Ulterior Motive Quotes

When one has extensively pondered about men, as a career or as a vocation, one sometimes feels nostalgic for primates. At least they do not have ulterior motives. ~ Albert Camus

Never trust a species that grins all the time. It's up to something. ~ Terry Pratchett

Most kids who don't feel enough love and nurturance carry around this kind of inner rage- a rage that often lasts throughout adulthood. The people who should have cared for them didn't. The lesson to take away: All people are shit. This is why troubled youth walk around with chips on their shoulders and why they are so hard to help.
Early on they learn that people can't be trusted. They often spend the rest of their lives embracing this damaging belief. Seeing the world through shit-coloured glasses, they are hypersensitive to every possible slight or judgement, and they believe anyone friendly or kind must have an ulterior motive.
Despite all this, wounded people desperately want and need love. But, terrified to trust, they constantly do thing to test and sabotage their relationships. This push-pull dance is well-known to anyone who's ever been close to a victim of abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Those who suffer from BPD are hypersensitive to perceived slights from others and can grow notoriously hostile when they feel dissed....
For survivors of abuse, who you trust is a matter of survival. Its black and white. There can be no apologies. There can be no gray. There are no exceptions.-Scared Selfless ~ Michelle Stevens

Your love for me is transparent, no hidden agenda, no ulterior motive. ~ Euginia Herlihy

Apparently Zara's never had anyone pay attention to her unless they had an ulterior motive. That's such a shame. I could spend all night talking to her, just like I could spend hours buried deep inside of her. ~ Various

Mayor Walmsley is using the typical Jim Crow manipulation tactics to deflect the blame and guilt. He's a classic racist politician with an ulterior motive," says Ora. ~ Shaune Bordere

It's not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even - or rather, especially - when we'd prefer not to be. ~ Josh Radnor

I don't consider [my] photographs fashion photographs. The photographs were for fashion, but at the same time they had an ulterior motive, something more to do with the world in general. ~ Deborah Turbeville

Some people are gift givers by nature. They love their tribe, or they respect their art, and so they give. Not for an ulterior motive, but because it gives them joy. ~ Seth Godin

There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use. ~ E. M. Forster

Revolutionists are accused of sowing fear abroad. Every barricade seems a crime. Their theories are incriminated, their aim suspected, their ulterior motive is feared, their conscience denounced. They are reproached with raising, erecting, and heaping up, against the reigning social state, a mass of miseries, of griefs, of iniquities, of wrongs, of despairs, and of tearing from the lowest depths blocks of shadow in order therein to embattle themselves and to combat. People shout to them: "You are tearing up the pavements of hell!" They might reply: "That is because our barricade is made of good intentions. ~ Victor Hugo

Some people make friends by wining and dining people with the sole objective of doing business with them. Once the usefulness goes, the friendship also goes. It is unfortunate because it is very shortsighted and insincere. One should keep in mind that just because a person is a friend it does not mean they are under an obligation to buy from you. In my career, I have acquired clients professionally and built friendships later, versus making friends with the intention of doing business. Sooner or later, people uncover the ulterior motive. ~ Shiv Khera

An elderly merchant, a man with a long beard, was pleading with a young girl for a favourable report! Whatever Block's ulterior motive might be, nothing could justify his behaviour in the eyes of a fellow human being.
K. did not understand how the advocate could have imagined that this spectacle would win him over. If K. had not dismissed him already, this performance would have made him do so; it almost degraded the onlooker. So this was the effect of the advocate's method, to which K. had fortunately not been exposed for too long: the client finally forgot the whole world and could only drag himself along this illusory path to the end of his trial. He was no longer a client; he was the advocate's dog. ~ Franz Kafka

Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world. ~ Jack Ruby

Lyor Cohen, who I consider my mentor, once told me something that he was told by a rabbi about the eight degrees of giving in Judaism. The seventh degree is giving anonymously, so you don't know who you're giving to, and the person on the receiving end doesn't know who gave. The value of that is that the person receiving doesn't have to feel some kind of obligation to the giver and the person giving isn't doing it with an ulterior motive. It's a way of putting the giver and receiver on the same level. It's a tough ideal to reach out for, but it does take away some of the patronizing and showboating that can go on with philanthropy in a capitalist system. The highest level of giving, the eight, is giving in a way that makes the receiver self-sufficient. ~ Jay-Z

The FMSF achieved prominence partly as a response to increased possibilities for women to institute criminal or civil proceedings that relate to historical abuse, and women do not often take their abusers to court. The foundation's framing of abuse serves an ulterior strategic purpose of constructing a narrative position that isolates the incest survivor in an adversarial setting of interpreter distrust and challenged. ~ Sue Campbell

When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed. ~ Franz Kafka

Within a lot of African-American households, I think, there's an idea that black men don't want to take an active participation in the lives of their children. That if they do, there has to be some sort of ulterior motive. ~ Gabrielle Union

