Top 70 Motive Quotes

If an essay has a ‘motive,’ it is linked more to happenstance and opportunity than to the driven will. A genuine essay is not a doctrinaire tract or a propaganda effort or a broadside.

We acknowledge but one motive – to follow the truth as we know it, whithersoever it may lead us; but in our heart of hearts we are well assured that the truth which has made us free, will in the end make us glad also.

Anyone who has ever tried to plot a detective mystery knows that the hardest thing to come up with is motive.

Is hacking ever acceptable? It depends on the motive.

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.

When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.

I’ve been pretty good at reading people. If you rockin’ with me cause you’re just a solid individual, then we’re rockin’. But if you got a motive or something, I am going to probably see right through that.

Because impudence is a vice, it does not follow that modesty is a virtue; it is built upon shame, a passion in our nature, and may be either good or bad according to the actions performed from that motive.

If a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the ‘strongest’ of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it?

The first voyagers to the stars will be creatures whose life cycle is matched to the voyage: the aeons involved in traversing the galaxy are not daunting to immortal beings. By the end of the third millennium, travel to other stars could be technically feasible. But would there be sufficient motive?

When you hire a nanny, the question you ask yourself is, ‘What’s best for my precious child?’ And do you really want someone who feels that your motive in life is to minimize the amount you spend on your child?

AOL had a very strong motive to create the appearance of high revenues for PurchasePro because the value of the warrants AOL had received in the deal depended on PurchasePro’s performance.

I think a lot of things are shoved in our face, politically and historically, for money, and that’s the motive.

The motive power of democracy is love.

To most people in the U.K., indeed throughout Western Europe, space exploration is primarily perceived as ‘what NASA does’. This perception is – in many respects – a valid one. Superpower rivalry during the Cold War ramped up U.S. and Soviet space efforts to a scale that Western Europe had no motive to match.

In my opinion, the form of Government may be different in different countries, according to their circumstances, their wishes, their wants. England loves her Queen, and has full motive to do so.

What appeared to the earlier physicists to be the constant quantity of heat is nothing more than the whole motive power of the motion of heat, which remains constant so long as it is not transformed into other forms of work, or results afresh from them.

‘Helter-Skelter’ was the motive for the murders. Manson borrowed that term from a Beatles song on the ‘White Album.’ In England, helter-skelter is a playground ride. To Manson, helter-skelter meant a war between whites and blacks that the Beatles were in favor of.

I believe that the human motive to share is very powerful. The human motive to profit is also very powerful, and I think that the profit motive and the sharing motive are not exclusive.

The old detective story that’s got a really complicated motive doesn’t apply to mine.

However much we might deplore the profit motive, or consumerist values, if everyone just wants i-Pods we would probably be better off than if they wanted class revolution.

If interstellar travel is as time- or energy- demanding as the above figures indicate, it is far from obvious what the motive for colonization might be.

The main thing in measuring integrity is someone’s motive and intent, not how many records they sell. Our intent in Ministry was never to be big. We just wanted to make enough money to live and to buy a studio, which we have done in Austin.

It’s not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even – or rather, especially – when we’d prefer not to be.

When you want someone to notice you, there’s one fail-safe way of making sure that they do: by plastering pictures of yourself across social media. Your motive might seem obvious, but so what?

Would we not do well to have the pleasing of God as our motive rather than to try to elevate ourselves above our brother and outdo another?

I first came to think about media and politics in the late 1960s, having observed some distortions up close, but since then I wouldn’t say that my personal experience has remained an important motive for my writing about media.

My books are love stories at core, really. But I am interested in manifestations of love beyond the traditional romantic notion. In fact, I seem not particularly inclined to write romantic love as a narrative motive or as an easy source of happiness for my characters.

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.

I know many businesspeople in Russia who have knowingly signed up to effectively compromise their values for their own profit motive to become part of this criminal apparatus in Russia.

The real cure to immigration, obviously, is to make sure that there is prosperity around the world so that people don’t have the motive. Not just prosperity, but freedom.

I try to be careful with my persuasiveness. When my heart is really behind it, and when I have no ulterior motive, then I know I’m truly persuasive.

Evil is an attack against human spiritual development and enlightenment. All evil, badness, neurosis – it has one motive and one motive only, which is to destroy – to destroy your chance of arising above yourself.

Getting ahead cannot be the only motive that motivates people. You have to imagine what a good life is.

We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.

For some reason, I have always been interested in the stories of people who are exiled and who are deprived of rights. My main motive to make a film is to keep the society in mind and the hospitality adhered.

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?

Relying on the power of kindness is a sensitive undertaking. The challenge is to inspire people to be kind more often without tainting the selflessness that comes from doing something nice with no ulterior motive.

The Creator, in taking infinite pains to shroud with mystery His presence in every atom of creation, could have had but one motive – a sensitive desire that men seek Him only through free will.

I believe absolutely in love being the central motive force of the universe.

Where destruction is the motive, unity is dangerous.

Do not ever say that the desire to ‘do good’ by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organise themselves into a professor of chemistry? What’s the motive?

Some people are born with a vital and responsive energy. It not only enables them to keep abreast of the times; it qualifies them to furnish in their own personality a good bit of the motive power to the mad pace.

People instinctively know the difference between something done with a profit motive and something done with a love motive.

I’m not trying to teach anybody anything, I’m not trying to say anything, I have no political motive whatsoever. My motive is just the big laugh.

A desire of gain is common to mankind, and the general motive to business and industry.

Looking forward, it might prove constructive to examine the true historical record of an issue prior to assuming the worst of anyone’s motive and deconstructing and questioning anyone’s Democratic bona fides. After all, we liberals got feelings.

For ‘Motive,’ it wasn’t a question of making it look un-Canadian, but instead, we wanted it to be the product of a bunch of really skilled people making something. And that’s what you have.

We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action.

No one does anything from a single motive.

My motive, and I will make it clear and look you in the eyes, is to attack major league baseball. That’s my motive.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

I think everything is a motive for money. Every thought, every belief, everything we’re taught in school.