Motive Quotes
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People who don't know you, you don't know their motives. They smile at you all day, "Oh, that's great. You've done it again! You're the greatest!" And that's not good for an artist.
Jay-Z
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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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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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I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device.
Nikola Tesla
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We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action.
Sarojini Naidu
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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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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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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 impediments in fancy's course Are motives of more fancy.
William Shakespeare
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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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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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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
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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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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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Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.
William J. Brennan, Jr.
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The meaning of what is said is according to the motive for saying it: because things are not subject to speech, but speech to things. Therefore we should take account of the motive of the lawgiver, rather than of his very words.
Thomas Aquinas
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Give a good deed the credit of a good motive; and give an evil deed the benefit of the doubt.
Brander Matthews
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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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Christ wishes the Christian Community to be a body that is perfect because we work together towards a single end, and the higher the motive which actuates this collaboration the higher, no doubt, will be the union. Now the end in question is supremely exalted: the continuous sanctification of the Body for the glory of God and the Lamb that was slain [Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament].
Katharine Drexel