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.
Barney Oliver

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.
Anna Jameson

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.
Lajos Kossuth

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.
Herbert Baxter Adams

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.
Dirk Benedict

It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer

It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.
Jean de la Bruyere

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.
Nathan Deal

Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer

My great crime in the world is blunder I will get into scrapes without intention or any bad motive.
Stand Watie

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.
Donna Leon

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.
Paul Gallico

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

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
Denis Diderot

Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.
William J. Brennan, Jr.

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.
William Howard Taft

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.
Kate Chopin

That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
Joseph Addison

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.
Cleveland Abbe

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.
Havelock Ellis