Quotes about motivation (1223 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Without underestimating the virtues of technical, specialized and necessary education, we cannot accept an education that eliminates the other dimension of human knowledge, that which motivates us to be more cultured, more human, deeper, more emotional.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Perú Informa. Interview. https://www.peruinforma.com/entrevista-cultural-al-escritor-chileno-jose-baroja/

Education , Knowledge

“A lot of people said to me that they were able to feel courage or happiness, for instance, when they see my performance. So, I believe that this is my motivation for skating, and that this gives me the reason to go on until the end.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

CBC interview with Scott Russell
Original: (ja) いろんな方々が僕の演技を見た時に勇気を感じたとか、何か幸せになったとか、そういったことを言ってくれて、それが自分にとってのスケートのモチベーションだと思ってますし、それが僕が今スケートを最後までやり通す意味になってるなって思います。

Happiness , People , Courage , Feeling

“My strong point is that even if I don’t do well in a competition, I don’t really get depressed. On the contrary, my motivation goes up 100% after a competition where I’ve failed.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Translation source: https://kaerb.tumblr.com/post/169640478259/my-strong-point-is-that-even-if-i-dont-do-well (user-translation) from 13 January 2018.
Page: 23.
Original: (ja) 試合でうまくいかなくてもあまり落ち込まないのが僕の特徴です。逆に失敗した試合のあとは100%モチベーションが上がります。

Strong

“If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway!”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

This is a variant or paraphrase of The Paradoxical Commandments, by Kent M. Keith, student activist, first composed in 1968 as part of a booklet for student leaders, which had hung on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta, India, and have sometimes become misattributed to her. The version posted at his site http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com begins:
Misattributed
Context: People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

Happy , People , Selfishness

“Stress can be a killer and is far too prevalent in today’s workplaces. You may not die because of stress but stress can easily kill your energy levels, motivation, relationships, health and mindset.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?idqZjO9_ov74EC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, p.107

Health

“I think it's rarely about what you actually learn in class it's mostly about things that you stay motivated to go and continue to do on your own.”

Maryam Mirzakhani (1977–2017) Iranian mathematician

Maryam Mirzakhani press conference after winning Field's Medal | august 2014

Thinking , Learning

“Death is our best motivator in life. The idea of dying or not seeing the sun tomorrow will keep you up on your toes.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Sun , Idea , Life , Death

“Neither pleasure nor pain should enter as motives when one must do what must be done.”

Julius Evola (1898–1974) Italian philosopher and esotericist

Source: Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul

Pain , Pleasure

“Listen to how everyone is talking about you. You have to use it as fuel for motivation.”

Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player

“In a socialist society, people are always motivated to achieve unity and the truest form of freedom— Organising themselves and coming to help those who are in need. You will find organisations such as social welfare, that take great care and give support to the poor, unemployed, old people, widows, etc.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Freedom , People , Support , Help

“Motivation gets you through the day, but inspiration lasts a lifetime.”

Nick Vujicic (1982) Serbian Australian evangelist and motivational speaker

“Everything that is past is either a learning experience to grow on, a beautiful memory to reflect on, or a motivating factor to act upon.”

Denis Waitley (1933) American writer

Beauty , Learning , Memory , Past

“Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?”

Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) Russian poet and essayist

Quoted in Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (1970), ch. 35

People

“Healthy relationships should always begin at the spiritual and intellectual levels - the levels of purpose, motivation, interests, dreams, and personality.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: Waiting and Dating

Dreams , Personality

“Any one can get angry — that is easy — or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book II, 1109a.27.
Variant translation: Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.
As quoted in The Child: At Home and School (1944) by Edith M. Leonard, Lillian E. Miles, and Catherine S. Van der Kar, p. 203
Nicomachean Ethics

Money , Way , Time , Personality

“Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Attributed in Talent Development for English Language Learners: Identifying and Developing Potential (2013) by Michael S. Matthews, Ph.D. SBN-13:9781618211057
2000s
Variant: Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals.

