Top 100 Motive Quotes
#1. It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquility was no more.
Charlotte Bronte
#2. 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.
Nathan Deal
#3. Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or calorie, or lightening.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
#4. Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey. The love may sublime, raw, obsessive, passionate, awful. or thrilling, but whatever its quality, it's a powerful motive in the artist's life.
Eric Maisel
#5. 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.
Alex Campbell
#6. I can hear you preach about freedom,
yet your motive that makes me listened.
Toba Beta
#7. To claim "humanitarian motives" when the motive is envy and its supposed appeasement, is a favorite rhetorical device of politicians today, and has been for at least a hundred and fifty years.
Helmut Schoeck
#8. Still, the conscientious detective is obliged to examine the question of motive in a new light, to place it within the matrix of our present unusual circumstance.
Ben H. Winters
#9. The first expression of religion was the dance, and the first motive of the dance was religion.
La Meri
#10. The motive of art comes to us not from what exists, but from the notion that there is something higher, something nobler, something richer, and that what exists corresponds only partially to all of this.
Abraham Kuyper
#11. It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer
#12. The alternation of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.
Isaac Newton
#13. The saving of labour of the individual should be the object and honest humanitarian considerations, and not greed, the motive.
Mahatma Gandhi
#14. It is all right when God sends us the approval of our fellow men; however, we must never make that approval a motive in our life.
A.B. Simpson
#15. The meaning of what is said is according to the motive for saying it: because things are not subject to speech, but speech to things. Therefore we should take account of the motive of the lawgiver, rather than of his very words.
Thomas Aquinas
#16. She had always been ... the motive power of her own happiness.
Ayn Rand
#17. There is nothing straight about you; no motive that hasn't another behind it; no statement that hasn't three meanings.
Isaac Asimov
#18. The satisfaction that accompanies good acts is itself not the motivation of the act; satisfaction is not the motive, but only the consequence.
Joseph Butler
#19. With a stranglehold of authority it banned the statement for its reproduction or publication in part or in full. The motive on the part of the Government was obvious. It did not want Gandhi to be exposed to the public. The
Anup SarDesai
#20. I deplore the horrible crime as child murder ... no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent,the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed ... but oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which compelled her to the crime.
Susan B. Anthony
#21. When we have unconflicted self-esteem, joy is our motor, not fear. It is happiness that we wish to experience, not suffering that we wish to avoid. Our purpose is self-expression, not self-avoidance or self-justification. Our motive is not to "prove" our worth but to live our possibilities.
Nathaniel Branden
#22. Everyone has an ulterior motive. Everyone wants something, and everyone is willing to do whatever they have
to in order to get it. Regardless of who winds up hurt in the process.
Kyra Dune
#23. But I can't say that gratitude was my motive for infringing on the Law of Cultural Embargo. I was not paying my debt to him. Such debts remain owing. Estraven and I had simply arrived at the point where we shared whatever we had that was worth sharing.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#25. Given involuntarily, and in an atmosphere of distrust, pain is torture, whatever the motive," suggests David. "But given consensually, between equals, pain can be a most incredible form of love.
Geoff Mains
#26. If three steps are taken without any other motive than the desire to obey God, those three steps are miraculous; they are equally so whether they take place on dry land or on water.
Simone Weil
#27. But, gee," the other nurse says, "what on earth would MAKE a man want to do something like disrupt the ward for, Miss Ratched? What possible motive ... ?"
"You seem to forget, MISS Flinn, that this is an institution for the insane.
Ken Kesey
#28. 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.
Todd Gitlin
#29. Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.
E.B. White
#30. Logically speaking," he said lightly, "the idea that you hired someone to attack me doesn't make much sense. I'm not sure what your motive would be."
"I could have wanted to put an end to the rumors."
"That would be a shame. I like the rumors.
Marie Rutkoski
#31. The human creature is so astonishing, but count on it before anything else to be just that-a creature. A laughing animal, a dangerous one, a clever one, a scared one, but always acting for a reason-a motive that will move the beast towards its desires.
Jeffery Deaver
#32. Fear is the deep motive of abstract art - fear of a repellent civilization which is dominated by the power of things ... who can be surprised if, more sensitive than the others, the artist is terrified by the power things have acquired over us?
