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The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.
Author:
Mao Zedong
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The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
Author:
William Yeats
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My great crime in the world is blunder I will get into scrapes without intention or any bad motive.
Author:
Stand Watie
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Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
Author:
William Taft
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Desire is poverty. Desire is the greatest impurity of the mind. Desire is the motive force for action. Desire in the mind is the real impurity. Even a spark of desire is a very great evil.
Author:
Swami Sivananda
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He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
Author:
Walter Scott
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Turning corporations loose and letting the profit motive run amok is not a prescription for a more livable world.
Author:
Tom Scholz
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Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
Author:
Ayn Rand
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Clarity, clarity, surely clarity is the most beautiful thing in the world, A limited, limiting clarity I have not and never did have any motive of poetry But to achieve clarity.
Author:
George Oppen
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If interstellar travel is as time- or energy- demanding as the above figures indicate, it is far from obvious what the motive for colonization might be.
Author:
Barney Oliver
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This part of being a man, changing the way we parent, happens only when we want it to. It changes because we are determined for it to change; and the motive for changing often comes out of wanting to be the kind of parent we didn't have.
Author:
Augustus Napier
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We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action.
Author:
Sarojini Naidu
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Because impudence is a vice, it does not follow that modesty is a virtue; it is built upon shame, a passion in our nature, and may be either good or bad according to the actions performed from that motive.
Author:
Bernard Mandeville
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Few men could explain why they enlisted, and if they attempted they might only prove that they had done as a politician said the electorate does, the right thing from the wrong motive.
Author:
Patrick MacGill
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I think the motive is to establish in federal law the personhood from conception forward and try and alter the Constitution through statute.
Author:
Zoe Lofgren
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My head can get to murder and rape for profit because I can understand greed as a human motive, but I cannot understand the voyeuristic desire to watch such a film. I can comprehend one and I cannot comprehend the other.
Author:
Donna Leon
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There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority.
Author:
Charles Kuralt
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In my opinion, the form of Government may be different in different countries, according to their circumstances, their wishes, their wants. England loves her Queen, and has full motive to do so.
Author:
Lajos Kossuth
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In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.
Author:
Anna Jameson
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I believe absolutely in love being the central motive force of the universe.
Author:
Laurence Housman
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America - a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.
Author:
Herbert Hoover
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Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Author:
Eric Hoffer
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It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Author:
Eric Hoffer
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For a war to be just three conditions are necessary - public authority, just cause, right motive.
Author:
Ernest Hemingway
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By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
Author:
Claude Helvetius
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Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
Author:
Claud-Adrian Helvetius
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What appeared to the earlier physicists to be the constant quantity of heat is nothing more than the whole motive power of the motion of heat, which remains constant so long as it is not transformed into other forms of work, or results afresh from them.
Author:
Hermann Helmholtz
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From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out.
Author:
Jurgen Habermas
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I first came to think about media and politics in the late 1960s, having observed some distortions up close, but since then I wouldn't say that my personal experience has remained an important motive for my writing about media.
Author:
Todd Gitlin
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No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so cleanly defined.
Author:
Paul Gallico
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I really have no ulterior motive in taking on certain roles. I have no larger issue that I really want to show people. I'm an actor, that's all. I just do what I do.
Author:
Sally Field
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The husband - by primitive instinct partly, certainly by ancient tradition - regards himself as the active partner in matters of love and his own pleasure as legitimately the prime motive for activity.
Author:
Havelock Ellis
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Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
Author:
George Eliot
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Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
Author:
Denis Diderot
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Just because scientists have the knowledge to do it, the technology to do it, and some may even have a financial motive or other incentive to do it, does not make it right.
Author:
Nathan Deal
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No one does anything from a single motive.
Author:
Samuel Coleridge
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Some people are born with a vital and responsive energy. It not only enables them to keep abreast of the times; it qualifies them to furnish in their own personality a good bit of the motive power to the mad pace.
Author:
Kate Chopin
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When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.
Author:
Miguel Cervantes
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To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.
Author:
Lord Byron
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We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.
Author:
Lord Byron
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It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.
Author:
Jean Bruyere
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The motive power of democracy is love.
Author:
Henri Bergson
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It is a good motive, fame and money, as it is tangible and measurable. Being an artist is neither measurable nor tangible and certainly not a way to become rich.
Author:
Dirk Benedict
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Cruel and cold is the judgment of man, Cruel as winter, and cold as the snow; But by-and-by will the deed and the plan Be judged by the motive that lieth below.
Author:
Lewis Bates
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You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive. Never complain and never explain.
Author:
Stanley Baldwin
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We acknowledge but one motive - to follow the truth as we know it, whithersoever it may lead us; but in our heart of hearts we are well assured that the truth which has made us free, will in the end make us glad also.
Author:
Mortimer Adler
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That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
Author:
Joseph Addison
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Individual ambition is undoubtedly a strong motive in student work, but there is such a thing among students everywhere as ambition for others, call it class spirit, esprit de corps, good fellowship, or good will to men.
Author:
Herbert Adams
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The atmosphere is much too near for dreams. It forces us to action. It is close to us. We are in it and of it. It rouses us both to study and to do. We must know its moods and also its motive forces.
Author:
Cleveland Abbe