Problem , Passion , Dependency

“People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

People

“You have to give everyone ugly motives for everything they do, because ugly motives are all you understand.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Understanding

“The difference between ethics and morality is quite essential. What is beneficial for one people is the ethics. Morality is the matter of intention, when I say I believe something is good and I will do it because my motivation is right. The fact that in the end it will be a disaster, is not my fault, I did it for good reasons. I despise that. I think that it is the excuse of the weaker. I am not interested in intentions. I am interested in consequences. Any one can have good intentions, which I believe is the matter of decency. I do not discuss others’ intentions. I assume that anyone has good intentions. But it is so trivial, that I am not interested in it. I am interested in what comes next. If I will not benefit from the outcome, I am not interested in good intentions.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

From Zoran Djindjic's speech held to students of Banja Luka University, 20.02.2003.

People , Thinking

“One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“But what first motivated me wasn’t anything I read. I just got mad seeing the machines ripping up the woods.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Interview with Earth First! in Administrative Maximum Facility Prison, Florence, Colorado, USA, (June 1999)
Interviews

Reading , Madness

“You have to work from one point to go to another. So I admire work ethic, I think it should be re-inforced through out our neigbourhoods, that everybody should work hard, practice makes perfect, you have to be diligent with what you want, you have to apply your self, you have to motivate your self. You have to do for-self by your self, and then you can do things for other people. But that's what I had to do, I had to do for-self.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, MTV interview (1994)

People , Thinking , Perfection

“The idea that an advanced civilization need not rest on slavery is a relatively new idea, for instance; it is a good deal younger than the Christian religion. But even if Chesterton's dictum were true, it would only be true in the sense that a statue is contained in every block of stone. Ideas may not change, but emphasis shifts constantly. It could be claimed, for example, that the most important part of Marx's theory is contained in the saying: ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ But before Marx developed it, what force had that saying had? Who had paid any attention to it? Who had inferred from it — what it certainly implies — that laws, religions and moral codes are all a superstructure built over existing property relations? It was Christ, according to the Gospel, who uttered the text, but it was Marx who brought it to life. And ever since he did so the motives of politicians, priests, judges, moralists and millionaires have been under the deepest suspicion — which, of course, is why they hate him so much.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

As I Please (25 February 1944) http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/eaip_01
"As I Please" (1943–1947)

Life , Hate , Religion , Law

“A Christian has no need of any law in order to be saved, since through faith we are free from every law. Thus all the acts of a Christian are done spontaneously, out of a sense of pure liberty. As Christians we do not seek our own advantage or salvation because we are already fully satisfied and saved by God’s grace through faith. Now our only motive is to do that which is pleasing to God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 75-76

God , Faith , Law , Sense

“From time immemorial man has been made in such a way that his vision of the world, so long as it has not been instilled under hypnosis, his motivations and scale of values, his actions and intentions are determined by his personal and group experience of life.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)

Life , World , Way , Time

“Discussion, therefore, is one of the motive powers of life, and, as such, is not to be deprecated.”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

p, 125
New Fragments (1892)

Life

“Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 7, “Failure Is the Way Forward” (p. 160)

“In your career you have a lot of good moments and bad ones. The important thing is to have enough motivation to keep working all the days with humility and trying to be a better player than before. I am going to try to continue doing this.”

Rafael Nadal (1986) Spanish tennis player

http://www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/news/articles/2010-06-19/201006191276967412350.html?promo=sl_toparticles

“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Quoted in Stanley Kubrick at Look Magazine (2013) by Phillipe Mather, p. 46
Context: I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.

Children , Fear , School , Thinking

“This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune (8 December 1944)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/tdoaom/</sup>
"As I Please" (1943–1947)
Context: We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort, are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism... To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore "Trotskyism is Fascism". And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated. This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions.

