Motive Quotes - Page 32

• CAIR officials or former officials have been arrested on charges related to terrorism yet all it offers is silence and stonewalling in discussing what are its real motives.

  Paul Weyrich

  Real, Silence, Terrorism

  "Questions for CAIR" by Paul Weyrich, www.newsmax.com. January 21, 2004.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose - that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Humorous, Mean, Sarcasm

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2016). “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”, p.174, My Ebook Publishing House

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anyhow, all mankind's ideas and interests, all human aims and motives, are exhibited, fully formed, in a three-year-old child. The kid is just operating on a smaller scale and lacks the advantage of having made enormous soft-money campaign contributions to political candidates.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Children, Humorous, Kids

  P. J. O'Rourke (2015). “Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader”, p.722, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God.

  Toni Morrison

  Love, Inspirational, Thinking

  Toni Morrison (1998). “Paradise”, Knopf

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The church must never become a government factory, carrying on a nationalized industry of religion with the people as the bolts and nuts; with God reduced to the role of cramped advocate of current national policy. Surely the pages of history are replete and the examples in many a foreign country convincing that this kind of church-state union-whatever the original motives, or however noble the original purposes-winds up with a state that is less than stable and a church that is less than sanctified, and with the poor still hungry.

  Glenn Archer

  Country, Wind, Nuts

  5 Copy quote

• We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions, and prejudices, so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we apeal to those of others. This is very difficult, because our own prejudice and emotional bias always seems to us so rational.

  T. S. Eliot

  Passion, Emotional, Justice

  30 Copy quote

• Almost all education has a political motive: it aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups. It is this motive, in the main, which determines the subjects taught, the knowledge offered and the knowledge withheld, and also decides what mental habits the pupils are expected to acquire. Hardly anything is done to foster the inward growth of mind and spirit; in fact, those who have had the most education are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life.

  Bertrand Russell

  Spiritual, Religious, Educational

  "The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959".

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of all the joyous motives of school life, the love of knowledge is the only abiding one; the only one which determines the scale, so to speak, upon which the person will hereafter live.

  Charlotte Mason

  Educational, School, Abiding

  Charlotte Mason (2013). “School Education”, p.202, Simon and Schuster

  99 Copy quote

  Show source

• Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations. Man's capacity for decent behavior seems to vary directly with his perception of others as individual humans with human motives and feelings, whereas his capacity for barbarism seems related to his perception of an adversary in abstract terms, as the embodiment, that is, of some evil design or ideology.

  J. William Fulbright

  Educational, Communication, Men

  37 Copy quote

• The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.

  William Hazlitt

  Opportunity, Men, Practice

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things”, p.51

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sinful actions of men may be sinful, either from the motives which prompt them, the ends in view, or the means by which they are accomplished. God may concur in such acts, from motives, with ends, and in the use of means which are altogether most holy

  James Petigru Boyce

  Mean, Men, Views

  7 Copy quote

• I deplore the horrible crime as child murder....no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent,the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed...but oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which compelled her to the crime.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Children, Abortion, Suffering

  11 Copy quote

• Gird up your loins for the task that now lies ahead. I had asked you for men, money and materials. I have got them in generous measure. Now I demand more of you. Men, money and materials cannot by themselves bring victory or freedom. We must have the motive-power that will inspire us to brave deeds and heroic exploits.

  Subhas Chandra Bose

  Lying, Army, Men

  Subhas Chandra Bose, P. D. Saggi (1954). “A Nation's Homage: Life and Work of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose”

  275 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.

  Robert Higgs

  Peace, War, President

  Robert Higgs (2005). “Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11”, Independent Inst

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• My actions to promote peace, the mediation missions which I carried out during many conflicts, which very often occurred between brothers of the same country, are not driven by any ulterior motives or any calculations based on personal ambitions.

  Omar Bongo

  Country, Brother, Ambition

  8 Copy quote

• Individual ambition is undoubtedly a strong motive in student work, but there is such a thing among students everywhere as ambition for others, call it class spirit, esprit de corps, good fellowship, or good will to men.

  Herbert Baxter Adams

  Strong, Ambition, Men

  Herbert Baxter Adams (1887). “The Study of History in American Colleges and Universities”

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.

  Samuel Johnson

  Revenge, Resentment, Insult

  16 Copy quote

• Ashamed of the many frailties they feel within, all men endeavor to hide themselves, their ugly nakedness, from each other, and wrapping up the true motives of their hearts in the specious cloak of sociableness, and their concern for the public good, they are in hopes of concealing their filthy appetites and the deformity of their desires.

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Heart, Men, Desire

  "The Fable of the Bees". Book by Bernard Mandeville. Remark T, p. 262, 1732.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Business, Self, Emulation

  The Theory of the Leisure Class ch. 5 (1899)

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions when performed by ourselves.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Discovery, Atheism, Action

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.292

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than the quantum of favor received.

  William Hazlitt

  Inspirational, Favors, Quantum

  William Hazlitt (1870). “The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things”, p.110

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The less men are fettered by tradition, the greater becomes the inward activity of their motives, and greater again in proportion to their outer restlessness.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Inward, Tradition

  6 Copy quote

• It is one of the primary motives of modern art that it wants to abolish the distance which the viewer, the consumer, the audience maintain vis-a-vis a work of art. There is no doubt that the leaders of the creative artists of the last 50 years concentrated their efforts mainly on eliminating that distance.

  Hans-Georg Gadamer

  Art, Fun, Distance

  8 Copy quote

• From the explanatory notes that Willson wrote to accompany his symphony, A Symphony of San Francisco,: "Generally speaking, the first movement is intended to convey pioneer courage, loyalty, strength of purpose and freedom." The trumpet motive in the closing Allegro "is a call of defiance to the very elements themselves that had the temerity to dispute the spiritual strength and courage of the golden city of the West."

  Meredith Willson

  Loyalty, Spiritual, Freedom

  4 Copy quote

• Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.

  Ayn Rand

  Selfish, Names, History

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”

  13 Copy quote

  Show source