Being able to be presented with differing opinions on the same issue is one of the glories of a free media, and it should make people stop and think. But a lot of people don't want to. They don't want to admit that whatever line being touted by their idol of the moment might not be unbiased and without ulterior motive. ~ Mira Grant

What is fantasy? On one level, of course, it is a game: a pure pretense with no ulterior motive whatever. It is one child saying to another child, "Let's be dragons," and then they're dragons for an hour or two. It is escapism of the most admirable kind - the game played for the game's sake.
On another level, it is still a game, but a game played for very high stakes. Seen thus, as art, not spontaneous play, its affinity is not with daydream, but with dream. It is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence. It is not antirational but pararational; not realistic, but surrealistic, superrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary, not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes, which, Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. And their guides, the writers of fantasy, should take their responsibilities seriously. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

At its most intense, the admissions process didn't force kids to be Lisa Simpson; it turned them into Eddie Haskell. ("You look lovely in that new dress, Ms. Admissions Counselor.") It guaranteed that teenagers would pursue life with a single ulterior motive, while pretending they weren't. It coated their every undertaking in a thin lacquer of insincerity. Befriending people in hopes of a good rec letter; serving the community to advertise your big heart; studying hard just to puff up the GPA and climb the greasy poll of class rank - nothing was done for its own sake. Do good; do well; but make sure you can prove it on a college app. So ~ Andrew Ferguson

What's 'at supposed tae mean?" He asked insulted.
"Everyone always has an ulterior motive." I replied.
"Well I dinnae, an' I'm nae claimin' tae be innocent. I was lookin' fur ye, as per yer mother's request. Nae hidden agenda here!" He said sternly. "Besides, if I wanted ye dead, you'd be dead." He stressed out the last part. ~ S.L. Ross

There are many ways to prescribe happiness but there is one way that is available to everybody, it's not very expensive ... it's very democratic, and everyone has acesss to it. It is: Find someone who needs help and help him for no ulterior motive. ~ Yossi Vardi

I want to also emphasize here that your end goal is trust and you should never say or do something you don't believe to pursue an ulterior motive. You will not be authentic and it will come back to haunt you. You want people to trust you and you want to be able to trust them. The way to do this is to be honest about your beliefs. ~ David Akadjian

To love mankind for the sake of God-that has been the most nobel and far-fetched feeling yet achieved by human beings. The idea that without some sanctifying ulterior motive, a love of mankind is just one more brutish stupidity, that the predisposition to such a love must first find its weight, its refinement, its grain of salt and pinch of ambergris in another even higher predisposition-whoever first felt and 'witnessed' this, and however much his tongue may have stuttered in attempting to express such a delicate idea: may he remain forever venerable and holy in our sight as the man who as yet has flown the highest and erred the most beautifully! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Everyone has an ulterior motive. Everyone wants something, and everyone is willing to do whatever they have
to in order to get it. Regardless of who winds up hurt in the process. ~ Kyra Dune

Elphaba gave him a sidelong glance. "I think you enjoy going to school, Nick. Are you sure canoodling with teenage girls isn't your ulterior motive?"
"Perish the thought, Elphaba, perish the thought. I'm too old for that." Nick winked. "By about eight hundred years. ~ Abramelin Keldor

When starting to think about any novel, part of the motive is: I'm going to show them, this time. ~ Kingsley Amis

Where we are from there is no remorse because action has a logical motive and always results in the best outcome for the given situation. ~ Matt Haig

Want keeps pace with dignity. Destitute of the lawful means of supporting his rank, his dignity presents a motive for malversation, and his power furnishes the means. ~ Jeremy Bentham

[He] seemed to possess, beneath it all, an immutable sense of self-assurance, but in addition to that, the look of a man ensnared by what he perceived to be his own Duty. A Duty that effervesced inside of him impatiently, dry at the mouth, shaking feverishly, and holding its breath in anticipation for - not his action, but in fact - the fruits of his actions, however distant these may have been. The goal was to satiate its thirst in as few moves as possible, instilling each action with an almost implied necessity for having a motive by which it must exist, which is to say that no action was to be wasted for anything, but only for that which was rooted in some definable and clear-cut purpose...Every action had to be a step in some direction and there could be no dillydallying, for Duty bubbling in the bloodstream for too long brought with it a kind of sickness...from which it was difficult to recover. Neither could there be any reconsideration, for the values to which one has sworn were unassailable and beyond the powers of one individual to reassess. And so, Duty, once instilled, must be allowed to carry on unabated, diverting sustenance away from other aspects of one's character - driving them to a weakened state, brow-beaten by circumstances beyond their immediate control and relegated to their own downtrodden acquiescence to the bravado of the Parasitic Superego, and, as such, cognizant of their growing superfluity. ~ Ashim Shanker