People , Penalty

“In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that Socialism means no more than a planned state—capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the 'mystique' of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Context: The workers' militias, based on the trade unions and each composed of people of approximately the same political opinions, had the effect of canalizing into one place all the most revolutionary sentiment in the country. I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragón one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life--snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.--had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master. Of course such a state of affairs could not last. It was simply a temporary and local phase in an enormous game that is being played over the whole surface of the earth. But it lasted long enough to have its effect upon anyone who experienced it. However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one had been in contact with something strange and valuable. One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word 'comrade' stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. One had breathed the air of equality. I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that Socialism means no more than a planned state—capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the 'mystique' of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all. And it was here that those few months in the militia were valuable to me.

Men , People , World , Idea

“When evaluating someone’s actions or temperament, always examine motive for it is the essence of what and who they are. One’s actions are in direct correlation with the conscience.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1992

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

This is a variant or paraphrase of The Paradoxical Commandments, by Kent M. Keith, student activist, first composed in 1968 as part of a booklet for student leaders, which had hung on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta, India, and have sometimes become misattributed to her. The version posted at his site http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com begins:
Misattributed

Forgiveness , God , Cheating , People

“Cause sometimes you feel tired, feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up. But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength and just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Till I Collapse"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

Bad luck , Feeling , Search

“Sometimes rejections betrayal and failures become the best motivation.”

Albara Almerf (2000)

Betrayal , Failure

“Why settle for what is provided instead of being motivated to achieve what you want. Complacency is your contentment.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1987

“It is with no doubt that there is trouble in every household, but I do not see the motive behind labelling each other as “narcissists” only after separation has occurred.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Every action of man, the highest as well as the lowest, is egoistic; for it flows from a certain individuality, a certain I, with a sufficient motive, and can in no way be omitted. To go into the reason of the difference of characters is not the place here; we have simply to accept it as a fact. Now it is just as impossible for the merciful man to let his neighbor starve as it is for the hard-hearted man to help the poor. Each of the two acts according to his character, his nature, his ego, his happiness, consequently egoistically; for if the merciful one did not dry the tears of others, would he be happy? And if the hard-hearted one relieved the suffering of others, would he be satisfied?”

Philipp Mainländer (1841–1876) German poet and philosopher

Source: Philosophie der Erlösung, Erster Band (2014), Ethik, § 11 ISBN 978-1494963262

Nature , Tear , Happiness , Suffering

“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Stupidity

“Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Source: Adam Bede (1859)
Context: These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people — amongst whom your life is passed — that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire — for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields — on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.
So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin — the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

Truth , Feeling , Falseness

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Notice
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
Source: The Adventures of Huck Finn

Personality

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Success , Motivational , Deep , Depressing

“One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism

Question

“I realized that searching was my symbol, the emblem of those who go out at night with nothing in mind, the motives of a destroyer of compasses.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Search , Night

“Of course motivation is not permanent. But then, neither is bathing; but it is something you should do on a regular basis.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Source: Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Peaceful , Life , Truth , Fear

“The root of the matter is a very simple and old fashioned thing… love or compassion. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide for action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Love , Feeling , Fashion , Courage

“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.”

Philip G. Zimbardo (1933) American social psychologist, author of Stanford Prison Experiment

Way

“Motivation is the fuel, necessary to keep the human engine running.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

“There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

Books , Reading , Funny

“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Leadership

“You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things — to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals. The intense effort, the giving of everything you've got, is a very pleasant bonus.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

As quoted in 1000 Brilliant Achievement Quotes (2004) by David Deford, p. 4
Source: High Adventure

Effort

“… there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.”

P.G. Wodehouse book My Man Jeeves

Source: My Man Jeeves

“In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that.”

Malcolm X book The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Change

“No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.”

B.F. Skinner Walden Two

Source: Walden Two

Nature , Baby

“Acquisitiveness – the wish to possess as much as possible of goods, or the title to goods – is a motive which, I suppose, has its origin in a combination of fear with the desire for necessaries.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Fear

“We must promote the idea of secession. Or more specifically, we must promote the idea of a world composed of tens of thousands of distinct districts, regions, and cantons, and hundred of thousands of independent free cities such as the present day oddities of Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Greatly increased opportunities for economically motivated migration would thus result, and the world would be one of small [classically] liberal governments economically integrated through free trade and an international commodity money such as gold.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

Interview at quebecoislibre.org (7 December 2002) http://www.quebecoislibre.org/021207-8.htm.

