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Motive Quotes

Browse 1214 quotes about Motive.

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Motive Quotes

“There are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.”

KnowsMenWellsDoneUseNamesNaturalResultsBrainStudyTalentCrimeAmountProfessionCriminalsThese DaysMotiveOfficialsYardsScotlandTransparentDetectionVillainyNatural TalentStudy In ScarletScotland Yard
Book:Sherlock Holmes. The best stories
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“[A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.”

MenShouldEarthSpiritualGivenPerfectEffortExistenceMoralCasesAirEqualCapacityArgumentShould HaveBreatheEnjoyedMotiveHonorableExertionEndowmentPro Feminist
Book:In the Words of Frederick Douglass: Quotations from Liberty’s Champion
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“One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness. Such men make this cosmos and its construction the pivot of their emotional life, in order to find the peace and security which they cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”

MenArtOrderSecurityEmotionalEverydayPainfulMemorableMotiveCosmosHopelessStrongestConstructionEveryday LifePersonal ExperiencesArt And ScienceEmotional LifePeace And SecurityWhirlpools
Author:Walter Isaacson
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“You are honest enough by nature to be able to see and judge your own self clearly - and that is a great thing. Never lose that honesty, Bobby - always be honest with yourself, know your own motives for what they are, good or bad, make your own decisions firmly and justly - and you will be a fine, strong character, of some real use in this muddled world of ours!”

KnowsWorldRealSelfEnoughCharacterUseAbleStrongLosesDecisionHonestHonestyJudgingFineGreat ThingsBeing HonestMotiveHonest With YourselfBe Honest With YourselfStrong Character
Book:Summer Term at St Clare's
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“For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency. If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic. People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness. People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware. Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world. Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional. The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”

PeopleIfsMenWorldMeanArtRealSelfBeliefLove IsResultsKnownSelf EsteemRationalEsteemPersistenceUpsetMotiveSicknessWorking ItReal WorldIrrationalDependencyConditional
Author:Albert Ellis
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“We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive; love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on. We'll spy relentlessly on the dead; we'll open their letters, we'll read their journals, we'll go through their trash, hoping for a hint, a final word, an explanation, from those who have deserted us--who've left us holding the bag, which is often a good deal emptier than we'd supposed.”

IfsMatterHandsLeftProcessDealsGriefDespairLettersHatredNo Matter WhatSticksFinalsCuriosityFlamesExplanationMotiveBagsJournalSpyTrashHintsDesertedFinal Words
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“These illustrations suggest four general maxims[...]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.”

PeopleGivingFirstsEnoughSeemsRememberDesireInterestFourImagineSpecialThirdsMeritMotiveFourthImagine ThatNarcissismMaximsParanoiaIllustrationSelf Centeredness
Book:The Conquest of Happiness
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“One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.”

PeopleInspirationalShouldImportantSchoolFormSuccessYoungScienceLife IsValuesCommunityPleasureResultsKnowledgeTeachingAimMotivePreachingAdolescenceCongratulationsKnowledge EducationAim Of Life
Author:Albert Einstein
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“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.”

IfsNeedsActionValuesCausesInterestingHistoryPlansWrittenEventsKingsAchievementAbsolutesHarmonyHistoricalPlanningMotiveAppropriateMarchBuriedHistorianOblivionProphetic
Book:The Life of Reason: Human Understanding
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“It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of evasions: history as sociology, leaders as teachers, bland benevolence as a motive force, when, finally, power is an end to itself, and the instinctive urge to prevail the most important single human trait, the necessary force without which no city was built, no city destroyed.”

HumansImportantEndsFactsWantedPoliticsForceDifficultPresidentSimpleCitiesLeaderTeacherSeaBuiltDestroyedAcknowledgeMotiveUrgesHistorianTraitsSociologyBenevolenceFranklinCrudeWadeBlandEvasion
Author:Gore Vidal
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“Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for the community.”

