He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
~By Walter Scott ~
From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out.
~By Jurgen Habermas ~
The moment there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted.
~By Mohandas Gandhi ~
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.
~By Chauncey Wright ~
Horses and mules, and even sail cars, made more rapid progress than did the earliest locomotive.
~By John Moody ~
It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.
~By Jean de la Bruyere ~
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.
~By Bram Fischer ~
The atmosphere is much too near for dreams. It forces us to action. It is close to us. We are in it and of it. It rouses us both to study and to do. We must know its moods and also its motive forces.
~By Cleveland Abbe ~
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.
~By Paul Weyrich ~
What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.
~By Miguel de Unamuno ~
There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.
~By Earle Brown ~
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.
~By Dougray Scott ~
Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.
~By George Eliot ~
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.
~By Chris Matthews ~
Even in political considerations, now-a-days, you have stronger motives to feel interested in the fate of Europe than in the fate of the Central or Southern parts of America.
~By Lajos Kossuth ~
Those who joined us for selfish personal reasons, for a career or other motives will be the ones to leave.
~By Janos Kadar ~
Actions are visible, though motives are secret.
~By Samuel Johnson ~
Apple's market share is bigger than BMW's or Mercedes's or Porsche's in the automotive market. What's wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?
~By Steve Jobs ~
The motive power of democracy is love.
~By Henri Bergson ~
Few men could explain why they enlisted, and if they attempted they might only prove that they had done as a politician said the electorate does, the right thing from the wrong motive.
~By Patrick MacGill ~
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.
~By Robert A. Heinlein ~
The automobile is technologically more sophisticated than the bundling board, but the human motives in their uses are sometimes the same.
~By Charles M. Allen ~
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
~By Denis Diderot ~
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.
~By Steven Spielberg ~
No one does anything from a single motive.
~By Samuel Taylor Coleridge ~
The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.
~By Samuel Johnson ~
Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil's spawn. He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive.
~By Eric Massa ~
I have always examined closely the motives of any group for which I am asked to raise money.
~By Kate Smith ~
You listen to a piece of music and it will remind you of something-it might make you happy, it might make you sad, but it is very emotive. And I think that Duran Duran have always understood that.
~By Nick Rhodes ~
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.
~By Omar Bongo ~
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.
~By Desmond Morris ~
In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.
~By Anna Jameson ~
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.
~By P. D. James ~
The husband - by primitive instinct partly, certainly by ancient tradition - regards himself as the active partner in matters of love and his own pleasure as legitimately the prime motive for activity.
~By Havelock Ellis ~
America - a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.
~By Herbert Hoover ~
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.
~By Philip Zimbardo ~
You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive. Never complain and never explain.
~By Stanley Baldwin ~
For the life of me, I don't understand what honest motive there is in putting this in front of this body to philosophically debate marriage on a constitutional amendment that is not going to happen, and which is enormously divisive in all of our communities.
~By Dianne Feinstein ~
Sometimes, his methods and his motives are questionable and even his morals are questionable in the way he does things. But I think his intention is always to protect his daughter.
~By Victor Garber ~
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.
~By Larry David ~
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.
~By Alex Campbell ~
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.
~By Barney Oliver ~
As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.
~By Boz Scaggs ~
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 class spirit, esprit de corps, good fellowship, or good will to men.
~By Herbert Baxter Adams ~
When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.
~By Miguel de Cervantes ~
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 vis-a-vis a work of art.
~By Hans-Georg Gadamer ~
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.
~By Henry Ward Beecher ~
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.
~By Jim Garrison ~
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.
~By William James ~
We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action.
~By Sarojini Naidu ~
I started to call myself a rational therapist in 1955; later I used the term rational emotive. Now I call myself a rational emotive behavior therapist.
~By Albert Ellis ~
Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
~By James M. Barrie ~
Emphasis on the common emotive or affective origins of music and words in the first cries of humankind undermines words.
~By Jean Philippe Rameau ~
In this respect I suppose I'm the total opposite of Garry. With his very emotive body language at the board he shows and displays all his emotions. I don't.