Humans all have the instinct to determine right from wrong and wrong from right. Religion plays no factor in morals and ethical motive. Did your instinct never tell you that you were doing something wrong when you did? Did your heart never feel the warmth of a good deed? Instinct gave you morals. You gave yourself morals. The whole argument that religion helps us distinguish the difference between right and wrong is buncombe. ~ J.C. Wickhart

The atmosphere is much too near for dreams. It forces us to action. It is close to us. We are in it and of it. It rouses us both to study and to do. We must know its moods and also its motive forces. ~ Cleveland Abbe

The noblest motive is the public good. ~ Virgil

The first step to moving towards achieving your goals is to have a comprehensive understanding of your life purpose. ~ Prem Jagyasi

The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 14, was a professor of philosophy who taught that there is no mind - how do you know that the tunnel is dangerous? - no reality - how can you prove that the tunnel exists? - no logic - why do you claim that trains cannot move without motive power? - no principles - why should you be bound by the law of cause-and-effect? - no rights - why shouldn't you attach men to their jobs by force? - no morality - what's moral about running a railroad? - no absolutes - what difference does it make to you whether you live or die, anyway? He taught that we know nothing - why oppose the orders of your superiors? - that we can never be certain of anything - how do you know you're right? - that we must act on the expediency of the moment - you don't want to risk your job, do you? The ~ Ayn Rand

But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of goodwill which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He ~ Jane Austen

It is a deformity in some 'radicals' to imagine that, once they have found the lowest or meanest motive for an action or for a person, they have correctly identified the authentic or 'real' one. Many a purge or show trial has got merrily under way in this manner. ~ Christopher Hitchens

We must not only do what is right. We must act for the right reasons. The modern term is good motive. The scriptures often signify this appropriate mental attitude with the words full purpose of heart or real intent. The scriptures make clear that God understands our motives and will judge our actions accordingly. ~ Dallin H. Oaks

A man's motive in the small actions of daily life, like resting a moment on his pitchfork in the sun and listening intently, may be the most important thing about that man. ~ Haniel Long

All change...arises from an underlying collapse into chaos...what may appear to us to be motive and purpose is in fact ultimately motiveless, purposeless decay. ~ Peter Atkins

I became bored - that was all. Boredom, which is another name and a frequent disguise for vitality, became the unconscious motive of all my acts. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

People who live according to the pure code of honor are not governed by the profit motive; they are governed by the thymotic urge, the quest for recognition. They seek the sort of glory that can be won only by showing strength in confrontation with death. ~ David Brooks

First of all; Frank was the BOSS. We didn't question any of his motives or decisions at the time. ~ Jimmy Carl Black

Veterans being sent into unjust wars for corporate profit is a perversion of trust, at best. I found the emotional manipulation of both sides, the propaganda at play so incredibly revolting that I couldn't stand to idly wave a flag or flaunt yellow ribbons without asking serious questions regarding motive. ~ M.B. Dallocchio

I've met a few people who had to change their jobs in order to change their lives, but I've met many more people who merely had to change their motive to service in order to change their lives. ~ Peace Pilgrim

The child is a realist in every domain of thought, and it is therefore natural that in the moral sphere he should lay more stress on the external, tangible element than on the hidden motive. ~ Jean Piaget

I simply wanted to bring out the ways that each of us (though on vastly different levels) is dedicated to music. That was my original motive, and I like to think that, to some extent, I have succeeded. ~ Haruki Murakami

Even the wisdom of God hath not suggested more pressing motives, more powerful incentives to charity, than these, that we shall be judged by it at the last dreadful day. ~ Francis Atterbury

You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive. Never complain and never explain. ~ Stanley Baldwin

If we use our fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful, and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations. The heat of the sun's rays represents an immense amount of energy vastly in excess of waterpower ... The sun's energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land ... ~ Nikola Tesla

The pretense that the "abolition of slavery" was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same character with that of "maintaining the national honor." Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general - not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war measure," and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. ~ Lysander Spooner

When a novelist has "something to say," they mean a message. It has political connotations, or a religious message, or a moral prescription. It means "commitment," as used by Sartre and other fellow-travelers. They are saying that the writer has a world view, a sort of truth that he wishes to communicate, and that his writing has an ulterior significance. I am against this. ~ Alain Robbe-Grillet

