Quotes About Motive

We call an intention good which is right in itself, but the action is good, not because it contains within it some good, but because it issues from a good intention.

We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.

The only motive that can keep politics pure is the motive of doing good for one's country and its people.

An action is essentially good if the motive of the agent be good, regardless of the consequences.

People always tend to chose what is best for them. They pretend to be unselfish, all so that they can feel good about themselves. Even that really is a selfish decision.

If you smile when you are alone, then you really mean it, or you're up to something.

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.

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

Few people ever kill for the right reasons, June. Most do it for the wrong reasons. I just hope you never have to be in either category.

Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

Always strive to get what you want, what you need, especially if your intentions are good and nobody gets hurt in the process."

Whenever executives talk about how their company is really like a big ol' family, beware. They're usually not referring to how the company is going to protect you no matter what or love you unconditionally. You know, like healthy families would. Their motive is rather more likely to be a unidirectional form of sacrifice: yours.

an odious crime, as old as the Bible and for an utterly despicable motive too and carried out in a cowardly manner, making use of intermediaries.

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.

Turning the pages of crime novels it occurs to me to ask how it's possible to write so much without saying the word "pain," "life," or "anxiety." I reject this stupid dehumanization. The behaving without motive. The horrific shutting out of what is most vital or important.

Exitus probatur," he said. The end is justified. "Ergo acta probantur," said one of the waiting men. Therefore the means are justified.

There are so many things that seem doubtful because we do not bring the test of the highest motive to bear on them. Complications would fall away when we only wished to know and be like Christ.

'Murder in the First' takes 12 episodes to explore the crime and the issues surrounding it, all in the hopes of answering the question, 'How did we get to this point?'

It is the nature of a business community that it deals with the covert forms of power in economic life and to be insensible to the significance and the complexity of more overt forms of power, even as it is insensible to the motive of the lust for power as an element in human nature.

if he had married Mrs. Albert Grantham for her money I freely admit that no man marries without a reason and with her it would have been next to impossible to think up another one....

His oratorical baritone was raspy and supercilious under the strain. "You say you are not interested," he told Wolfe, "in the factors of means and opportunity. The motive is palpable for all of us, but it is also palpable that Miss Duday is biased by animus. She cannot support her statement that after June thirtieth my income from the corporation would have ceased. I deny that Miss Eads intended to take any action so ill advised and irresponsible.

Damien Vesper Didn't plan on killing anyone today

God is always more interested in why we do something than in what we do. Attitudes count more than achievements.