Top 757 Motives Quotes & Sayings

President Obama, I think, wanted what was best for the country, but I think it didn't work well. I think we have the death spiral, and I think particularly premiums in the individual market are going through the roof. Republicans want what's best for the country, but I think they're not fixing the death spiral of Obamacare. They're going to subsidize it with a lot of taxpayer money. So, characterizing something as mean or generous I think goes to people's motives, and I think it is sort of why we have such an angry country now. We think that people have ill motives.

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.

I invest because I love helping entrepreneurs and watching them learn and succeed. In my opinion your motives are driven by self serving factors around ego satisfaction and "making a buck". My motives and values are very different.

Many ... begin to make converts from motives of charity, but continue to do so from motives of pride. ... Charity is contented with exhortation and example, but pride is not to be so easily satisfied. ... Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity.

In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.

Men are more accountable for their motives, than for anything else; and primarily, morality consists in the motives, that is in the affections.

The parallel between antifeminism and race prejudice is striking. The same underlying motives appear to be at work, namely fear, jealousy, feelings of insecurity, fear of economic competition, guilt feelings, and the like. Many of the leaders of the feminist movement in the nineteenth-century United States clearly understood the similarity of the motives at work in antifeminism and race discrimination and associated themselves with the anti slavery movement.

When we think of a criminal, we imagine someone with criminal motives. And when we look at Eichmann, he doesn't actually have any criminal motives. Not what is usually understood by "criminal motives." He wanted to go along with the rest. He wanted to say "we," and going-along-with-the-rest and wanting-to-say-we like this were quite enough to make the greatest of all crimes possible. The Hitlers, after all, really aren't the ones who are typical in this kind of situation--they'd be powerless without the support of others.

Beautiful words are ugly motives best friends.

Everyone has motives. Let's acknowledge that and get on with the interesting part.

Motives are causes experienced from within.

Capitalism justified itself and was adopted as an economic principle on the express ground that it provides selfish motives for doing good, and that human beings will do nothing except for selfish motives

The eternal ambiguity of human motives and memory.

Principles, convictions and motives are neither sold nor bargained for!

It's a world in which people's motives are questionable and shadowy.

What a delight it is to think that you are quietly & philosophically at work in the pursuit of science... rather than fighting amongst the crowd of black passions & motives that seem now a days to urge men every where into action. What incredible scenes every where, what unworthy motives ruled for the moment, under high sounding phrases and at the last what disgusting revolutions.

What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.

Magnanimity will not consider the prudence of its motives.

We can never understand other people's motives, nor their furniture.

we make a great fuss about national conscience, but it consists mainly in insisting upon everyone ascribing our national policy to highly moral motives, rather than in examining what our motives really are.

There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that.

I'm sorry, you leftists: you're not the only people whose motives are pure.

You have to give everyone ugly motives for everything they do, because ugly motives are all you understand.

As is the case with most people in this game, I am driven by financial motives and creative motives; the question I had to answer is which motive I will give priority to?

Humans are very seldom either totally sincere or totally hypocritical. Their moods change, their motives are mixed, and they are often quite mistaken as to what their motives are.

One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.

There are three things that are the motives of choice and three that are the motives of avoidance; namely, the noble, the expedient, and the pleasant, and their opposites, the base, the harmful, and the painful. Now in respect of all these the good man is likely to go right and the bad to go wrong, but especially in respect of pleasure; for pleasure is common to man with the lower animals, and also it is a concomitant of all the objects of choice, since both the noble and the expedient appear to us pleasant.

The Nova Mob doesn't have motives, as we understand motives. "Sex is profoundly distasteful to a being of my mineral origin," as a leader of the Nova Mob, Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin, said on one occasion.

Our motives and thoughts ultimately influence our actions. Jesus repeatedly emphasized the power of good thoughts and proper motives: 'Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not' In Proverbs we read, 'For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he

I keep renaming my motives, but continue doing the same things.

I don't [know] what everybody else's motives are, I don't know what your motives are, but mine is to portray the real life of an NBA player. And it's not all about I just do everything, like I'm the hardest worker, or I love to play basketball every day, I go to the gym at eight and don't leave until five. No, that's not how it is. That's not how I am.

I'm a person who really likes to understand motives - the inner motives and the inner personalities of persons. Why do people do some things? How do they deal with themselves while doing them? Definitely one of the most interesting parts of doing interviews and creating the movie was going into those persona issues in each one of them.

My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.

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

Liberals and leftists have been dismissing inconvenient facts by attacking motives for generations. In the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, Soviet spies and abettors attacked the motives of their accusers because the fact of their guilt was undeniable. In the 1960s, over a thousand psychiatrists who'd never even met Barry Goldwater signed a petition saying the GOP candidate was too mentally unstable to be president.

My motives at a young age were, "I want to be rich and famous".

It's the millenium, motives are incidental.

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.

Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.

One must know ones enemy as he is, not as one, for whatever motives, wishes him to be.

Pure motives can never justify impure or violent action.

I have been accused of acting out of partisan political motives.

In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail.

We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.

Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers. In them the replacement of religious motives for civilized behaviors by other, secular motives, would proceed unobtrusively. . . .

If the outcome is good, what's the difference between motives that sound good and good, sound motives?

Pure motives do not insure perfect results.

There will always be people who question your motives.

Everyone who comes within the reach of your knowledge is, as it were, on trial in your mind. It is easy to be an unjust, ignorant, and even a merciless judge. The real character of the actions of others depends in great measure on the motives that prompt them, and these motives are unknown to you.

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

Men sometimes have strange motives for the things they do.

The greatest cause of evil included all human motives in one giant paradox. Good and bad were so inextricably mixed that we couldn't make them out; bad seemed to lead to good, and good motives led to bad. The paradox is that evil comes from man's urge to heroic victory over evil.

I don't always understand other people's motives. I will repeat that for my own benefit, if you don't mind. I don't always understand other people's motives.

I'm sorry you leftists, you're not the only people whose motives are pure.

What is obnoxious about the motives of politicians - whatever those motives may be - is that politicians must announce their motives as visionary and grand.

The proper office of religion is to regulate the heart of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, andobedience; and as its operation is silent, and only enforces the motives of morality and justice, it is in danger of being overlooked, and confounded with these other motives.

No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble.

Animals are complicated and so is the animal-rights opposition. It's hard to read motives in animals, and hard to read motives in politics.

Who is sure of their own motives can in confidence advance or retreat.