Motive Quotes

782 Motive quotes by 561 unique authors

Anyhow, all mankind's ideas and interests, all human aims and motives, are exhibited, fully formed, in a three-year-old child. The kid is just operating on… — P.J. O'Rourke
The church must never become a government factory, carrying on a nationalized industry of religion with the people as the bolts and nuts; with God… — Unknown Author
We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions, and prejudices, so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we… — Thomas Stearns Eliot
Almost all education has a political motive: it aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups.… — Bertrand Russell
Of all the joyous motives of school life, the love of knowledge is the only abiding one; the only one which determines the scale, so… — Charlotte Mason
Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations. Man's capacity for decent… — J. William Fulbright
The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they… — William Hazlitt
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… — James Petigru Boyce
I deplore the horrible crime as child murder....no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent,the woman… — Susan B. Anthony
Gird up your loins for the task that now lies ahead. I had asked you for men, money and materials. I have got them in… — Subhas Chandra Bose
Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war. — Robert Higgs
My actions to promote peace, the mediation missions which I carried out during many conflicts, which very often occurred between brothers of the same country,… — Omar Bongo
Individual ambition is undoubtedly a strong motive in student work, but there is such a thing among students everywhere as ambition for others, call it… — Unknown Author
What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect. — Samuel Johnson
Help your sister's boat across the water, and yours too will reach the other side. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind… — Eric Hoffer
Ashamed of the many frailties they feel within, all men endeavor to hide themselves, their ugly nakedness, from each other, and wrapping up the true… — Bernard de Mandeville
With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives… — Thorstein Veblen
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… — Charles Caleb Colton
We are thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than the quantum of favor received. — William Hazlitt
The less men are fettered by tradition, the greater becomes the inward activity of their motives, and greater again in proportion to their outer restlessness. — Friedrich Nietzsche
It is one of the primary motives of modern art that it wants to abolish the distance which the viewer, the consumer, the audience maintain… — Hans-Georg Gadamer
From the explanatory notes that Willson wrote to accompany his symphony, A Symphony of San Francisco,: "Generally speaking, the first movement is intended to convey… — Meredith Willson
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by… — Ayn Rand
Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead… — Henry Ward Beecher
Who is sure of their own motives can in confidence advance or retreat. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Who Wrote These Motive Quotes

561 authors contributed a total of 782 Motive Quotes, led by these top contributors: