Motive Quotes
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The wind, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear. Before the era of steam-engines, windmills were tried for draining mines; but though they were powerful machines, they were very irregular, so that in a long tract of calm weather the mines were drowned, and all the workmen thrown idle.
William Stanley Jevons
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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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Usually I just let my songs do the talking. As a matter of fact I have long had an aversion to celebrities endorsing politics, and in some cases even other causes. I wonder about their motives. And I have to admit when celebrities get involved in political campaigns I tend to get a little bit sarcastic about it.
John Fogerty
Creedence Clearwater Revival
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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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I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device.
Nikola Tesla
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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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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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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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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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All impediments in fancy's course Are motives of more fancy.
William Shakespeare
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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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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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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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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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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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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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We are thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than the quantum of favor received.
William Hazlitt
