America - a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.
Herbert Hoover

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.
Bernard de Mandeville

By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
Claude Adrien Helvetius

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.
George Oppen

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.
Lewis J. Bates

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
George Eliot

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.
Swami Sivananda

Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
Ayn Rand

Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
Claud-Adrian Helvetius

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.
Patrick MacGill

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary - public authority, just cause, right motive.
Ernest Hemingway

For the life of me, I don't understand what honest motive there is in putting this in front of this body to philosophically debate marriage on a constitutional amendment that is not going to happen, and which is enormously divisive in all of our communities.
Dianne Feinstein

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.
Jurgen Habermas

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
Walter Scott

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
William James

I believe absolutely in love being the central motive force of the universe.
Laurence Housman

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.
Todd Gitlin

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.
Sally Field

I think the motive is to establish in federal law the personhood from conception forward and try and alter the Constitution through statute.
Zoe Lofgren

I, Alexander B. Campbell, make this statement of the cause of my death to relieve the coroner of the necessity of an inquest, and also let my friends know the motive that led me to take my own life.
Alex Campbell