A Quote by Edmund Burke

Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.

Edmund Burke

Quote Topics

Acts Adequate His Interest Man Metaphysical Motives Relative

Quote Author

Edmund Burke
Irish - Statesman
January 12, 1729 - July 9, 1797

We must judge of a man's motives from his overt acts.

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon

Man in harmony with his Creator is sublime, and his action is creative; equally, once he separates himself from God and acts alone, he does not cease to be powerful, since this is the privilege of his nature, but his acts are negative and lead only to destruction.

Joseph de Maistre

A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.

Carlos Castaneda

But the egoist has no ideals, for the knowledge that his ideals are only his ideals, frees him from their domination. He acts for his own interest, not for the interest of ideals.

John Buchanan Robinson

When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country.

Noah Webster

A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.When we feel stuck, going nowhere -- even starting to slipbackward -- we may actually be backing up to get a runningstart.

Dan Millman

Adequate control means that the successive acts are brought into a continuous order; each act not only meets its immediate stimulus but helps the acts which follow.

John Dewey

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

Confucius

It is alleged by men of loose principles , or defective views of the subject, that religion and morality are not necessary or important qualifications for political station. When a citizen gives his vote to a man of immorality , he abuses his civic responsibilty. He sacrifices not only his own interest but that of his neighbor, and he betrays the interest of his country.

Noah Webster

He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people.

Anton Chekhov

Myth is necessary because reality is so much larger than rationality...man is fundamentally mythic...His real health depends upon his knowing and living his metaphysical totality.

Clyde S. Kilby

Mankind is made up of inconsistencies, and no man acts invariably up to his predominant character. The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and the weakest sometimes wisely.

Lord Chesterfield

Technologically, modern man does everything he can do-he functions on this single boundary principle. Modern man, seeing himself as autonomous, with no personal-infinite God who has spoken, has no adequate universal to supply an adequate second boundary condition; and man being fallen is not only finite, but sinful. Thus man's pragmatically made choices have no reference point beyond human egotism. It is dog eat dog, man eat man, man eat nature.

Francis Schaeffer

It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man's nature -- the connection between his survival and his use of reason -- that capitalism recognizes and protects.