9 Quotes Tagged: motives

The outstanding discovery of recent historical and anthropological research is that man's economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He does not act so as to safeguard his individual interest in the possession of material goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social claims, his social assets. He values material goods only in so far as they serve this end. Neither the process of production nor that of distribution is linked to specific economic interests
attached to the possession of goods; but every single step in that process is geared to a number of social interests which eventually ensure that the required step be taken. These interests will be very different in a small hunting or fishing community from those in a vast despotic society, but in cither case the economic system will be run on noneconomic motives.

Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold.

Bethink thee then how love must be the seed
In you, not only of each virtuous action,
But also of each punishable deed.

I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, to someone else.

Instruction would be wasted on me. Just to give me the form and I'll sign on the dotted line.

Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Henchard's motives in opening the matter at all; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a power of consistent action which we never find in ourselves or or in our friends...

This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.

We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.

People talk of their motives in a cut and dried way. Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster. I am not a monster but I have not felt exactly what other women feel, or say they feel, for fear of being thought unlike others.