Motive is a reason a person would want to or do something.

1. The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.
The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master’s whiplash.
Franz Kafka

2. God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.
Henry Ward Beecher

3. What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.
Miguel de Unamuno

4. I take pride in my parenting skills and in my son when other people tell me that he’s a good kid, a well-behaved boy, and so polite. I feel like I’m doing my part as his Mom, and he’s doing his part as my son.
Shanon Nebo

5. A wicked person, swayed by evil motives and evil actions, is described as a demon.
Sathya Sai Baba

6. How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
Lee Lacocca

7. You may think everything you do is right, but the Lord judges your motives
Anonymous

8. If you are kind, People may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, People may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, They may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway
Kent M. Keith

9. Zay shrugged one shoulder. “I wouldn’t say it was entirely innocent. All that warm, wet water touching us everywhere. And the soap definitely had ulterior motives. I wrapped the towel around me, tucking it tight at the top. “That career in comedy? Walk away now, Jones.
Devon Monk

10. Neither fear nor self-interest can convert the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even the conduct, but never the object of supreme desire… Fear is the motive which constrains the slave; greed binds the selfish man, by which he is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed (James 1:14). But neither fear nor self-interest is undefiled, nor can they convert the soul. Only charity can convert the soul, freeing it from unworthy motives.
Bernard Of Clairvaux

11. Care giving has no second agendas or hidden motives. The care is given from love for the joy of giving without expectation, no strings attached.
Gary Zukav

12. Magnanimity owes no account to prudence of its motives.
Luc De Clapiers

13. Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
James M. Barrie

14. The motives even of our best actions will not always bear examination.
Charlotte Lennox

15. Almost every sinful action ever committed can be traced back to a selfish motive. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves
Anonymous

16. Those who joined us for selfish personal reasons, for a career or other motives will be the ones to leave.
Janos Kadar

17. 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.
Victor Garber
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18. I dream of a better world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned
Anonymous

19. I really have no ulterior motive in taking on certain roles. I have no larger issue that I really want to show people. I’m an actor, that’s all. I just do what I do.
Sally Field
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/sallyfield363447.html

20. There appear to be numerous ulterior personal motives on the part of some persons driving this process.
James Brooks

21. Your fulfillment stems from your motives
Anonymous

22. When I give, it does not come with strings. I’m not keeping track of what you owe me. When I give, I choose to do so without ulterior motives. I give because I’m genuine. I give because I know what it’s like to be without. To long for and be ignored. To speak and not be heard. To care for and have nothing returned. When I give it’s because I get it. It’s because I know the value in what I have in my heart and I refuse to let the world stop me from sharing that. But when things start being taken for granted. When you no longer appreciate my sincerity. I won’t switch, I won’t get angry, and I won’t be spiteful. I’ll just get smart and I’ll change your role in my life. Because when I give, I’m all in. But when I’m done, there’s no looking back.
Anonymous

23. HUMILITY IS ALLOWING OTHERS TO THINK THAT YOU ARE UNAWARE OF THEIR ULTERIOR MOTIVES
Anonymous

24. When men can hate without risk, their stupidity is easily convinced, the motives supply themselves.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine

25. It can also be useful to politics, enabling that science to discover how much of it is no more than verbal construction, myth, literary tops. Politics, like literature, must above all know itself and distrust itself. As a final observation, I should like to add that it is impossible today for anyone to feel innocent, if in whatever we do or say we can discover a hidden motive – that of a white man, or a male, or the possessor of a certain income, or a member of a given economic system, or a sufferer from a certain neurosis – this should not induce in us either a universal sense of guilt or an attitude of universal accusation. When we become aware of our disease or of our hidden motives, we have already begun to get the better of them. What matters is the way in which we accept our motives and live through the ensuing crisis. This is the only chance we have of becoming different from the way we are – that is, the only way of starting to invent a new way of being
Italo Calvino

26. Never judge a man's actions until you know his motives.
Vikas Swarup

27. My desire is manifested in my motives and agendas
Anonymous

28. Man sees your actions, but God sees your motives
Anonymous

29. What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
George Eliot

30. God will help you overcome wrong motives and intentions if you'll simply ask and receive help rather than trying to do it on your own
Anonymous

31. It is during our failures that we discover our true desire for success.
Kevin Ngo

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

33. Examine your Motives
Anonymous

34. It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

35. Who is sure of their own motives can in confidence advance or retreat
Anonymous

36. Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
Ayn Rand

37. Though a good motive cannot sanction a bad action, a bad motive will always vitiate a good action. In common and trivial matters we may act without motives, but in momentous ones the most careful deliberation is wisdom.”
W. M. L. Jay

38. The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail.
Charles R. Swindoll

39. Without trust and respect, only fear and distrust of others’ motives and intentions are left. Without trust and respect between parties, it is nearly impossible to find good solutions to effective communication.
Deborah A. Beasley

40. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered
Martin Luther King Jr.

41. True remorse is never just a regret over consequence; it is a regret over motive.
Mignon McLaughlin

42. We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

43. 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

44. People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.
Thomas Mann

45. There are two motives for reading a book one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it. Bertrand Russell

46. Tis the motive exalts the action 'Tis the doing and not the deed.
Margaret Junkin Preston

47. Men who just call to say hello generally have ulterior motives.
Steig Larsson

48. No one does anything from a single motive.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

49. A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.
J. P. Morgan

50. People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.
Albert Ellis

51. You smell like hidden motives, get away from me.
Rachel Wolchin

52. One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought
Albert Einstein

53. We can never understand other people's motives, nor their furniture.
Mignon Mclaughlin

54. If ones motives are wrong, nothing can be right.
G. W. Carver

55. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
Mother Terasa

56. The moment there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted.
Mahatma Gandhi

57. 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

58. Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others.
Charles R. Swindoll

59. Genuine kindness doesn't have ulterior motive
Anonymous

60. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Oscar Wilde

61. The inner thought coming from the heart represents the real motives and desires. These are the cause of action. Raymond Holliwell

62. Actions are visible, though motives are secret.
Samuel Johnson