Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.
Saint Teresa

People do not always understand the motives of sublime conduct, and when they are astonished they are very apt to think they ought to be alarmed. The truth is none are fit judges of greatness but those who are capable of it.
Jane Porter

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.
Albert Ellis

People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.
Thomas Mann

Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.
Robert Higgs

Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
Eric Hoffer

Sometimes, his methods and his motives are questionable and even his morals are questionable in the way he does things. But I think his intention is always to protect his daughter.
Victor Garber

The automobile is technologically more sophisticated than the bundling board, but the human motives in their uses are sometimes the same.
Charles M. Allen

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

The inner thought coming from the heart represents the real motives and desires. These are the cause of action.
Raymond Holliwell

The moment there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted.
Mohandas Gandhi

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 motives of these parents vary, many parents don't like the curriculum being taught to their kids, or are wary of the threat of peer pressure or the presence of drugs or violence lurking in too many of our schools today.
Ernest Istook

The pains of disconcerted or frustrated habits, and the inherent pleasure there is in following them, are motives which nature has put into our wills without generally caring to inform us why; and she sometimes decrees, indeed, that her reasons shall not be ours.
Chauncey Wright

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.
Samuel Johnson

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.
Earle Brown

This kind of charge reveals a good deal about the personality of the people who make it; to impute such motives to another man is to imply you're harboring them yourself.
Jim Garrison

This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time ignoring his fundamental ones.
Desmond Morris

Those who joined us for selfish personal reasons, for a career or other motives will be the ones to leave.
Janos Kadar

We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.
Edward Dahlberg