Storm Jameson
#33. Give a good deed the credit of a good motive; and give an evil deed the benefit of the doubt.
Brander Matthews
#34. It is a deformity in some 'radicals' to imagine that, once they have found the lowest or meanest motive for an action or for a person, they have correctly identified the authentic or 'real' one. Many a purge or show trial has got merrily under way in this manner.
Christopher Hitchens
#36. To follow implies not only the denying of one's own clarity, investigation, integrity and honesty , but it also implies that your motive in following, your motive is a reward .
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#37. No woman dares to refuse love without a motive, for nothing is more natural than to yield to love.
Honore De Balzac
#38. Watch your motive before God; have no other motive in prayer than to know Him.
Oswald Chambers
#39. The only motive that there ever was was to completely control a person; a person I found physically attractive. And keep them with me as long as possible, even if it meant just keeping a part of them.
Jeffrey Dahmer
#40. If you're actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you'll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface.
Emma Thompson
#41. Love expects no reward. Love knows no fear. Love Divine gives - does not demand. Love thinks no evil; imputes no motive. To Love is to share and serve.
Sivananda
#42. My great crime in the world is blunder I will get into scrapes without intention or any bad motive.
Stand Watie
#43. Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a science of the search for food.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#44. Pounce if I'm outta some arbitrary line, Specter, but from what you say this demilout's runnin' hogwild over creation with no better motive than a gratuitous and luxurious will to do evil.
Steve Aylett
#45. Money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate, by turning desire for gain into the sole motive. It easily manages to outweigh all other motives, because the effort it demands of the mind is so very much less. Nothing is so clear and so simple as a row of figures.
Simone Weil
#46. There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.
E. M. Forster
#47. But rules only work when everyone plays by them. What happens when someone doesn't, and the fallout bleeds right into his life? Whats stronger- the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?
Jodi Picoult
#48. One who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and at the right time, posseses character worthy of our trust and admiration.
Aristotle.
#49. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. Even with no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth.
George Eliot
#50. The desire for legitimate offspring is, in fact, according to the Catholic Church, the only motive which can justify sexual intercourse.
Bertrand Russell
#51. The motive for metaphor ... is a desire to associate, and finally to identify, the human mind with what goes on outside it, because the only genuine joy you can have is in those rare moments when you feel that although we may know in part, as Paul says, we are also a part of what we know.
Northrop Frye
#52. God is His own motive. His love is not drawn out by our loveableness, but wells up, like an artesian spring, from the depths of His nature.
Alexander MacLaren
#53. And I envy the intransigence of my own
Countrymen who shoot to kill and never
See the victim's face become their own
Or find his motive sabotage their motives.
Louis MacNeice
#54. I am not tormented, Fern responded. I am ... diminished. I have always believed that your soul grows when you do something that is good and brave, a right thing, a true thing, and when you do evil- no matter what the motive- your soul is eroded. Well, my soul is less.
Jan Siegel
#56. The political motive in the academic breast is honest enough. It is fear---genuine, perpetual, heart-felt timorousness. All the Political Arguments are addressed to this passion. Have you ever noticed how people say, 'I'm afraid I don't ...' when they mean, 'I think I don't ...'?
Francis Macdonald Cornford
#57. The least glimmering or shade of acting, in man or woman, is a sure motive of envy in the rest; and, if their malice can't persuade the town's-people into a dislike of their performance, they'll cruelly endeavor to taint their characters ...
Charlotte Charke
#58. Everyone, no doubt, remains first and foremost a man of his own country and continues to draw from it his motive force.
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
#59. Capitalism encourages entrepreneurs to act with consideration for others even when their ultimate motive is to benefit themselves.
Dinesh D'Souza
#60. The good opinion of our fellow men is the strongest, though not the purest motive to virtue.
Charles Caleb Colton
#61. We need not seek a cause or a motive or a purpose for that which is, in its nature, eternally self-existent and free.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
#62. I didn't expect to feel pathos for the villains in our show. I feel quite moved in several of our episodes; I never realized that a show like 'Motive,' which aims for a broad appeal, could have that sort of emotional impact.
Kristin Lehman
#63. The creative instinct has always been a stronger motive than mere profit to do truly new and revolutionary things.
Phil Karn
#64. Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime ...
Lord Acton
#65. 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.
