Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
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.
No one does anything from a single motive.
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.
When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.
I, Alexander B. Campbell, make this statement of the cause of my death to relieve the coroner of the necessity of an inquest, and also let my friends know the motive that led me to take my own life.
To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.
We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.
Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.
The motive power of democracy is love.
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.
You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive. Never complain and never explain.
We acknowledge but one motive - to follow the truth as we know it, whithersoever it may lead us; but in our heart of hearts we are well assured that the truth which has made us free, will in the end make us glad also.