Motives Quotes
Men are more accountable for their motives, than for anything else; and primarily, morality consists in the motives, that is in the affections.
Archibald Alexander
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.
Ferdinand Christian Baur
But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.
Abraham Maslow
Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.
Philip Zimbardo
The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.
Mason Cooley
There is an institutional cynicism that causes reporters to question everything the President says, and the motives of everything the President and his Administration try to accomplish.
Dee Dee Myers
But I have the satisfaction, at the same time, to reflect that the impression to be made depends upon the consistency of the charge and the motives of the prosecutors.
Robert Walpole
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
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.
Robert A. Heinlein
The pains of disconcerted or frustrated habits, and the inherent pleasure there is in following them, are motives which nature has put into our wills without generally caring to inform us why; and she sometimes decrees, indeed, that her reasons shall not be ours.
Chauncey Wright
Politicians are usually the first to forget that if you assume someone else is acting in bad faith, they will do the same to you. Questioning motives poisons the well.
John Sununu
What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.
Miguel de Unamuno
I don't know why they're doing it. I have to assume that their motives are positive, not negative. But they don't understand the severity of the problem in this state.
Gray Davis
Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.
Saint Teresa
I have always examined closely the motives of any group for which I am asked to raise money.
Kate Smith
People do not always understand the motives of sublime conduct, and when they are astonished they are very apt to think they ought to be alarmed. The truth is none are fit judges of greatness but those who are capable of it.
Jane Porter
Naturally, it is a terrible, despicable crime when, as in Munich, people are taken hostage, people are killed. But probing the motives of those responsible and showing that they are also individuals with families and have their own story does not excuse what they did.
Steven Spielberg
CAIR officials or former officials have been arrested on charges related to terrorism yet all it offers is silence and stonewalling in discussing what are its real motives.
Paul Weyrich
This kind of charge reveals a good deal about the personality of the people who make it; to impute such motives to another man is to imply you're harboring them yourself.
Jim Garrison
First of all; Frank was the BOSS. We didn't question any of his motives or decisions at the time.
Jimmy Carl Black
A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others.
Charles Darwin
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, are not driven by any ulterior motives or any calculations based on personal ambitions.
Omar Bongo
When I consider what it was that moved me to join the Communist Party, I have to cast my mind back for more than a quarter of a century to try and ascertain what precisely my motives at that time were.
Bram Fischer
If efforts to do social work are couched in selfish motives, then they will die a premature death. Why would my efforts get politicised? I have values I inherited from my father. He helped many. Anyone, even a postman knocking on our door would get a glass of water and some sweets.
Sachin Tendulkar
We have nothing less to do than to get inside of whole peoples and change their motives and dispositions.
John Raleigh Mott
Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
Ayn Rand
Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
Eric Hoffer