Quotes about Motives

The older I get, the more I realize that motives are less of a contributor to the problems of the world than is the failure to understand what is implicit in our actions. Anatole France observed that "those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their neighbours very miserable," an insight that should remind us of the disruptive nature of unintended consequences.

When we analyze or diagnose or psychoanalyze people's motives (e.g. in politics or in reading a mystery novel or decoding some everyday remark), we are trying to puzzle out not just the tangle of emotions or interests that lie all on the same plane, but also the priority or hierarchy of different species of motive and interest:  cui bono? i.e. what element or organismic subsystem in his psyche ultimately benefited from his behavior or his ploy?  Differently put, the contents of experience and self-expression "differ" from one another not just qualitatively but also ordinally, in terms of their ranking or determinative power over one another.  

And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.

The ''Inside-Out'' approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self -- with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves recedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.

A man is the part he plays among his fellows. He is not isolated; he cannot be. His life is made up of the relations he bears to others - is made or marred by those relations, guided by them, judged by them, expressed in them. There is nothing else upon which he can spend his spirit - nothing else that we can see. It is by these he gets his spiritual growth; it is by these we see his character revealed, his purpose, his gifts. A few (men) act as those who have mastered the secrets of a serious art, with deliberate subordination of themselves to the great end and motive of the play. These have "found themselves," and have all the ease of a perfect adjustment.

Of the various executive abilities, no one excited more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the hands of honest men, with understanding sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the same time more difficult to fulfil. The knowledge of character possessed by a single individual is of necessity limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect.

Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.

Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers. In them the replacement of religious motives for civilized behaviours by other, secular motives, would proceed unobtrusively. . . .

On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight, and sawdust footprints lay about the doorways of butcher shops and fruit stores. And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence - I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally. The sidewalks were wider than any causeway; the street itself was immense, and it quaked and gleamed and it seemed . . . to throb at the last limit of endurance.

From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,- Path, motive, guide, original, and end.

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.

Get to know two things about a man. How he earns his money and how he spends it. You will then have the clue tohis character. You will have a searchlight that shows up the inmost recesses of his soul. You know all you need to knowabout his standards, his motives, his driving desires, his real religion.

If you seek His help, be sure your life is clean, your motives are worthy, and you're willing to do what He asks-for He will answer your prayers. He is your loving Father; you are His beloved child. He loves you perfectly and wants to help you.

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.

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 pioneer courage, loyalty, strength of purpose and freedom." The trumpet motive in the closing Allegro "is a call of defiance to the very elements themselves that had the temerity to dispute the spiritual strength and courage of the golden city of the West."

The only motive strong enough to induce men to exercise the self control required by the religion of Jesus is love.

Spiritual awakening is the most essential thing in man's life, and it is the sole purpose of being. Is not civilization, in all its tragic forms, a supreme motive for spiritual awakening?

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.

Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is part of an unending plan.

To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations. . . . For the maxim lacks the moral import, namely, that such actions be done from duty, not from inclination.

The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.

All higher motives, ideals, conceptions, sentiments in a man are of no account if they do not come forward to strengthen him for the better discharge of the duties which devolve upon him in the ordinary affairs of life.

Four things a man must learn to do If he would make his record true; To think without confusion clearly; To love his fellowmen sincerely; To act from honest motives purely; To trust in God and Heav'n securely.

.He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a reasonable motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for that of reason and conscience.

Four things to learn in life: To think clearly without hurry or confusion To love everybody sincerely; To act in everything with the highest motives; To trust God unhesitatingly.

History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. . . . What is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events, and harmonies are turned into causes. Kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions; plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements, while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion.

No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble.

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.

expectations of women Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.