Motive Quotes - Page 9

• Reason, in a strict sense, as meaning the judgment of truth and falsehood, can never, of itself, be any motive to the will, and can have no influence but so far as it touches some passion or affection. Abstract relations of ideas are the object of curiosity, not of volition. And matters of fact, where they are neither good nor evil, where they neither excite desire nor aversion, are totally indifferent, and whether known or unknown, whether mistaken or rightly apprehended, cannot be regarded as any motive to action.

  David Hume

  Truth, Passion, Ideas

  David Hume, Tom L. Beauchamp (2007). “A Dissertation on the Passions: The Natural History of Religion : a Critical Edition”, p.24, Oxford University Press

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• Love is a far more dangerous motive than dislike.

  Lady Violet

  Love Is, Dangerous, Dislike

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• We no longer live in a post-Christian society, we live in an anti-Christian society, one in which the Christian faith is dismissed or ridiculed and Christians are considered suspect and their motives and behavior berated.

  Josh McDowell

  Christian, Religious, Behavior

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• And I envy the intransigence of my own
  Countrymen who shoot to kill and never
  See the victim's face become their own
  Or find his motive sabotage their motives.

  Louis MacNeice

  Envy, Faces, Killing

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.93, Faber & Faber

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• You can drive yourself crazy trying to peer into a person's soul--or you can do the sensible thing: ask not what inner motives drive a politician's policy choices but instead whether those choices are good for the country.

  Paul Begala

  Country, Crazy, Choices

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• Single mothers have as much to teach their children as married mothers and as much love to share--maybe more. Yet their motives are often labeled selfish and single-minded--never mind all the babies brought into the world to snag husbands, "save" faltering marriages or produce heirs.

  Anne Cassidy

  Mother, Baby, Children

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• The motives to actions and the inward turns of mind seem in our opinion more necessary to be known than the actions themselves; and much rather would we choose that our reader should clearly understand what our principal actors think than what they do.

  Sarah Fielding

  Thinking, Mind, Inward

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• Not rarely, and this is especially true of wives and mothers, the motive behind assuming a disproportionate share of work and responsibility is completely unselfish. We want to protect, to spare those of whom we are fond. We forget that, regardless of the motive, the results of such action are almost always destructive and unproductive.

  Hortense Odlum

  Mother, Responsibility, Wife

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• Men sometimes have strange motives for the things they do.

  Michael Reeves

  Motivation, Men, Humanity

  "Fictional character: Matthew Hopkins". "Witchfinder General", www.imdb.com. 1968.

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• As an actor, your motives and your own crazy psyche is really all you're responsible for in the movie.

  Kate Beckinsale

  Crazy, Actors, Responsible

  Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. July 15, 2012.

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• My confessions are shameless. I confess, but do not repent. The fact is, my confessions are prompted, not by ethical motives, butintellectual. The confessions are to me the interesting records of a self-investigator.

  W.N.P. Barbellion

  Self, Interesting, Diaries

  W.N.P. Barbellion (2017). “The Journal of a Disappointed Man: & A Last Diary”, p.363, Courier Dover Publications

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• A man may act as his conscience dictates so long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others. That is the spirit of true democracy, and all government by the Priesthood should be actuated by that same high motive.

  David O. McKay

  Men, Rights, Long

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• Sincerity of conviction and purity of motive will surely gain the day; and even a small minority, armed with these, is surely destined to prevail against all odds.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Odds, Minorities, Gains

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1677, Manonmani Publishers

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• When our brain feels too weak to deal with our opponent's objections, our heart answers by casting suspicion on their underlying motives.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Heart, Brain, Answers

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• The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, Eye, Science

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.468

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• State censorship presents itself as a bulwark between society and forces of subversion or moral corruption. To dismiss this account of its own motives by the state as insincere would be a mistake: it is a feature of the paranoid logic of the censoring mentality that virtue ... must be innocent, and therefore, unless protected, vulnerable to the wiles of vice.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Mistake, Vices, Moral Corruption

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• Listen to others as if they are telling you the truth, ask questions when you aren't clear, and allow others the room to have different feelings than you. No more assigning hidden motives, prejudging and cutting people off before separating fact from fiction.

  Rhonda Britten

  Cutting, People, Feelings

  FaceBook post by Rhonda Britten from Oct 24, 2015

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• The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate.

  H. L. Mencken

  World, Unjust, Values

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.12, Vintage

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• What if a man save my life with a draught that was prepared to poison me? The providence of the issue does not at all discharge the obliquity of the intent. And the same reason holds good even in religion itself. It is not the incense, or the offering that is acceptable to God, but the purity and devotion of the worshipper.

  Seneca the Younger

  Men, Offering, Issues

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• What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Want, Cant

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• The desire of posthumous fame and the dread of posthumous reproach and execration are feelings from the influence of which scarcely any man is perfectly free, and which in many men are powerful and constant motives of action.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Powerful, Men, Feelings

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• We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Clever, Different, Way

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• The time which passes over our heads so imperceptibly makes the same gradual change in habits, manners and character, as in personal appearance. At the revolution of every five years we find ourselves another and yet the same;--there is a change of views, and no less of the light in which we regard them; a change of motives as well as of action.

  Walter Scott

  Time, Character, Light

  Sir Walter Scott (1856). “Waverley Novels”, p.272

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• Take away the motive, and you take away the sin.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Sin

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• I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.

  Saint Augustine

  Fall, Mean, Self

  Saint Augustine, Henry Chadwick (2008). “The Confessions”, p.29, Oxford Paperbacks

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