#motives

I don't know why they're doing it. I have to assume that their motives are positive, not negative. But they don't understand the severity of the problem in this state. ↗

— Gray Davis

#doing #i #know #motives #negative

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

— Mason Cooley

#motives #other #people #recognizing #same

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#church #end #end result #forbidden #government

It is a question of fact, whether the influence of motives be fixed by laws of nature, so that they shall always have the same effect in the same circumstances. ↗

— Thomas Reid

#circumstances #effect #fact #fixed #influence

This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#history #humanity #life #motives #life

You don't just have people who wake up in the morning and say, "What evil things can I do today, because I'm Mr. Evil?" People do things for what they think are justified reasons. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and you have to keep that in mind. If you read a lot of history, as I do, even the worst and most monstrous people thought they were the good guys. We're all very tangled knots. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#good #intentions #motives #people #motivational

It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquility was no more. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#motivational

Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Henchard's motives in opening the matter at all; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a power of consistent action which we never find in ourselves or or in our friends... ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#motives #motivational

I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, to someone else. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#revenge #motivational

...our monsters walk the dark pathways of secret motives... ↗

— John Geddes

#motives #secrets #motivational