Money , World , Idea

“And try not to get too depressed in the part of the journey, because there’s a professional responsibility. If you are depressed, you can’t motivate your staff to extraordinary measures. So you have to keep your own spirits up even though you well understand that you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

Cited in: " Andy Grove Tells The Truth About What Great Leaders Do http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/03/andy_grove_tell.html." bobsutton.typepad.com/my weblog. by Bob Sutton, March 11, 2007.
New millennium, Harvard Business School Press conference, 2002

Understanding , Parting

“Voltaire, who was both the flatterer and the satirist of despotism, took another line. His force lay in exposing and ridiculing the superstitions which priest-craft, united with state-craft, had interwoven with governments. It was not from the purity of his principles, or his love of mankind (for satire and philanthropy are not naturally concordant), but from his strong capacity of seeing folly in its true shape, and his irresistible propensity to expose it, that he made those attacks. They were, however, as formidable as if the motive had been virtuous; and he merits the thanks rather than the esteem of mankind.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

Love , Nature , Strong

“Four things a man must learn to do
If he would make his record true:
To think without confusion clearly;
To love his fellow-men sincerely;
To act from honest motives purely;
To trust in God and Heaven securely.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

"Four Things," Poems, vol. 1 (vol. 9 of The Works of Henry Van Dyke) (1920).

Love , Men , God , Thinking

“Understanding human motivation ought to be a good thing. It should help us to find out what we really want so that we can avoid chasing rainbows that are not for us. It should open up opportunities for self-development if we apply motivational principles to pursuing our goals in life.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

David C. McClelland (1978). "Managing motivation to expand human freedom". American Psychologist. 33 (3): 201

Life , Understanding , Help

“Your suffering like your fate is without motive. To suffer, truly to suffer, is to accept the invasion of ills without the excuse of causality, as a favor of demented nature, as a negative miracle…”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Fate , Nature , Suffering

“I do not believe I have used radically different elements in the different manners I have used in my paintings. If the subjects I have wanted to express have suggested different ways of expression, I have never hesitated to adopt them. I have never made trials nor experiments. Whenever I had something to say I have said it in the manner in which I have felt it ought to be said. Different motives inevitably require different methods of expression.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Paris 1923
As quoted by Marius de Zayas, in 'The Arts', New York, May 1923
Quotes, 1920's, "Picasso Speaks," 1923

Way , Painting

“The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique. In politics, also, a reformer may have just as strong a love of power as a despot. It would be a complete mistake to decry love of power altogether as a motive. Whether you will be led by this motive to actions which are useful, or to actions which are pernicious, depends upon the social system, and upon your capacities.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Love , Knowledge , Thinking , Strong

“My objections to Marx are of two sorts: one, that he was muddle-headed; and the other, that his thinking was almost entirely inspired by hatred. The doctrine of surplus value, which is supposed to demonstrate the exploitation of wage-earners under capitalism, is arrived at: (a) by surreptitiously accepting Malthus's doctrine of population, which Marx and all his disciples explicitly repudiate; (b) by applying Ricardo's theory of value to wages, but not to the prices of manufactured articles. He is entirely satisfied with the result, not because it is in accordance with the facts or because it is logically coherent, but because it is calculated to rouse fury in wage-earners. Marx's doctrine that all historical events have been motivated by class conflicts is a rash and untrue extension to world history of certain features prominent in England and France a hundred years ago. His belief that there is a cosmic force called Dialectical Materialism which governs human history independently of human volitions, is mere mythology. His theoretical errors, however, would not have mattered so much but for the fact that, like Tertullian and Carlyle, his chief desire was to see his enemies punished, and he cared little what happened to his friends in the process.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 211

World , Error , History , Thinking

“To succeed at reengineering, you have to be a missionary, a motivator, and a leg breaker.”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Michael Hammer in: Fortune, August 1993. Quoted in: QFINANCE: The Ultimate Resource, 4th edition. Bloomsbury Publishing - 2013.