There is no question that the Deep South seceded and fought the civil war to defend slavery. And its leaders made no secret of this motive. Slavery they argued Ad nauseam was the foundation for a virtuous biblically sanctioned social system superior to that of the free states. When 19th century deep southerners spoke of defending their "traditions", "heritage", and way of life they proudly identified the enslavement of others as the center piece of all three. Indeed, many of their leaders even argued that all lower class people should be enslaved regardless of race for their own good.
In response to Yankee and midland abolitionist the Deep South's leaders developed an elaborate defense for human bondage. James Henry Hammond, former governor of South Carolina, published a seminal book arguing that enslaved laborers where happier, fitter and better looked after than their free counter parts in Brittan and the North, who were ruthlessly exploited by industrial capitalists. Free societies were therefore unstable as there was always a danger that the exploited would rise up creating a fearful crisis in republican institutions. Salves by contrast were kept in their place by violent means and denied the right to vote, resist or testify, ensuring the foundation of every well designed and durable republic.
Enslavement of the white working class would be in his words a most glorious act of emancipation. Jefferson's notion all men are created equal, he wrote, was ridiculousl ~ Colin Woodard

There are reasons for everything, even if we don't know them," Stevie said. "Motive."
"Okay," Nate said. "My motive is that I prefer dragons."
"To what?"
"To the absence of dragons. ~ Maureen Johnson

We use committees for all the ulterior purposes for which they might have been designed: diffusion of executive responsibility, plausible deniability, misdirection, providing the appearance of activity without the substance, and protecting the guilty. ~ Charles Stross

Turning the pages of crime novels it occurs to me to ask how it's possible to write so much without saying the word "pain," "life," or "anxiety." I reject this stupid dehumanization. The behaving without motive. The horrific shutting out of what is most vital or important. ~ Alejandra Pizarnik

The motives of these parents vary, many parents don't like the curriculum being taught to their kids, or are wary of the threat of peer pressure or the presence of drugs or violence lurking in too many of our schools today. ~ Ernest Istook

My motive has always been just to be who I am, and play what I love- if that doesn't get me anywhere then at least it wasn't because I tried to be something I'm not. ~ Ben Howard

Knowledge is older than ignorance.
Understanding is older than intolerance.
Intuition is older than intelligence.

Innocence is older than guilt.
Clarity is older than compassion.
Order is older than anarchy.

Calmness is older than turmoil.
Peace is older than war.
Life is older than death.

Existence is older than oblivion.
Reality is older than life.
Eternity is older than time.

Thought is older than desire.
Motive is older than feat.
Action is older than experience.

Faith is older than religion.
Truth is older than uncertainty.
Love is older than passion.

Joy is older than pleasure.
Need is older than want.
Reason is older than emotion.

The soul is older than the heart.
The heart is older than the mind.
The mind is older than the body.

The universe is older than the sky.
The sky is older than the stars.
The stars are older than the world. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

One glance at any government budget anywhere in the world tells the story - the money is always in place, already allocated, the motive everywhere is fear, the more immediate the fear, the higher the multiples. ~ Thomas Pynchon

The man who did the shooting was a civilian, Peter Kakhovsky, a gifted intellectual of extreme purity of motive in whom the conviction of the necessity of regicide burned with a gem-like flame. Determined to kill, expecting to die, this brilliant and terrible apparition, his slender form bundled up in a sheepskin coat, his delicate features surmounted by a shabby top hat, shot to kill with that indiscriminate ruthlessness which was later to characterise a whole generation of revolutionary terrorists. If he could not yet murder the Tsar, he would do the next best thing. ~ Edward Crankshaw

Whatever be the motives which induce men to write,
whether avarice or fame,
the country becomes more wise and happy in which they most serve for instructors. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

Growing up in that fashion is a breeding ground for insecurity and doubt; it also leaves you questioning motives. It took me a long time to see the world as I want it without constantly looking for approval. I still fall, but I'm better suited for survival. ~ Damon Runyon

As water cannot rise higher than its source, so the moral quality in an act can never be higher than the motive that inspires it. For this reason no act that arises from an evil motive can be good, even though some good may appear to come out of it. Every deed done out of anger or spite, for instance, will be found at last to have been done for the enemy and against the kingdom of God. ~ A.W. Tozer

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature ~ John Locke

All higher motives, ideals, conceptions, sentiments in a man are of no account if they do not come forward to strengthen him for the better discharge of the duties which devolve upon him in the ordinary affairs of life. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

On no account would I do a picture which I should be unwilling to show to all the world - or at least all the artistic world. If I did not believe I could take pictures of all children without any lower motive than a pure love of Art, I would not ask it: and if I thought there was any fear of its lessening their beautiful simplicity of character, I would not ask it. I print all such pictures myself, and of course would not let any one see them without your permission. I fear you will reply that the one insuperable objection is "Mrs. Grundy"
that people will be sure to hear that such pictures have been done, and that they will talk. As to their hearing of it, I say "of course. All the world are welcome to hear of it, and I would not an any account suggest to the children to mention it - which would at once introduce an objectionable element" - but as to people talking about it, I will only quote the grand old monkish legend: They say: Quhat do they say? Lat them say! ~ Lewis Carroll

I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear. ~ Benjamin F. Wade