The beauty and riddle in studying the motives of any politician is in trying to decide what is idealism and what is self-interest, and often we are left to conclude that the answer is a mixture of the two.
You should be careful what you wish for as the reasons for war get confused. One person can be very clear in their motives but others can have different agendas.
I couldn't be happier that President Bush has stood up for having served in the National Guard because I can finally put an end to all those who questioned my motives for enlisting in the Army Reserve at the height of the Vietnam War.
Bob Dylan has always sealed his decisions with the unexplainable. His motives for withholding the release of the magnificent 'Basement Tapes' will be as forever obscure as Brian Wilson's reasons for the destruction of the tapes for 'Smile.'
Every diminution of the public burdens arising from taxation gives to individual enterprise increased power and furnishes to all the members of our happy confederacy new motives for patriotic affection and support.
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.
I don't know why they're doing it. I have to assume that their motives are positive not negative. But they don't understand the severity of the problem in this state.
My actions to promote peace the mediation missions which I carried out during many conflicts which very often occurred between brothers of the same country are not driven by any ulterior motives or any calculations based on personal ambitions.
Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.
Do I get up every morning and ask: am I doing the things that I believe in and am I doing them for the best possible motives? Yes. Unambiguously yes.
No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high idealistic motives and idealism in our time has been shoved aside and we are paying the penalty for it.
Revolutions are the locomotives of history.
When any government or any church for that matter undertakes to say to its subjects This you may not read this you must not see this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.
Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
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.
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.
Politicians are usually the first to forget that if you assume someone else is acting in bad faith they will do the same to you. Questioning motives poisons the well.
It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming It is a scam. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming.
If efforts to do social work are couched in selfish motives then they will die a premature death. Why would my efforts get politicised? I have values I inherited from my father. He helped many. Anyone even a postman knocking on our door would get a glass of water and some sweets.
But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense a way of concealing motives and thoughts as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.
We should often blush for our very best actions if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.