Quotes About Motives

Actions whose motives he cannot understand that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit.

If we give God things in hope that they'll earn us blessings, we're really not doing anything for him. It's for ourselves.

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.

Humanity is made up of an infinity of different individuals. Each of us travels for motives exclusively his own.

Don't let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.

People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.

Who is sure of their own motives can in confidence advance or retreat.

Ultimately, the Buddhist teachings say, misfortune happens less often to those whose motives are pure.

If the child of the alcoholic, not unlike the alcoholic, is ever to mature, there must be accountability. Part of having a strong sense of self is to be accountable for one's actions. No matter how much we explore motives or lack of motives, we are what we do. We take credit for the good and we must take credit for the bad. The key is to take responsibility for all of our behavior.

I never got caught because of money. I got caught because of love.

Our Conclusions Reflect Self-Interest

The third possible explanation for the sex difference in actual homicides is linked to a surprising motive for much violent behavior: the tendency to act aggressively to impress others.

Whatever I may do to serve you will be prompted solely from selfish motives, since it gives me more pleasure to serve you than not.

sentimentalists have words: love, loyalty, friendship, enmity, jealousy, hate, a thousand others; a waste of words – one word defines them all: self-interest.

It did not occur to her that Selden might have been actuated merely by the desire to spend a Sunday out of town: women never learn to dispense with the sentimental motive in their judgments of men.

The modest, the sober, and the learned, are seldom preferred; and the nomenclators, who are commonly swayed by interested motives, have the address to insert, in the list of invitations, the obscure names of the most worthless of mankind

No one is to practise or aspire after virtue or perfection upon a motive of greatness, or of being exalted by it. This would be to fall into the snare of pride, which is to be feared under the cloak of sanctity itself.

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.