to Jonathan Phillips, esq”, p.3

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• That man is the most loyal who aims at the noblest motive, and that motive the public good.

  Virgil

  Loyalty, Men, Aim

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• Sexual activity is driven by the same aims and motives as reading poetry or listening to music: to escape the limitations imposed by the need for particularity in the consciousness.

  Colin Wilson

  Reading, Listening, Needs

  "The Origins of the Sexual Impulse" by Colin Wilson, (p. 75), 1963.

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• Tis impossible to judge with much Præcision of the true Motives and Qualities of human Actions, or of the Propriety of Rules contrived to govern them, without considering with like Attention, all the Passions, Appetites, Affections in Nature from which they flow. An intimate Knowledge therefore of the intellectual and moral World is the sole foundation on which a stable structure of Knowledge can be erected.

  John Adams

  Passion, Judging, Intellectual

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1850). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Diary, with passages from an autobiography. Notes of debates in the Continental Congress, in 1775 and 1776. Autobiography”, p.79

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• In the eye of that Supreme Being to whom our whole internal frame is uncovered, dispositions hold the place of actions.

  Hugh Blair

  Motivation, Eye, Action

  Hugh Blair (1827). “Sermons ... To which is prefixed, a short account of the life and character of the author, by James Finlayson ... A new edition, etc. With a portrait”, p.150

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• I'm always suspicious of people, especially being in a weird realm of people kind of knowing me... and not knowing what people's motives might be.

  Amanda Seyfried

  Knowing, People, Might

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• I do think that sometimes you can invent more palatable or digestible reasons versions or reasons, when perhaps you don't want to admit the truth to yourself, and sometimes we deceive ourselves - along with others - about our reasons and motives.

  Adam Brody

  Thinking, Want, Sometimes

  "Adam Brody Makes Some Winsome Wagers". Interview with Alice Greenberg, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 20, 2012.

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• The ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason for writing the book. [...] The other motive is unconscious. There is something deeply psychological and emotional that draws me to the material in the first place.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Book, Writing, Emotional

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

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• People who don't know you, you don't know their motives. They smile at you all day, "Oh, that's great. You've done it again! You're the greatest!" And that's not good for an artist.

  Jay-Z

  Artist, People, Done

  Interview with Elvis Mitchell, www.interviewmagazine.com. January 11, 2010.

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• I think there was a bit of brotherly love, but I think everything has a motive when you're king. It's all about maintaining that power - securing that power - and I think Edward was very skillful at doing that. I think he was a great king. Opinions are split, if you look at what he's done and written about him.

  Max Irons

  Kings, Thinking, Looks

  "Max Irons Assumes His Throne". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 15, 2013.

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• Usually I just let my songs do the talking. As a matter of fact I have long had an aversion to celebrities endorsing politics, and in some cases even other causes. I wonder about their motives. And I have to admit when celebrities get involved in political campaigns I tend to get a little bit sarcastic about it.

  John Fogerty

  Sarcastic, Song, Talking

  Source: www.citypages.com

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• How can any Action be meritorious of Praise or Dispraise, Reward or Punishment, when the natural Principle of Self-Love is the only and the irresistible Motive to it?

  Benjamin Franklin

  Love Is, Self, Punishment

  Benjamin Franklin (2006). “The Portable Benjamin Franklin”, p.359, Penguin

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• What we must remember, however, is that preservation of liberties does not depend on motives. A suppression of liberty has the same effect whether the suppressor be a reformer or an outlaw. The only protection against misguided zeal is constant alertness to infractions of the guarantees of liberty contained in our Constitution. Each surrender of liberty to the demands of the moment makes easier another, larger surrender. . .

  William O. Douglas

  Liberty, Doe, Guarantees

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• Altruism is a fine motive, but if you want results, greed works much better.

  Henry Spencer

  Greed, Want, Results

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• Order, for a liberal, means only peace; and the hope of a profound peace was one of the chief motives in the liberal movement. Concessions and tolerance and equality would thus have really led to peace, and to peace of the most radical kind, the peace of moral extinction.

  George Santayana

  Mean, Order, Profound

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• To seek out the best [persons to serve in the government] though the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with ther purest motives, is something incorrect....No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Trying, Acting

  In J. B. MacMaster 'History of the People of the U.S.' (1883-1913) vol. 2, ch. 13, p. 586

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