MayScienceDesireIndividualCommunityInterestingHealthyStrongerIntelligentFellowsPsychologicalRecognitionMotiveScholarApprovalAdjustment
Book:Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words
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“Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others.”

NeedsRealTruthBeautifulPoliticalGamesOur LivesHonestyIntegritySimplicityAbsenceMotiveHypocrisyManipulateRefreshingSuperficialityDuplicityHidden MeaningUlterior MotivePolitical Games
Book:Improving Your Serve
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“Every one knows that the heavenly bodies move in certain paths in relation to each other with seeming consistency and regularity which we call [physical] law. ... No one attributes freewill or motive to the material world. Is the conduct of man or the other animals any more subject to whim or choice than the action of the planets? ... We know that man's every act is induced by motives that led or urged him here or there; that the sequence of cause and effect runs through the whole universe, and is nowhere more compelling than with man.”

KnowsMenWorldWholeBodyRunningActionMovingLawCertainChoicesUniverseCausesAnimalPathSubjectsEffectsPlanetsMaterialsRelationMotiveHeavenlyFree WillAttributesCompellingConsistencySequenceCause And EffectSeemingWhimMaterial WorldRegularityHeavenly Bodies
Author:Clarence Darrow
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“It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint.”

DisciplineMereMotiveRemoveMaterialismRestraintOld FashionedSkepticObjectionsFallacyScepticism
Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“We went all the way down the Himalayan chain for a day and a half. That was magnificent, except the Chinese told us they were going to shoot us down if we came out the far end. So I spent a lot of my time contacting former Prime Minister Tony Blair begging him to tell the Chinese we were coming in this direction by mistake and could he please say we have no nasty motives for flying into their territory.”

IfsWayEndsMistakeHalfAdventurePleaseFlyingChainsFormerChineseMinistersMotiveMy TimePrimeTerritoryMagnificentNastyPrime MinisterBeggingBlair
Author:Richard Branson
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“And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose - that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs.”

MayMeanReasonActionRememberDependsSolutionsHumorousExtraordinaryNosesMotiveSarcasmVolumePowderInscrutableQuicksand
Book:The Return of Sherlock Holmes
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“Anyhow, all mankind's ideas and interests, all human aims and motives, are exhibited, fully formed, in a three-year-old child. The kid is just operating on a smaller scale and lacks the advantage of having made enormous soft-money campaign contributions to political candidates.”

YearsHumansChildrenMadeIdeasKidsPoliticalThreeInterestMankindHumorousAdvantageAimParentingCampaignsScalesEnormousMotiveCandidatesContributionThree YearsThree Year OldsCampaign ContributionsPolitical Candidates
Book:Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader
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“The church must never become a government factory, carrying on a nationalized industry of religion with the people as the bolts and nuts; with God reduced to the role of cramped advocate of current national policy. Surely the pages of history are replete and the examples in many a foreign country convincing that this kind of church-state union-whatever the original motives, or however noble the original purposes-winds up with a state that is less than stable and a church that is less than sanctified, and with the poor still hungry.”

PeopleKindStillsCountryStatesGovernmentPurposeCultureChurchJusticePoorRolesAtheismPolicyExampleWindIndustryDiversityPagesOriginalsSocial JusticeUnionsCurrentsPositive AtheismNobleHungryMotiveNutsFactoriesStableConvincingBoltsForeign CountriesCarrying On
Author:Glenn Archer
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“Almost all education has a political motive: it aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups. It is this motive, in the main, which determines the subjects taught, the knowledge offered and the knowledge withheld, and also decides what mental habits the pupils are expected to acquire. Hardly anything is done to foster the inward growth of mind and spirit; in fact, those who have had the most education are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life.”

MindDoneFactsSpiritualPoliticalSpiritSocialGrowthReligiousGroupsSubjectsTaughtHabitAimCompetitionDetermineEducationalExpectedMotiveAcquireSpiritual LifeInwardPupilsStrengthening
Author:Bertrand Russell
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