Best 132 quotes in «motive quotes» category

Conviction is a good motive, but a bad judge.

Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.

Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is seen, and you need not search for truth; truth will find you.

Effort plus motive equals result.

Everybody who talks to a newspaper has a motive. That's just a given. And good reporters always, repeat always, probe to find out what that motive is.

Every instance of obedience, from right motives, strengthens us spiritually, whilst every act of disobedience weakens us.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

Garry Shandling was an actor's actor. He really cares about the performance. It was really interesting to watch him talk about motives and motivation and stuff. He really knows the craft.

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, most people are motivated by unconscious motives most of the time.

Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive of our actions.

Gods tend to be selfish. Even when they're helpful, they always have their own motives. That's why you have to be careful about trusting them.

He who has no passion has no principal or motive to act.

I, Alexander B. Campbell, make this statement of the cause of my death to relieve the coroner of the necessity of an inquest, and also let my friends know the motive that led me to take my own life.

Iago's soliloquy - the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity - how awful it is!

I am suspicious without a motive, and jealous without love; although I feel I ought to love since I desire to be loved.

I don't consider [my] photographs fashion photographs. The photographs were for fashion, but at the same time they had an ulterior motive, something more to do with the world in general.

I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device.

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

In all our actions, God considers the intention: whether we act for Him or for some other motive.

I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.

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.

In the motive lies the good or ill.

It is all right when God sends us the approval of our fellow men; however, we must never make that approval a motive in our life.

It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.

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

It's so easy to become a grumbler, someone who condemns and carps at everything on principle and sees an ulterior motive behind it.

Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.

Magnanimity will not consider the prudence of its motives.

Many actions, like the Rhone, have two sources,--one pure, the other impure.

Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.

Men who just call to say hello generally have ulterior motives.

Motives reveal why we do what we do, which is actually more important to God than what we're doing.

My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have... an ambition of transcendence.

Never go into business purely to make money. If that's the motive you're better off doing nothing.

Never judge a man's actions until you know his motives

No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.

Occasionally we all do wrong things from right motives. Only time can prove us right or wrong. The past is the past. Nothing can change it now, and who is to say that it was all wrong, anyway?

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

Our motive is not to prove our self-worth, but to live up to our possibilities.

Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can.

People who don't know you, you don't know their motives. They smile at you all day, "Oh, that's great. You've done it again! You're the greatest!" And that's not good for an artist.

Profit per se is not my motive.

Ready are we all to cry out and ascribe motives when our toes are pinched.

Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action.

That man is the most loyal who aims at the noblest motive, and that motive the public good.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them.

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.

The meaning of what is said is according to the motive for saying it: because things are not subject to speech, but speech to things. Therefore we should take account of the motive of the lawgiver, rather than of his very words.

The most terrible of motives and the most unanswerable of responses: Because.