~By Vladimir Kramnik ~
Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year? Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.
~By Karl Rove ~
It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
~By Eric Hoffer ~
Previously people were treated anonymously particular on a drugs situation which is obviously highly emotive. They have been treated anonymously even after the verdict had been reached.
~By David Gill ~
Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
~By William Howard Taft ~
Men killing other men really is an extraordinary phenomenon. Why does it happen? And how long has it gone on? And have the motives changed?
~By John Keegan ~
I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.
~By Benjamin F. Wade ~
Turning corporations loose and letting the profit motive run amok is not a prescription for a more livable world.
~By Tom Scholz ~
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.
~By Mortimer Adler ~
I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.
~By Charles Dudley Warner ~
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.
~By Charles Darwin ~
People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.
~By Albert Ellis ~
Mankind are divided into sects, and individuals think very differently on religious subjects, from the purest motives; and that gracious common Parent, who loves all his children alike, beholds with approbation every one who worships him in sincerity.
~By Joseph Lancaster ~
Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.
~By William J. Brennan, Jr. ~
We have nothing less to do than to get inside of whole peoples and change their motives and dispositions.
~By John Raleigh Mott ~
People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.
~By Thomas Mann ~
Just because scientists have the knowledge to do it, the technology to do it, and some may even have a financial motive or other incentive to do it, does not make it right.
~By Nathan Deal ~
In a world full of competing emergencies and disasters, it really helps if there is an international locomotive that can help us bring attention - help us bring resources.
~By Jan Egeland ~
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.
~By Robert Higgs ~
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.
~By Ferdinand Christian Baur ~
My great crime in the world is blunder I will get into scrapes without intention or any bad motive.
~By Stand Watie ~
By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
~By Claude Adrien Helvetius ~
Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments.
~By Sidney Hook ~
It is a good motive, fame and money, as it is tangible and measurable. Being an artist is neither measurable nor tangible and certainly not a way to become rich.
~By Dirk Benedict ~
We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.
~By Robert Byrd ~
What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
~By George Eliot ~
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.
~By Lajos Kossuth ~
If you want to be in the automotive business, you go to Detroit, and you figure it out. If you want to be in entertainment, go to where it's at. Go to Hollywood, go to New York.
~By Nick Cannon ~
Every diminution of the public burdens arising from taxation gives to individual enterprise increased power and furnishes to all the members of our happy confederacy new motives for patriotic affection and support.
~By Andrew Jackson ~
That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
~By Joseph Addison ~
All governments in all wars have used all the means at their disposal to put their own motives, decisions and actions, and the actions of their military forces, in the best possible light.
~By Bruce Jackson ~
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.
~By Saint Teresa ~
The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.
~By Mason Cooley ~
Phrenology taught us that the mind thinks by means of the brain, is liable to become fatigued by too long attention, as the locomotive muscles are by too much walking; and I therefore proposed to them to take a brief rest.
~By George Combe ~
We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.
~By Edward Dahlberg ~
To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.
~By Lord Byron ~
This part of being a man, changing the way we parent, happens only when we want it to. It changes because we are determined for it to change; and the motive for changing often comes out of wanting to be the kind of parent we didn't have.
~By Augustus Y. Napier ~
The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
~By William Butler Yeats ~
We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.
~By Francois de La Rochefoucauld ~
It's the millenium, motives are incidental.
~By Jamie Kennedy ~
I believe absolutely in love being the central motive force of the universe.
~By Laurence Housman ~
I really have no ulterior motive in taking on certain roles. I have no larger issue that I really want to show people. I'm an actor, that's all. I just do what I do.
~By Sally Field ~
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
~By Oscar Wilde ~
Cruel and cold is the judgment of man, Cruel as winter, and cold as the snow; But by-and-by will the deed and the plan Be judged by the motive that lieth below.
~By Lewis J. Bates ~
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.
~By Gray Davis ~
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.
~By Abraham Maslow ~
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.
~By Todd Gitlin ~
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