Josh Radnor
#66. Stories are my art and my solace. They could also be my weapons. Stories give more than facts. Stories touch the conscience and stimulate action. That is my motive and my goal, to put research and study and feeling into that cauldron called the novel.
Sonia Levitin
#67. Postpone to the great object of Liberty every smaller motive and passion.
Thomas Jefferson
#68. There are many ways to prescribe happiness but there is one way that is available to everybody, it's not very expensive ... it's very democratic, and everyone has acesss to it. It is: Find someone who needs help and help him for no ulterior motive.
Yossi Vardi
#69. That kind always has the public good as a motive to justify every abomination.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#70. Your authority extends only to the performance of action; obtaining or not obtaining the fruit is never within your control; therefore, do not be one who performs action with a motive that a specific fruit should be obtained; nor insist on not-performing action.
William Milcetich
#71. Altruism is a fine motive, but if you want results, greed works much better.
Henry Spencer
#72. What is the motive which operates in every man's breast to counteract the impulse towards the gratification of his wants and appetites?
Jean-Baptiste Say
#73. 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.
Cynthia Ozick
#74. Selfishness is the controlling force of sinful living. It is this motive which pulsates through the natural mind, emotions and will - self-pleasing, self-serving, living for self.
Walter J Chantry
#75. To empathize with someone means to care about and understand him. That's why the trick to keeping the audience's interest in a character, even when the character is not likable or is taking immoral actions, is to show the audience the hero's motive.
John Truby
#76. Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#77. More secrets are improperly disclosed from boredom than from any other motive;
Robert Aickman
#78. Sometimes fear is wholesome and rational; it is well to swing fear as a mighty battle-axe over men's heads when no other motive will move them.
Henry Ward Beecher
#79. In the first place, a man who can work for five days, or even for five minutes, without any selfish motive whatever, without thinking of future, of heaven, of punishment, or anything of the kind, has in him the capacity to become a powerful moral giant.
Swami Vivekananda
#80. The morality of an action depends on the motive from which we act. If I fling half a crown to a beggar with intention to break his head and he picks it up and buy victuals with it, the physical effect is good. But with respect to me the action is very wrong.
Samuel Johnson
#81. How easily a parent's motive could be misconstrued by an injured child.
Susan Vreeland
#82. 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.
Paramahansa Yogananda
#84. If you are thinking of nything with dependence upon it, there is a motive of curiosity, or pleasure, or success, and though the thinking will help towards satisfaction you will still be in bondage. There is no harm in this, but the higher samadhi, without such motives, is best.
Ernest Wood
#86. Humanism inspires a lot of enthusiasm for everyday life and urges people to be better to one another, to work towards a better future and a common good. If I believed there was an afterlife I would have so much less motive for filling this life with every experience that is offered up to me.
Stephen Fry
#87. 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.
Giancarlo Esposito
#88. I think the motive force of all our action is, after all, personal happiness.
Leo Tolstoy
#89. because there may be a few coincidences in life, but none in crime. Everything has a motive.
Linda Howard
#90. 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.
Dirk Benedict
#91. The motive for criticizing myth, that is, its objectifying representations, is present in myth itself, insofar as its real intention to talk about a transcendent power to which both we and the world are subject is hampered and obscured by the objectifying character of its assertions.
Rudolf Bultmann
#92. If you examine your motive for doing anything, you'll soon discover that your reason is that you believe it will make you happy.
Chris Prentiss
#93. To sway opinion should never be the motive of argument. I argue only for pleasure.
A.E. Marling
#94. Each truth about God known by the mind is a new motive for loving Him with the will.
Peter Kreeft
#95. Nobody can advise and help you, nobody. There is only one single means. Go inside yourself. Discover the motive that bids you write; examine whether it sends its roots down to the deepest places of your heart, confess to yourself whether you would have to die if writing were denied you.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#96. Many people in a rather reckless context claim to 'just tell it like it is'. In actuality, nobody really stresses what one says so much as the motive behind what one says; hence, he is merely blowing hot air and detracting from 'what is'.
Criss Jami
#97. Man's motive power is his moral code.
Ayn Rand
#99. 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.
Dianne Feinstein
#100. Do not have as your motive the desire to be known as a praying man. Get an inner chamber in which to pray where no one knows you are praying, shut the door, and talk to God in secret.
Oswald Chambers