“It is the media that controls the boundaries of what is politically permissible, so better to change the media. Profit motives work against it, but if we can have the audience understand that most other forms of journalism are not credible, then it may be a forced move.”

Julian Assange (1971) Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

Source: [Peter, Farquhar, http://www.news.com.au/technology/ipad/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-adamant-his-site-broke-collateral-murder-encryption/story-fn5knrwy-1225868870785, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange adamant his site broke Collateral Murder encryption, News.com.au, May 19, 2010, 2010-06-17]

Understanding , Change

“But where is the antidote for lucid despair, perfectly articulated, proud, and sure? All of us are miserable, but how many know it? The consciousness of misery is too serious a disease to figure in an arithmetic of agonies or in the catalogues of the Incurable. It belittles the prestige of hell, and converts the slaughterhouses of time into idyls. What sin have you committed to be born, what crime to exist? Your suffering like your fate is without motive. To suffer, truly to suffer, is to accept the invasion of ills without the excuse of causality, as a favor of demented nature, as a negative miracle...”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Fate , Disease , Hell , Nature

“I do not think it can be questioned that sympathy is a genuine motive, and that some people at some times are made somewhat uncomfortable by the sufferings of some other people. It is sympathy that has produced the many humanitarian advances of the last hundred years. We are shocked when we hear stories of the ill-treatment of lunatics, and there are now quite a number of asylums in which they are not ill-treated. Prisoners in Western countries are not supposed to be tortured, and when they are, there is an outcry if the facts are discovered. We do not approve of treating orphans as they are treated in Oliver Twist.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

People , Question , Thinking , Suffering

“Humans have a more complex motivational structure and more capability to solve social dilemmas than posited in earlier rational-choice theory. Designing institutions to force (or nudge) entirely self-interested individuals to achieve better outcomes has been the major goal posited by policy analysts for governments to accomplish for much of the past half century. Extensive empirical research leads me to argue that instead, a core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans.”

Elinor Ostrom (1933–2012) American political economist

Elinor Ostrom (2009) "Nobel Prize Lecture", December 8.

Past

“The world at present is obsessed by the conflict of rival ideologies, and one of the apparent causes of conflict is the desire for the victory of our own ideology and the defeat of the other. I do not think that the fundamental motive here has much to do with ideologies. I think the ideologies are merely a way of grouping people, and that the passions involved are merely those which always arise between rival groups. Ideologies, in fact, are one of the methods by which herds are created, and the psychology is much the same however the herd may have been generated.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

People , World , Way , Thinking

“I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the Revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. By this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice incident to our nature and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength, were for the time in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive, while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature, were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest cause — that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty. But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that produced it. I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten, but that, like everything else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read; but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then they cannot be so universally known nor so vividly felt as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family — a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related — a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done — the leveling of its walls. They are gone. They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more. They were pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Hate , People , Lie , World

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?”

Edward Bernays book Propaganda

Page 71 (1928 edition?)
Propaganda (1928)

Understanding

“I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.”

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

II, 4
Confessions (c. 397)

