Life needs a motive to live. In other words, we need motivations that drive us to continue fighting to move forward.
Below you will find our collection of “motives quotes” that will inspire you to live your life with good motives.
Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.
– Leonardo Da Vinci
Motives Quotes
1. “Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.” – Oscar Wilde
2. “Where destruction is the motive, unity is dangerous.” – Ravi Zacharias
3. “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
4. “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.” – Mao Zedong
5. “It’s motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.” – Jean De La Bruyere
6. “If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.” – Mother Teresa
7. “All of the best motives boiled down to a single, driving emotion.” – Brandon Sanderson
8. “Our motives and thoughts ultimately influence our actions.” – Dieter F. Uchtdorf
9. “People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.” – Albert Ellis
10. “The inner thought coming from the heart represents the real motives and desires. These are the cause of action. – Raymond Holliwell
Inspirational Quotes About Motives
11. “There’s no way to know the motives of another person totally, even a person that you know very well.” – Carl Bernstein
12. “This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.” – Leo Tolstoy
13. “Not only the right thing is the right thing, but doing the right out of the right motives is the right thing.” – Kabelo Mabona
14. “No one shakes hands without motives, whether, objective or subjective.” – Ehsan Sehgal
15. “It is not always the motives behind an action that make it noble. Sometimes it is as simple as the action itself.” – Jocelyn Murray
16. “Every soul is a soul. It is the motives, deeds and actions that define the personality of each soul.” – Lailah Gifty Akita
17. “I listen to people motives more than I listen to what they say, because their motives won’t lie.” – De philosopher DJ Kyos
18. “Our motives are useless if we don’t start acting it out” – Sunday Adelaja
19. “When motives are prettily packaged they are much more easily obscured.” – Ashley Weaver
20. “People’s behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.” – Thomas Mann
21. “Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.” – James M. Barrie
22. “Never judge a man’s actions until you know his motives.” – Vikas Swarup
23. “Actions are visible, though motives are secret.” – Samuel Johnson
24. “We love from little motives, not for large reasons.” – Ellen Glasgow
25. “Never question another man’s motive. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
26. “A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.” – J. P. Morgan
27. “Humility is allowing others to think that you are unaware of their ulterior motives.”
28. “You may think everything you do is right, but the Lord judges your motives”
29. “We do a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive. We want to leave the world better than we found it.” – Tim Cook
30. “The moment there is suspicion about a person’s motives, everything he does becomes tainted.” – Mahatma Gandhi
31. “We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
32. “The only words free of suspicious motives will be the ones I find in books.” – Michelle Moran
33. “Inspiration is allowed to do whatever it wants to, in fact, and it is never obliged to justify its motives to any of us.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
34. “You can have the most wonderful motives for what you do, but if what you do harms other people, you’re fooling yourself.” – John Carroll Lynch
35. “Your life will be joyful and complete when you have a pure heart and your motives are unsullied.” – Frederick Lenz
36. “But if we never acted except when we were certain our motives were pure, we would never act at all.” – C.J. Sansom
37. “People always try to find base motives behind every good action. We are afraid of pure goodness and of pure evil.” – Eugene Ionesco
38. “Good motives butter no parsnips, and hell is paved with buttered parsnips.” – Irvin S. Cobb
39. “If your motives are high and noble and your work is hard and you do a good job, then whatever the task is in your life, it will benefit you.” – Frederick Lenz
40. “Actions are visible, though motives are secret.” – Samuel Johnson
Best Motives Quotes
41. “The only work that spiritually purifies us is that which is done without personal motives.” – Sri Aurobindo
42. “Distrust your judgment the moment you can discern the shadow of a personal motive in it.” – Marie von Eschenbach
43. “The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed. But the gilded and the hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front of show.” – C. C. Colton
44. “The distance is nothing when one has motive.” – Jane Austen
45. “The more we learn, the less and less motive we find for suicide? But for murder, we begin to have a surprising collection of motives!” – Agatha Christie
46. “Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.” – John Locke
47. “Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.” – John Perry Barlow
48. “Men are more accountable for their motives, than for anything else; and primarily, morality consists in the motives, that is in the affections.” – Archibald Alexander
49. “Motivation comes from working on things we care about. It also comes from working with people we care about.” – Sheryl Sandberg
50. “The true worth of a soul is revealed as much by the motive it attributes to the actions of others as by its own deeds.” – Jean Antoine Petit-Senn
51. “Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.” – Kazuo Ishiguro
