Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), XI : The Practical Problem
“Never question another man's motive. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives.”
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Dwight D. Eisenhower173
American general and politician, 34th president of the Unit… 1890–1969Related quotes
Philostratus book Life of Apollonius of Tyana
Book 4, § 44.
Life of Apollonius of Tyana
“We must judge of a man's motives from his overt acts.”
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron
King v. Waddington (1800), 1 East, 158.
Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior
Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 265.
James McCosh (1811–1894) British philosopher
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 420.
W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords
Assessing St. Augustine's perspectives in "Augustus to Augustine", p. 37
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: Man … always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations. Man chooses either life or death, but he chooses; everything he does, from going to the toilet to mathematical speculation, is an act of religious worship, either of God or of himself.
Lastly by the classical apotheosis of Man-God, Augustine opposes the Christian belief in Jesus Christ, the God-Man. The former is a Hercules who compels recognition by the great deeds he does in establishing for the common people in the law, order and prosperity they cannot establish for themselves, by his manifestation of superior power; the latter reveals to fallen man that God is love by suffering, i. e. by refusing to compel recognition, choosing instead to be a victim of man's self-love. The idea of a sacrificial victim is not new; but that it should be the victim who chooses to be sacrificed, and the sacrificers who deny that any sacrifice has been made, is very new.
Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman
Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter XIX, p. 207
John Jay (1745–1829) American politician and a founding father of the United States
Letter to (22 August 1774), as published in The Life of John Jay (1833) by William Jay, Vol. 2, p. 345.
1770s, Letter to Lindley Murray (1774)
Context: Among the strange things of this world, nothing seems more strange than that men pursuing happiness should knowingly quit the right and take a wrong road, and frequently do what their judgments neither approve nor prefer. Yet so is the fact; and this fact points strongly to the necessity of our being healed, or restored, or regenerated by a power more energetic than any of those which properly belong to the human mind.
We perceive that a great breach has been made in the moral and physical systems by the introduction of moral and physical evil; how or why, we know not; so, however, it is, and it certainly seems proper that this breach should be closed and order restored. For this purpose only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation. In this plan I have full faith. Man, in his present state, appears to be a degraded creature; his best gold is mixed with dross, and his best motives are very far from being pure and free from earth and impurity.
“I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.”
Graham Greene book The Quiet American
Source: The Quiet American