action-philosophy

"We must not inquire too curiously into motives…. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light."

"There is a desire deep within the soul which drives man from the seen to the unseen, to philosophy and to the divine."

"The human mind is always inexorable in demanding a motive for all human actions. It is only himself that each man permits to act without one, and avails himself of the privilege with astonishing frequency."

"Anybody who says that we understand human motivation, that we can formulate simple and clear reasons for why people what they do, is either lying or naïve."

"It is not the motive, properly speaking, that determines the working of the will; but it is the will that imparts strength to the motive. As Coleridge says: " It is the man that makes the motive, and not the motive the man.""

"The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate."

"The plea of good intentions is not one that can be allowed to have much weight in passing historical judgment upon a man whose wrong-headedness and distorted way of looking at things produced, or helped to produce, such incalculable evil; there is a wide political applicability in the remark attributed to a famous Texan, to the effect that he might, in the end, pardon a man who shot him on purpose, but that he would surely never forgive one who did so accidentally."

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."

"Iago's soliloquy—the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity—how awful it is!"

"What makes life dreary is the want of motive."

"A good intention clothes itself with sudden power."

"For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions."

"Men's minds are as variant as their faces. Where the motives of their actions are pure, the operation of the former is no more to be imputed to them as a crime, than the appearance of the latter; for both, being the work of nature, are alike unavoidable."

"As a general proposition, we may say that the drive that carries forward any activity, when it is running freely and effectively, is inherent In that activity. It is only when an activity is running by its own drive that it can run thus freely and effectively; for as long as it is being driven by some extrinsic motive, it is subject to the distraction of that motive."

"We all know this type of behavior, where the interest of the performer is in himself and not in the work. One who has thoroughly prepared for a public performance of some sort, may break down in the performance because of inability to get away from the desire to do his best in the presence of all these spectators, this self-consciousness making impossible a direct application of his energies to the work in hand."

"The motive that originally induced him to go in for this event may very well have been a desire to distinguish himself; but this motive has to drop out of sight or else by its distraction spoil the performance. It is not true, then, that the motive that initiates a given activity furnishes the motive force for the whole activity; it simply leads the performer up to the act, but the motive force for the act itself must be inherent."

"Motives do not concern me; they are a dangerous subject with which to deal."

"What passes in the mind of man is not scrutable by any human tribunal; it is only to be collected from his acts."

"We must judge of a man's motives from his overt acts."

"There is no entering into the secret thoughts of a man's heart."

"It is impossible to dive into the secret recesses of a man's heart."

"To enter into the hearts of men belongs to him who can explore the human heart."

"It is not for human judgment to dive into the heart of man, to know whether his intentions are good or evil."

". . . The fallacious use of the principle that you cannot look into a man's mind. It is said you cannot do that: therefore what follows? It is said that you are to have fixed rules to tell you that he must have meant something, one way or the other, when certain exterior phenomena arise. The answer is that there is no such thing as an absolute criterion which gives you certain index to a man's mind. There is nothing outside his mind which is an absolute indication of what is going on inside. So far from saying that you cannot look into a man's mind, you must look into it, if you are going to find fraud against him: and unless you think you see what must have been in his mind, you cannot find him guilty of fraud."

"He revealeth the deep and secret things, he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him."

"The plaintiff cannot dive into the secret recesses of his (the defendant's) heart."

"Every man has a right to keep his own sentiments if he pleases."

"A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose."

"I take great satisfaction in seeing people and organizations achieve goals they might have originally believed to be beyond their reach."

"There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. [...] Live being true to the single purpose of the moment."

"There's no escaping reason, no denying purpose, for as we both know, without purpose we would not exist. It is purpose that created us, purpose that connects us, purpose that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us; it is purpose that defines us, purpose that binds us."

"No matter how stormy the ocean is, the river still knows its way."

"A union of indomitable resolution in the achievement of a given purpose, with patience and moderation in the policy pursued, and with kindly charity and consideration and friendliness to those of opposite belief, marks the very spirit in which we of to-day should approach the pressing problems of the present."

"There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright."

"The hypothesis will lead to our thinking of features of each Universe as purposed; and this will stand or fall with the hypothesis. Yet a purpose essentially involves growth, and so cannot be attributed to God. Still it will, according to the hypothesis, be less false to speak so than to represent God as purposeless."

"We all engage in purposeful activity, and we judge ourselves and others in terms of success in achieving the purposes that we set before ourselves. Yet we accept as the final product of this purposeful activity a picture of the world from which purpose has been eliminated. Purpose is a meaningful concept in relation to our own consciousness of ourselves, but it is allowed no place in our understanding of the world of facts."

"Purposes are deduced from behaviour, not from rhetoric or stated goals."

"Our purpose is to educate as well as to entertain."

"Everyone has a goal which appears to be great, at least to himself, and is great when deepest conviction, the innermost voice of the heart, pronounces it great. ... This voice, however, is easily drowned out, and what we thought to be inspiration may have been created by the fleeting moment and again perhaps destroyed by it. ... We must seriously ask ourselves, therefore, whether we are really inspired about a vocation, whether an inner voice approves of it, or whether the inspiration was a deception, whether that which we took as the Deity’s calling to us was self-deceit. But how else could we recognize this except by searching for the source of our inspiration?"

"Every nation, like every individual, has received a mission that it must fulfil."

"Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them."

"The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance."

"Purpose has no place in biology, but history has no meaning without it."

"Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself."

"The final goal of the human race is independence and mutual aid, the realization of freedom, equality, and fraternity. If we look at the evolution of politics, law, religion, and ethics, they have been developing from heteronomy toward autonomy; thus after attaining self-governance the people will use their eventual individual surpluses to compensate for other’s inefficiencies. This is natural evolution, and this is also the ultimate ideal of life. Everyone should fight and strive toward this goal."

"Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction."

"Even flies, parasites and microbes have their purpose to fulfil, and there is nothing superfluous in creation."

"I, too, believed it was impossible to change the existing society into one that would be for the benefit of all; neither could I espouse any given ideal for society. But [...] I felt that even if one did not have an ideal vision of society, one could have one’s work to do. Whether it was successful or not was not our concern; it was enough that we believed it to be a valid work. The accomplishment of that work, I believed, was what our real life was about. Yes. I want to carry out a work of my own; for I feel that by so doing our lives are rooted in the here and now, not in some far-off ideal goal."

"I need to have a purpose in life and for that I might sacrifice some of the luxuries that I enjoy; fortunately I am fairly adaptable. I try to be aware, flexible and unbiased in my thinking. If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?"

"We look upon this shaken Earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose — the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails. The building of such a peace is a bold and solemn purpose. To proclaim it is easy. To serve it will be hard."