Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The things that converge in the writing of a play come from a complex of motives, a genesis shrouded in a certain kind of mystery.
Do I want a character who just has the best motives and the best intentions, zero flaws, and is doing things for the right reasons? No!
Any actor who judges his character is a fool - for every role you play you've got to absorb that character's motives and justifications.
Criticism always seemed to me a lot like police work. You look for clues, fingerprints, motives. You need to construct an airtight case.
Honest error in the face of complex and possibly intractable problems is a far more important source of bad results than are bad motives.
The automobile is technologically more sophisticated than the bundling board, but the human motives in their uses are sometimes the same.
A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others.
Men killing other men really is an extraordinary phenomenon. Why does it happen? And how long has it gone on? And have the motives changed?
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.
Caregiving has no second agendas or hidden motives. The care is given from love for the joy of giving without expectation, no strings attached.
Men are more accountable for their motives, than for anything else; and primarily, morality consists in the motives, that is in the affections.
A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.
I don't want to impugn the motives of my colleagues, but my attitude is, speaking just for me, you either believe in border security or you don't.
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.
Do I get up every morning and ask: am I doing the things that I believe in and am I doing them for the best possible motives? Yes. Unambiguously yes.
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.
Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.
For months, Obama administration officials attacked Snowden's motives and said the work of the NSA was distorted by selective leaks and misinterpretations.
A boardroom is a collection of individuals, and individuals have varying motives, egos, agendas and qualifications. Sometimes the dynamics can go off track.
The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.
What is obnoxious about the motives of politicians - whatever those motives may be - is that politicians must announce their motives as visionary and grand.
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.
It is a question of fact, whether the influence of motives be fixed by laws of nature, so that they shall always have the same effect in the same circumstances.
Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.
It is one of the primary motives of modern art that it wants to abolish the distance which the viewer, the consumer, the audience maintain vis-a-vis a work of art.
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.
As I got older, I was able to articulate why I was rebelling against authority - because their motives were much more forceful and hurtful than I had ever thought.
And then there's Israel - a lot of people support Israel, and it's important to Israel to take out Iraq. So it's all mixed together. It's a combination of motives.
I always thought it hadn't influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books.
Politicians are usually the first to forget that if you assume someone else is acting in bad faith, they will do the same to you. Questioning motives poisons the well.
So many books that have Christian characters but are written by atheists mercilessly pillory and mock and question the motives of people with faith. I'm past all that.
But I have the satisfaction, at the same time, to reflect that the impression to be made depends upon the consistency of the charge and the motives of the prosecutors.
I don't know why they're doing it. I have to assume that their motives are positive, not negative. But they don't understand the severity of the problem in this state.
There are indeed people with ulterior motives who don't wish Chinese swimming well; they even don't wish Asian swimming well. We cannot let these people's plans succeed.
In 'Diary,' the motto really is: 'Where Do You Get Your Inspiration?' It coaches us to be aware of our motives and not just be a reaction to the circumstances around us.
I just go out there and play basketball. I play basketball the way I'd play if I was at the park. There's no motives with me. I'm all for the team, and that's how I play.
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.
A lot of times people's main motives and plan in life is to hurt as many people as they can, but I think there's enough good people that help make the world a good place.
CAIR officials or former officials have been arrested on charges related to terrorism yet all it offers is silence and stonewalling in discussing what are its real motives.
Even in political considerations, now-a-days, you have stronger motives to feel interested in the fate of Europe than in the fate of the Central or Southern parts of America.
But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.
It's funny: now we're starting to do interviews, we've just begun to understand what we're doing, whereas before, without doing interviews, we never really thought about motives.
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.
Circumstances of crimes vary. So do motives. And so do prospects for rehabilitation. The number of imponderables makes it impossible to sentence by formula and still sentence justly.
Society is indeed better off when we share knowledge with one another and have open debates about the issues in the public arena, with the hands and motives of the players identified.
There is an institutional cynicism that causes reporters to question everything the President says, and the motives of everything the President and his Administration try to accomplish.
All governments in all wars have used all the means at their disposal to put their own motives, decisions and actions, and the actions of their military forces, in the best possible light.
It saddens me when public officials and bureaucrats are criticized for ulterior motives, none of which I have ever found in a government bureaucrat, or when someone personalizes disagreements.
I had never written anything. And I had never studied writing. So my motives were pure: I had a great story... a courtroom drama that I sort of fictionalized, and that became 'A Time to Kill.'
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.