#motivations

Bureaucrats behave very differently than a private-sector manager because their motivations are different. Permanent bureaucrats, no matter how senior, worry about their next job. ↗

— John Sununu

#because #behave #bureaucrats #different #differently

At the same time it offered the hope, as it still does, that improved understanding could better the lot of mankind. For me, growing up in the 1930s, the two motivations powerfully reinforced each other. ↗

— James Tobin

#could #does #each #growing #growing up

While people argue with one another about the specifics of Freud's work and blame him for the prejudices of his time, they overlook the fundamental truth of his writing, his grand humility: that we frequently do not know our own motivations in life and are prisoners to what we cannot understand. We can recognize only a small fragment of our own, and an even smaller fragment of anyone else's, impetus. ↗

— Andrew Solomon

#humility #impetus #motivations #prejudice #truth

People are always trying to understand. There is only one way to do that. It is to discover < + i + >why< + i + > you want to understand. ↗

— Idries Shah

#technique #understanding #motivational

The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict? The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict. The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict. (Junky, Prologue, p. xxxviii) ↗

— William S. Burroughs

#addicts #drug-addiction #junk #junkie #motivations

If you wish to draw profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faith, and never with the design of gaining a reputation for learning. ↗

— Thomas à Kempis

#reading #scripture #faith

Motivations are too tangled and complex. ↗

— Russell Banks

#motivations #tangled #too

I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else. ↗

— Gary Becker

#criminals #different #else #everyone #had

It's a complex relationship when your dad happened to be president and you are president and then you have all the amateur psychology that goes on when people try to speculate about motivations. ↗

— Jeb Bush

#amateur #complex #dad #goes #happened

We have today a fairly thorough knowledge of the early Greco-Roman period because our motivations are the same. ↗

— Arthur Erickson

#early #fairly #knowledge #motivations #our