Motives Quotes

I have always examined closely the motives of any group for which I am asked to raise money.

People do not always understand the motives of sublime conduct, and when they are astonished they are very apt to think they ought to be alarmed. The truth is none are fit judges of greatness but those who are capable of it.

Naturally, it is a terrible, despicable crime when, as in Munich, people are taken hostage, people are killed. But probing the motives of those responsible and showing that they are also individuals with families and have their own story does not excuse what they did.

This kind of charge reveals a good deal about the personality of the people who make it; to impute such motives to another man is to imply you're harboring them yourself.

If efforts to do social work are couched in selfish motives, then they will die a premature death. Why would my efforts get politicised? I have values I inherited from my father. He helped many. Anyone, even a postman knocking on our door would get a glass of water and some sweets.

Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others.

My actions to promote peace, the mediation missions which I carried out during many conflicts, which very often occurred between brothers of the same country, are not driven by any ulterior motives or any calculations based on personal ambitions.

When I consider what it was that moved me to join the Communist Party, I have to cast my mind back for more than a quarter of a century to try and ascertain what precisely my motives at that time were.

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.

We have nothing less to do than to get inside of whole peoples and change their motives and dispositions.

The moment there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted.

Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.

One principle I've been fighting for that doesn't endear me to a lot of people is that black people can be just as complicated and screwed up as white people. Our motives can be just as base and violent. Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.

I always thought it hadn't influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books.

The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.

The automobile is technologically more sophisticated than the bundling board, but the human motives in their uses are sometimes the same.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.