“The motives that explained human murder bunched, historically, into three groups: material gain; personal grudge and sociopathy.”

“Every public declaration is tested with polls and focus groups. The result is a bunch of platitudes that don’t offend anybody, but also don’t mean anything and don’t motivate anyone.”

“Is this a personal grudge or are you just psychotic?”

“Now there is no murder without a motive.”

“Humans can never escape personal motives and prejudices. It's in our nature.”

“The preceding verse explained that together the three factors: 1) the knowledge (jnanam), 2) the known (jneyam), and 3) the knower (parijnata) motivate action. It was also stated that the organ (karanam), the action (karma), and the agent (karta) execute the action. In this verse the threefold distinction of knowledge, action, and the actor is explain according to the three gunas of Samkhya philosophy.”

“When a unit group is destroyed, a real individual is ‘killed’ above and beyond whatever human losses are incurred. The destruction of a feature group, in contrast, whatever the cultural loss, is not any kind of killing beyond the mass murder of human individuals.”

“Economic theory, in every branch, deals with practical affairs. Its subject is human welfare, and it is never entirely dissociated from the practical question of how human welfare is to be promoted. But it is a special characteristic of the art of central banking that it deals specifically with the task of an authority directly entrusted with the promotion of human welfare. Human welfare, human motives, human behaviour supply material so baffling and elusive that many people are sceptical of the possibility of building a scientific edifice on so shifting a foundation. But however complex the material, and however imperfect the data, there is always an advantage to be gained from systematic thought.”

“Of historic method, indeed, nothing wiser has ever been said than a word which will be found in Gibbon's youthful Essay on the Study of Literature. Facts, the young sage instructs us, are of three kinds: those which prove nothing beyond themselves, those which serve to illustrate a character or explain a motive, and those which dominate the system and move its springs.”

“Vampires bore a grudge longer than any technically living creatures, and whenever they were in a bad temper, they expressed themselves through murder.”