Motive Quotes - Page 33

• No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Doe, Penalties, Periods

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.272, David R. Godine Publisher

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• The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.

  William Butler Yeats

  Inspirational, Light, Shadow

  Poems (1895) "The Countess Cathleen" act 3

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• A lot of times people's main motives and plan in life is to hurt as many people as they can, but I think there's enough good people that help make the world a good place.

  Tina Yothers

  Hurt, Thinking, People

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• Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Hero, Power, Noble

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• The thirst for education that comes with the change the gospel brings can be a blessing or a curse, depending on our motives.

  Henry B. Eyring

  Blessing, Curse, Thirst

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• We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspiring, Rights, Racism

  Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

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• There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspirational, Funny, Book

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.28, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings.

  Graham Greene

  Wish, Littles, Might

  Graham Greene (1973). “The Collected Edition: The quiet American”

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• Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.

  Philip K. Dick

  Religious, Real, Writing

  "How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later". Speech by Philip K. Dick, published in "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (book by Philip K. Dick), 1978.

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• Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Fashion, Atheist, Freedom

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• Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, "I am what I do.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Opposites, May

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• I realized that searching was my symbol, the emblem of those who go out at night with nothing in mind, the motives of a destroyer of compasses.

  Julio Cortazar

  Night, Mind, Compass

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.53, Everyman's Library

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• That was the funniest thing I'd heard in days. You're kidding, right? PLEASE tell me you have a stronger motive for me than 'fair is fair.' Life isn't FAIR, Dean....Nothing is fair, EVER. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I need to help you because FAIR IS FAIR? Try, 'I need you to help me so I won't rip out your spine and beat you with it.' I MIGHT respond to that. MAYBE.

  James Patterson

  Rip, Trying, Stronger

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• Suicide is a form of murder - premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Suicide, Suicidal, Mean

  FaceBook post by Susanna Kaysen from Mar 22, 2014

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• The dog’s agenda is simple, fathomable, overt: I want. “I want to go out, come in, eat something, lie here, play with that, kiss you. There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied.

  Caroline Knapp

  Dog, Lying, Kissing

  Caroline Knapp (2010). “Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs”, p.215, Dial Press

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• Our body remains alive, yet sooner or later our soul will receive a mortal blow. The perfect crime--for we don't know who murdered our joy, what their motives were, or where the guilty parties are to be found.

  Paulo Coelho

  Party, Blow, Perfect

  Paulo Coelho (2011). “The Witch of Portobello”, p.14, HarperCollins UK

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• Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Courage, Selfish, Science

  Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.140, Basic Books

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• Because we are saturated with life, because we are human, our strongest motive is life, humanity; and the stronger the motive back of the line the stronger, and therefore more beautiful, the line will be.

  Robert Henri

  Beautiful, Drawing, Humanity

  Robert Henri (1960). “The art spirit”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

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• Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition.

  Robert Henri

  Running, Art, Bridges

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• I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Believe, Men, Acting

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• Uniformity, in its motives, its goals, its far-ranging consequences, is the natural enemy of poetry, not to mention the enemy of trees, the soil, the exemplary life therein.

  C.D. Wright

  Goal, Tree, Enemy

  C.D. Wright (2012). “Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil”, p.29, Copper Canyon Press

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• We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.

  Harold Bloom

  Reading, Knowledge, Self

  Harold Bloom (2001). “How to Read and Why”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

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• I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

  Jane Austen

  Writing, People, Laughing

  Jane Austen, Penelope Hughes-Hallett (1991). “My dear Cassandra: the letters of Jane Austen”, Clarkson N Potter Publishers

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• Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong and the final decisions are made in silent rooms. Tell him to be different from other people if it comes natural and easy being different. Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives. Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural. Then he may understand Shakespeare and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov, Michael Faraday and free imaginations Bringing changes into a world resenting change. He will be lonely enough to have time for the work he knows as his own.

  Carl Sandburg

  Lonely, Strong, Brother

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.449, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

  Blaise Pascal

  Happiness, War, Mean

  Blaise Pascal (1959). “Pascal's Pensées: Selections”, p.114, Prabhat Prakashan

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