Love , Soul , Evil

“I am distinctly opposed to visibly arrogant and arbitrary extremes of government—but this is simply because I wish the safety of an artistic and intellectual civilisation to be secure, not because I have any sympathy with the coarse-grained herd who would menace the civilisation if not placated by sops. Surely you can see the profound and abysmal difference between this emotional attitude and the attitude of the democratic reformer who becomes wildly excited over the "wrongs of the masses". This reformer has uppermost in his mind the welfare of those masses themselves—he feels with them, takes up a mental-emotional point of view as one of them, regards their advancement as his prime objective independently of anything else, and would willingly sacrifice the finest fruits of the civilisation for the sake of stuffing their bellies and giving them two cinema shows instead of one per day. I, on the other hand, don't give a hang about the masses except so far as I think deliberate cruelty is coarse and unaesthetic—be it towards horses, oxen, undeveloped men, dogs, negroes, or poultry. All that I care about is the civilisation—the state of development and organisation which is capable of gratifying the complex mental-emotional-aesthetic needs of highly evolved and acutely sensitive men. Any indignation I may feel in the whole matter is not for the woes of the downtrodden, but for the threat of social unrest to the traditional institutions of the civilisation. The reformer cares only for the masses, but may make concessions to the civilisation. I care only for the civilisation, but may make concessions to the masses. Do you not see the antipodal difference between the two positions? Both the reformer and I may unite in opposing an unworkably arrogant piece of legislation, but the motivating reasons will be absolutely antithetical. He wants to give the crowd as much as can be given them without wrecking all semblance of civilisation, whereas I want to give them only as much as can be given them without even slightly impairing the level of national culture. … He works for as democratic a government as possible; I for as aristocratic a one as possible.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

But both recognise the limitations of possibility.
Letter to Woodburn Harris (25 February-1 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 289-290
Non-Fiction, Letters

Men , Dogs , Feeling , Thinking

“Since the wings are swifter to press the air than the air is to escape from beneath the wings the air becomes condensed and resists the movement of the wings; and the motive power of these wings by subduing the resistance of the air raises itself in a contrary movement to the movement of the wings.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight

“The right to hope is the most powerful human motivation I know.”

Aga Khan IV (1936) 49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailism

Baccalaureate Address at Brown University Delivered by His Highness the Aga Khan, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America (26 May 1996) http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/1995-96/95-147t.html

Hope

“Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men.
Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Love , Men

“Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist—that is, I don't make the mistake of thinking that the resultant of the natural forces surrounding and governing organic life will have any connexion with the wishes or tastes of any part of that organic life-process. Pessimists are just as illogical as optimists; insomuch as both envisage the aims of mankind as unified, and as having a direct relationship (either of frustration or of fulfilment) to the inevitable flow of terrestrial motivation and events. That is—both schools retain in a vestigial way the primitive concept of a conscious teleology—of a cosmos which gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitos, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (1929), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, p. 483
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Life , Men , School , Dogs

“The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labor-power to the greatest possible extent.”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Vol. I, Ch. 13, pg. 363.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

“I indicated in a speech at the National Defense University last May that we needed a more robust public discussion about the balance between security and liberty. Of course, what I did not know at the time is that within weeks of my speech, an avalanche of unauthorized disclosures would spark controversies at home and abroad that have continued to this day. And given the fact of an open investigation, I’m not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden’s actions or his motivations; I will say that our nation’s defense depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation’s secrets. If any individual who objects to government policy can take it into their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will not be able to keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy. Moreover, the sensational way in which these disclosures have come out has often shed more heat than light, while revealing methods to our adversaries that could impact our operations in ways that we may not fully understand for years to come.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)

People , Secret , Way , Home

“As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting — the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.”

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Ch. 6

Age , Game , Science , Painting

“I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals. I abhor violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid it. I respect all men and women who from high motives and with sanity and self-respect do all they can to avert war. I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only alternative to dishonor.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Source: 1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913), Ch. VII : The War of American and the Unready

Women , Men , War , Strong

“I never used any outside influence to advance my career. All I had was the inner urge to seek more within myself. The key to my motivation has always been to look at how far I had still to go rather than how far I had come.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 140.

“Men's minds are as variant as their faces, and, 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.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Benjamin Harrison V (9 March 1789), published in Washington's Writings: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=DTlEAQAAMAAJ&rdid=book-DTlEAQAAMAAJ&rdot=1, Volume IX, p. 475.
1780s

Men , Nature , Appearance

“The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man’s wish to rest for a moment — an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to turn the knowledge into the goal.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

86
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

World , Knowledge

“I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind — that he would be considered a madman is evident. How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very generous spirit — truly feeling what all merely profess — must inevitably find itself misconceived in every direction — its motives misinterpreted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon as meanness in the last degree — and so on with other virtues. This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so soared above the plane of their race is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all the biographies of the "good and the great," while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Pain , Fate , Feeling , History

“Even in the world, the yogi who faithfully discharges his responsibilities, without personal motive or attachment, treads the sure path of enlightenment.”

