We have nothing less to do than to get inside of whole peoples and change their motives and dispositions.
John Raleigh Mott

We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.
Robert Byrd

What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.
Miguel de Unamuno

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.
Robert A. Heinlein

When I consider what it was that moved me to join the Communist Party, I have to cast my mind back for more than a quarter of a century to try and ascertain what precisely my motives at that time were.
Bram Fischer

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

You should be careful what you wish for, as the reasons for war get confused. One person can be very clear in their motives, but others can have different agendas.
Dougray Scott