A Quote by Jane Smiley

In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it. — © Jane Smiley
In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.
Reasons always came with a purpose, to give the appearance of a struggle between principle and desire. Principle had power only until you found what you had to have.
Philosophical argument, trying to get someone to believe something whether he wants to believe it or not, is not, I have held, a nice way to behave towards someone; also it does not fit the original motivation for studying or entering philosophy. That motivation is puzzlement, curiousity, a desire to understand, not a desire to produce uniformity of belief. Most people do not want to become thought-police. The philosophical goal of explanation rather than proof not only is morally better, it is more in accord with one's philosophical motivation.
Desire is the mother of motivation because that is where your motivation is born.
Iran is also engaged in the fight against ISIL for reasons of its own that include a desire not to see a reasonably friendly government in Baghdad falling. But it also includes its desire not to have ISIL's ideology spread in the region where it lives
Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.
When you meditate you can stand back from your desire. When you silence the mind and there is stillness, only then can you tell if a desire is dharma.
Like, in general I think people have very complicated reasons for wanting things, and we often have no idea whether we’re actually motivated by altruism or a desire to hook up or a search for answers or what. I always get annoyed when in books or movies characters want clear things for clear reasons, because my experience of humanness is that I always want messy things for messy reasons.
We have to stand together against terror and the reasons for terrorism, which are poverty and ignorance.
If the Republican party essentially becomes the white party, it is going to be the death of it, not only for demographic reasons but for reasons of principle. The party of Lincoln is a party of opportunity for everyone. It's a party about the right to rise, and Mr. Trump unfortunately doesn't represent that view.
At the beginning of my career, my desire to understand was associated with a profound desire to act, with the wish to influence opinion and policy; but, over the years, this motivation has come to be of secondary importance, far behind my desire to understand.
What everyone in the astronaut corps shares in common is not gender or ethnic background, but motivation, perseverance, and desire - the desire to participate in a voyage of discovery.
One thing I've learned in my limited experience is you can justify anything intellectually. There are a million reasons to stay with someone, and a million reasons to end something - so you can really only trust your gut.
Motivation remains key to the marathon: the motivation to begin; the motivation to continue; the motivation never to quit.
One of the things I have tried to do with this book and with all of them really is avoid that simple, easy, reductionist view of motivation and to show we do things for a complex net of reasons, a real braid of reasons.
I equate inspiration with desire ? the desire that moves us to be artists in the first place. To attempt to make a painting without this motivation is a waste of time.
I don't have any particular plans in mind. What I see is that you can become so focused on the idea of running that winning becomes your motivation, as opposed to what you stand for being your motivation.
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