Mahavatar Babaji Hindu Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), Ch. 34 : Materializing a Palace in the Himalayas

World , Personality

“There is a trick with which votaries of Feminism seek to prejudice the public mind against its critics, and that is the “fake” that any man who ventures to criticise the pretensions of Feminism, is actuated by motives of personal rancour against the female sex.”

Ernest Belfort Bax (1854–1926) British barrister and journalist

Introduction https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Fraud_of_Feminism/Introduction
The Fraud of Feminism (1913)

Sex , Personality

“Now, those who were killed and injured here were gunned down by a single killer with a powerful assault weapon. The motives of this killer may have been different than the mass shooters in Aurora or Newtown. But the instruments of death were so similar. And now another 49 innocent people are dead; another 53 are injured; some are still fighting for their lives; some will have wounds that will last a lifetime. We can’t anticipate or catch every single deranged person that may wish to do harm to his neighbors or his friends or his coworkers or strangers. But we can do something about the amount of damage that they do. Unfortunately, our politics have conspired to make it as easy as possible for a terrorist or just a disturbed individual like those in Aurora and Newtown to buy extraordinarily powerful weapons, and they can do so legally.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

In Orlando after the Orlando nightclub shooting ([President Obama: Orlando Families' Grief Is 'Beyond Description', Time, Maya, Rhodan, June 16, 2016, September 2, 2018, http://time.com/4372190/orlando-shooting-barack-obama-joe-biden-grief/]; [‘Our hearts are broken, too’: Obama visits survivors of Orlando rampage, Katie, Zezima, Ellen, Nakashima, Mark, Berman, June 16, 2016, September 2, 2018, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/06/16/obama-looks-toward-grieving-orlando-in-visit-as-political-showdowns-expand-after-massacre/]; [After meeting with Orlando victims, Obama renews call for gun control, Gregory, Korte, USA Today, June 16, 2016, September 6, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/06/16/obama-biden-visit-orlando-emotional-visit-after-shooting/85973066/]).
2016, After the Orlando nightclub shooting (June 2016)

Death , People , Fight , Personality

“One day, as I was roaming the mountains, I sought shelter from an approaching storm. The sky became overhung with heavy clouds, but somehow the rain was delayed until, all of a sudden, there was a lightening flash and a few moments after, a deluge. This observation set me thinking. It was manifest that the two phenomena were closely related, as cause and effect, and a little reflection led me to the conclusion that the electrical energy involved in the precipitation of the water was inconsiderable, the function of the lightening being much like that of a sensitive trigger. Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this might life sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers, and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Life , Way , Mountain , Nature

“It is frequently insufficient to identify the motives that guide our conduct, or that shape our attitudes and our thinking, just by observing vaguely that there are various things we want. That often leaves out too much. In numerous contexts, it is both more precise and more fully explanatory to say that there is something we care about.”

Harry G. Frankfurt (1929) Philosopher

The Reasons of Love (2004)

Thinking

“The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life and in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Source: (1932), pp. 27-28

Life

“When the great truth accidentally revealed and experimentally confirmed is fully recognized, that this planet, with all its appalling immensity, is to electric currents virtually no more than a small metal ball and that by this fact many possibilities, each baffling imagination and of incalculable consequence, are rendered absolutely sure of accomplishment; when the first plant is inaugurated and it is shown that a telegraphic message, almost as secret and non-interferable as a thought, can be transmitted to any terrestrial distance, the sound of the human voice, with all its intonations and inflections, faithfully and instantly reproduced at any other point of the globe, the energy of a waterfall made available for supplying light, heat or motive power, anywhere — on sea, or land, or high in the air — humanity will be like an ant heap stirred up with a stick: See the excitement coming!”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

"The Transmission of Electric Energy Without Wires" in Electrical World and Engineer (5 March 1904)

Truth , Secret , Imagination , Light

“The greatest prayer motivator in existence is answered prayer.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

“In a nutshell, the idea of Juche means that the masters of the revolution and the work of construction are the masses of the people and that they are also the motive force of the revolution and the work of construction. In other words, one is responsible for one's own destiny and one has also the capacity for hewing out one's own destiny.”

