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Motives and motivation...
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Published Thursday, February 05, 2015 @ 10:35 PM EST
Feb 05 2015

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And money is one of the motives for becoming a writer. The others are leisure and money, women and money, and sometimes just money all alone by itself.
-J.P. Donleavy

As to the idea that advertising motivates people, remember the Edsel.
-Peter Drucker

Certain people have a way of saying things that shake us at the core. Even when the words do not seem harsh or offensive, the impact is shattering. What we could be experiencing is the intent behind the words. When we intend to do good, we do. When we intend to do harm, it happens. What each of us must come to realize is that our intent always comes through. We cannot sugarcoat the feelings in our heart of hearts. The emotion is the energy that motivates. We cannot ignore what we really want to create. We should be honest and do it the way we feel it. What we owe to ourselves and everyone around is to examine the reasons of our true intent.
-Thurgood Marshall

Everybody who talks to a newspaper has a motive. That's just a given. And good reporters always, repeat always, probe to find out what that motive is.
-Ben Bradlee

Give a good deed the credit of a good motive; and give an evil deed the benefit of the doubt.
-Brander Matthews

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guide.
-John Locke

I think that money spoils most things, once it becomes the primary motivating force.
-John Cleese

If a pretty picture and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.
-Larry Kersten, PhD

In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail.
-William Ellery Channing

It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it. People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake.
-Stephen Covey

It is the times that have changed, not the man. He is there still, just as greedy and rapacious as ever, but no greedier: and we have just the same social need of his greed as a motive power in industry as we ever had, and indeed a worse need than before.
-Stephen Leacock

Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able, and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner torments.
-Bergen Evans

Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime...
-John Dalberg-Acton

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

Many a man, who has gone but a few miles from home, understands human nature better, detects motives and weighs character more sagaciously, than another who has travelled over the known world, and made a name by his reports of different countries.
-William Ellery Channing

Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
-J.M. Barrie

No one does anything from a single motive.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Of course motivation is not permanent. But then, neither is bathing; but it is something you should do on a regular basis.
-Zig Ziglar

People always try to find base motives behind every good action. We are afraid of pure goodness and of pure evil.
-Eugene Ionesco

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
-Andrew Carnegie

Scientists are just as vulnerable to wishful thinking, just as likely to be tempted by base motives, just as venal and gullible and forgetful as the rest of humankind.
-Daniel Dennett

Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine.
-Arthur Schopenhauer

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.
-Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The sole motivating factor behind the death penalty is vengeance, not justice, and I firmly believe that a government that forbids killing among its citizens should not be in the business of killing people itself.
-Larry Flynt

The thing is plain. All that men really understand is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know and motives to study or practise. The rest is affectation and imposture.
-William Hazlitt

The whole motivation for any performer is 'Look at me, Ma.'
-Lenny Bruce

There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied.
-Caroline Knapp

There's a truism that the road to Hell is often paved with good intentions. The corollary is that evil is best known not by its motives but by its methods.
-Eric S. Raymond

Vanity is truly the motive-power that moves humanity, and it is flattery that greases the wheels.
-Jerome K. Jerome

We have a besetting sin today in our politics where people think that you show your depth of commitment to a cause by rigidity, not just by rigidity, but impugning the motives of those on your side who try to get something done.
-Barney Frank

What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe.
-Joseph Campbell

What's W. doing now? He's a motivational speaker. It's kind of cool. It's kind of like having Lindsay Lohan as a guidance counselor.
-Robin Williams

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
-Dale Carnegie

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing it is always from the noblest motive.
-Oscar Wilde

Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
-Rex Stout

You can question somebody's views and their judgment without questioning their motives or patriotism.
-Barack Obama

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(February 6 is also the birthday of Bob Marley.)


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