You should be careful what you wish for, as the reasons for war get confused. One person can be very clear in their motives, but others can have different agendas.
Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.
Motives are causes experienced from within.
Even in political considerations, now-a-days, you have stronger motives to feel interested in the fate of Europe than in the fate of the Central or Southern parts of America.
The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue.
We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
Too great a preoccupation with motives (especially one's own motive) is liable to lead to too little concern for consequences.
If your motives aren't clean, money itself becomes evil. But When we don't have money enough evil, the world tells us we're losers. So what determines our place in society is not how much kindness is in our hearts but how much evil is in our wallet.
When men can hate without risk, their stupidity is easily convinced, the motives supply themselves.
We can be civil to each other, and we can try to express ourselves acknowledging that we're all patriots, we're all Americans, and not assume the absolute worst in people's motives.
With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial community this propensity for emulation expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous waste.
I felt the sensation of each of the directions I mentally and emotionally turned into amazed at all the possible directions you can take with different motives that come in like it can make you a different person — I’ve often thought of this since childhood of suppose instead of going up Columbus as I usually did I’d turn into Filbert would something happen that at the time is insignificant enough but would be like enough to influence my whole life in the end? — What’s in store for me in the direction I don’t take?
I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.
Actions are visible, though motives are secret.
The motives and purposes of authors are not always so pure and high, as, in the enthusiasm of youth, we sometimes imagine. To many the trumpet of fame is nothing but a tin horn to call them home, like laborers from, the field, at dinner-time, and they think themselves lucky to get the dinner.
It is the media that controls the boundaries of what is politically permissible, so better to change the media. Profit motives work against it, but if we can have the audience understand that most other forms of journalism are not credible, then it may be a forced move.
If you are not as happy as you used to be, chances are you are not meditating properly. You may be trying to skip steps. You are using power incorrectly. Your motives are not pure. You don't vibrate quickly.
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.
People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.
The fundamental characteristic of the scientific method is honesty. In dealing with any question, science asks no favors. . . . I believe that constant use of the scientific method must in the end leave its impress upon him who uses it. . . . A life spent in accordance with scientific teachings would be of a high order. It would practically conform to the teachings of the highest types of religion. The motives would be different, but so far as conduct is concerned the results would be practically identical.