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Mainichi Shimbun (17 September 1972) "On Some Problems of Our Party's Juche Idea and the Government of the Republic's Internal and External Policies"

People , Idea

“I think I have more plans for my future from now and I think we must start work for a campaign now so we have set up a Malala foundation. And through Malala fund we are going to educate girls and we want to do work on the ground: building schools, teachers, training, trying to motivate parents of the children to send their children to school. We also want to recognize those girls who are fighting for their rights. In the future when I grow older, much older I want to do politics. I want to serve my country for politics. I want to help my people and I want to help in education.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Statements in PBS interview with Margaret Warner (October 11, 2013)

Children , People , Education , School

“There as here, passions are the motive of all action, but they are livelier, more ardent, or merely simpler and purer, thereby assuming a totally different character. All the first movements of nature are good and right.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

First Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

Nature , Passion

“Inconceivable events and conditions form a class apart from all other story elements, and cannot be made convincing by any mere process of casual narration. They have the handicap of incredibility to overcome; and this can be accomplished only through a careful realism in every other phase of the story, plus a gradual atmospheric or emotional build-up of the utmost subtlety. The emphasis, too, must be kept right—hovering always over the wonder of the central abnormality itself. It must be remembered that any violation of what we know as natural law is in itself a far more tremendous thing than any other event or feeling which could possibly affect a human being. Therefore in a story dealing with such a thing we cannot expect to create any sense of life or illusion of reality if we treat the wonder casually and have the characters moving about under ordinary motivations. The characters, though they must be natural, should be subordinated to the central marvel around which they are grouped. The true "hero" of a marvel tale is not any human being, but simply a set of phenomena. Over and above everything else should tower the stark, outrageous monstrousness of the one chosen departure from Nature. The characters should react to it as real people would react to such a thing if it were suddenly to confront them in daily life; displaying the almost soul-shattering amazement which anyone would naturally display instead of the mild, tame, quickly-passed-over emotions prescribed by cheap popular convention. Even when the wonder is one to which the characters are assumed to be used, the sense of awe, marvel, and strangeness which the reader would feel in the presence of such a thing must somehow be suggested by the author.... Atmosphere, not action, is the thing to cultivate in the wonder story. We cannot put stress on the bare events, since the unnatural extravagance of these events makes them sound hollow and absurd when thrown into too high relief. Such events, even when theoretically possible or conceivable in the future, have no counterpart or basis in existing life and human experience, hence can never form the groundwork of an adult tale. All that a marvel story can ever be, in a serious way, is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood. The moment it tries to be anything else it becomes cheap, puerile, and unconvincing. Therefore a fantastic author should see that his prime emphasis goes into subtle suggestion—the imperceptible hints and touches of selective and associative detail which express shadings of moods and build up a vague illusion of the strange reality of the unreal—instead of into bald catalogues of incredible happenings which can have no substance or meaning apart from a sustaining cloud of colour and mood-symbolism. A serious adult story must be true to something in life. Since marvel tales cannot be true to the events of life, they must shift their emphasis toward something to which they can be true; namely, certain wistful or restless moods of the human spirit, wherein it seeks to weave gossamer ladders of escape from the galling tyranny of time, space, and natural laws.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

"Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction", Californian 3, No. 3 (Winter 1935): 39-42. Published in Collected Essays, Volume 2: Literary Criticism edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 178
Non-Fiction

Life , People , Law , Way

Quotes about motivation

Best quotes about motivation

Quotes about motivation