Top 115 Motives Quotes

We must understand the motives and forces of our time and analyze their structure from three points of view: the material, the functional, and the spiritual. We must make clear in what respects our epoch differs from others and in what respects it is similar.

It is a question of fact, whether the influence of motives be fixed by laws of nature, so that they shall always have the same effect in the same circumstances.

You should be careful what you wish for, as the reasons for war get confused. One person can be very clear in their motives, but others can have different agendas.

Assuming ill motives almost instantly cuts us off from truly understanding why someone does and believes as they do.

The beauty and riddle in studying the motives of any politician is in trying to decide what is idealism and what is self-interest, and often we are left to conclude that the answer is a mixture of the two.

Self-deception is so far from impossible that it is one of the most ordinary phenomena with which we are acquainted. Nothing is more usual than for a man to impute his actions to honorable motives when it is nearly demonstrable that they flowed from some corrupt and contemptible force.

When you are doing a film for money or to help a friend out, be clear about the motives and then finish what needs to be done.

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

I was incredibly angry to see Mr. Trump question a judge’s motives because of his ethnicity.

A boardroom is a collection of individuals, and individuals have varying motives, egos, agendas and qualifications. Sometimes the dynamics can go off track.

And then there’s Israel – a lot of people support Israel, and it’s important to Israel to take out Iraq. So it’s all mixed together. It’s a combination of motives.

What America did in Vietnam and the Congo – we feel. And as a result come these demonstrations. I am not defending the act of burning USIS books. We deplore it. But we can understand the motives of the students.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

I want my books to explore motives which make people think, ‘Wow! Imagine the psychological state you’d have to be in for that to be your motive!’ Whereas things like blackmail, jealousy – they’re rational reasons for committing murder.

You can have the most wonderful motives for what you do, but if what you do harms other people, you’re fooling yourself.

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.

Do I get up every morning and ask: am I doing the things that I believe in and am I doing them for the best possible motives? Yes. Unambiguously yes.

The New Testament persistently presses us upward, toward higher motives for being good.

I always look at the motives behind each scene. You can play that out tonally with how you express yourself or you can do that with your physical expression, your physical presence. So I always think about what physical presence I want to embody in each scene.

It is the easiest thing in the world to become a Christian – ten thousand times easier than it is to hold out unrepenting against the motives which God presents to the mind, to induce it to forsake its evil thoughts and turn unto Him.

This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time ignoring his fundamental ones.

I always thought it hadn’t influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books.

I can understand that people who have a very different view to mine are motivated by the purest of motives. All I ask is that they might give the same benefit of the doubt to those with whom they might disagree with.

I couldn’t be happier that President Bush has stood up for having served in the National Guard, because I can finally put an end to all those who questioned my motives for enlisting in the Army Reserve at the height of the Vietnam War.

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.

Bob Dylan has always sealed his decisions with the unexplainable. His motives for withholding the release of the magnificent ‘Basement Tapes’ will be as forever obscure as Brian Wilson’s reasons for the destruction of the tapes for ‘Smile.’

When you’re a woman with a certain amount of fame and money, you are never certain what someone’s motives are.

In judging other people’s work, particularly short stories, I have noticed how novice writers tell the readers everything about their characters in the first paragraphs, disclose their motives, reveal their recent activities and their future intentions.

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

A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.

Psychopaths view any social exchange as a ‘feeding opportunity,’ a contest or a test of wills in which there can be only one winner. Their motives are to manipulate and take, ruthlessly and without remorse.

The automobile is technologically more sophisticated than the bundling board, but the human motives in their uses are sometimes the same.

It saddens me when public officials and bureaucrats are criticized for ulterior motives, none of which I have ever found in a government bureaucrat, or when someone personalizes disagreements.

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

I try to be cool with everybody, but sometimes, everybody just has different personalities, motives, and different characters.

Most of the evil of the world comes about not out of evil motives, but somebody saying ‘get with the program, be a team player;’ this is what we saw at Enron, this is what we saw in the Nixon administration with their scandal.

Successful givers secure their oxygen masks before coming to the assistance of others. Although their motives may be less purely altruistic, their actions prove more altruistic, because they give more.

Honest error in the face of complex and possibly intractable problems is a far more important source of bad results than are bad motives.

When you do well, everybody’s after you, and sometimes the motives are legitimate, and sometimes it’s envy and jealousy.

Evolutionary psychologists seem to want to unmask our noblest motives as ultimately self-interested – to show that our love for children, compassion for the unfortunate and sense of justice are just tactics in a Darwinian struggle to perpetuate our genes.

God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.

Maybe its time for politicians to fight back a little bit in terms of this notion that politicians are all in it for themselves, we’re all the same, we’re not driven by sincere motives. Because the fact of the matter is the vast majority are.

Criticism always seemed to me a lot like police work. You look for clues, fingerprints, motives. You need to construct an airtight case.

People’s behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

My obvious happiness and open, sharing nature made me vulnerable to people with ulterior motives.

Circumstances of crimes vary. So do motives. And so do prospects for rehabilitation. The number of imponderables makes it impossible to sentence by formula and still sentence justly.

We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.

In ‘Diary,’ the motto really is: ‘Where Do You Get Your Inspiration?’ It coaches us to be aware of our motives and not just be a reaction to the circumstances around us.

I’m not questioning Dick Cheney’s motives. There’s a chance for a conflict of interest. At one point in time, he was opposed to going into Baghdad. Then he was out of office and involved in the defense industry, and then he became for going into Baghdad.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

Any good story can galvanize a person, make him/her think about things a different way, reassess their own motives and needs, but that’s never my intent. That’s an unintended consequence of me just trying to entertain, to write what we used to call ‘ripping yarns.’

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