Motive Quotes
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Negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.
Abraham Lincoln
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I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device.
Nikola Tesla
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Love turns all the wheels of human industry, is the motive power under the world's machinery, makes worthwhile every enterprise on the earth, is coequal with life, outlasts death, and reaches onward into heaven.
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
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The motives to actions and the inward turns of mind seem in our opinion more necessary to be known than the actions themselves; and much rather would we choose that our reader should clearly understand what our principal actors think than what they do.
Sarah Fielding
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If God were a Kantian, who would not have us till we came to Him from the purest and best motives, who could be saved?
C. S. Lewis
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The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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For an act may be wrong judged purely by itself, but when the motive that prompted the act is understood, it is construed differently. I lay it down as an axiom, that only that is criminal in the sight of God where crime is meditated.
Elizabeth Keckley
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All impediments in fancy's course Are motives of more fancy.
William Shakespeare
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All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions.... This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.
Blaise Pascal
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No matter how sophisticated the reason, a murder is a murder, and similarly, it doesn’t matter how great the motive is, if you can’t kill, you won’t. But someone who can kill definitely will.
Natsuhiko Kyogoku
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Love is a momentary upwelling of three tightly interwoven events: First, a sharing of one or more positive emotions between you and another; second, a synchrony between your and the other person’s biochemistry and behaviors; and third, a reflected motive to invest in each other’s well-being that brings mutual care.
Barbara Fredrickson
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Fie, fie upon her!
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.
William Shakespeare
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Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination, with the right motive, are the levers that move the world.
Noah Porter
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A strengthened national spirit can provide the motive power to rise our people from the depths and... pour new life and vigor in the national system.
The reinvigoration of the national spirit must take place in the grass roots, in every city, town and barrio in the Philippines, and it must start among our own people... To be a worthy citizen of the world one must first prove himself to be a good Filipino.
Carlos P. Romulo
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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
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You know, you can't always criticize without somebody being at the end of the stick. And she perhaps did not always grant credit to her opponents for their motives, any more than they granted credit to her for hers.
William A. Rusher
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Men's minds are as variant as their faces. Where the motives of their actions are pure, the operation of the former is no more to be imputed to them as a crime, than the appearance of the latter; for both, being the work of nature, are alike unavoidable.
George Washington
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If there was the same propensity in mankind for investigating the motives, as there is for censuring the conduct, of public characters, it would be found that the censure so freely bestowed is oftentimes unmerited and uncharitable.
George Washington
