Agenda With Motivational Quotes

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The dog’s agenda is simple, fathomable, overt: I want. “I want to go out, come in, eat something, lie here, play with that, kiss you. There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied.
Caroline Knapp
A man who loves others based solely on how they make him feel, or what they do for him, is really not loving others at all - but loving only himself.
Criss Jami (Healology)
During energy deflation, we must first re-evaluate our values, motivations, and capacities because this helps us adopt a more grounded, realistic approach to life. By cultivating a creative, transformative power that shapes our destiny, we enforce our own in-depth agenda and avoid falling short and becoming "fallen stars." ("Feeling like a fallen star")
Erik Pevernagie
Yamamoto was considered, both in Japan and the United States, as intelligent, capable, aggressive, and dangerous. Motivated by his skill as a poker player and casino gambler, he was continually calculating odds on an endless variety of options. He played bridge and chess better than most good players. Like most powerful leaders he was articulate and persuasive, and once in a position of power he pushed his agenda relentlessly. Whether he would push his odds successfully in the Pacific remained to be seen.
Dale A. Jenkins (Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway)
The people at the center of these stories of power couples mostly choose to see their own motives as selfless. In Elizabeth Edwards’ autobiography Resilience, she wrote of her marriage to John, U.S. senator from North Carolina, ‘We were lovers, life companions, crusaders, side by side, for a vision of what the country could be.’ When she found out he was cheating on her, the crusading together became ‘the glue’ that kept them together. ‘I grabbed hold of it. I needed to,’ Edwards wrote. ‘Although I no longer knew what I could trust between the two of us, I knew I could trust in our work together.’ She wanted ‘an intact family fighting for causes more important than any one of us.
Anne Michaud (Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Eight Political Wives)
He felt safe with her. He'd never been safe with another human being, not since he'd been taken as a child from his home. He'd never been able to trust. He could never give that last small piece - all that was left of his humanity - into someone else's keeping. And now there was Rikki. She let him be whatever he had to be to survive. She didn't ask anything of him. There was no hidden motive. No agenda. Just acceptance. She was different - imperfect, or so she thought - and she knew what it was like to fight to carve out a space for herself. She was willing for him to do thar.
Christine Feehan (Water Bound (Sea Haven/Sisters of the Heart, #1))
Often people that tell others they are "extremely polite" when the situation calls for tact and bluntness are not actually polite people. Instead, they hide behind the word “polite” because they have low self esteem or hidden agendas. Sadly, they impolitely confuse the hell out of everyone, send mixed signals, which then makes people question their sanity and motives.
Shannon L. Alder
Patriarchy’s influence often lives in the minds of women who were raised in a certain way and who aspire to a certain type of greatness — as one half of a powerful, leading couple. They act from behind the scenes, from behind a husband, because their goals and dreams, their stature in the world, is achieved most effectively through the influence of men — or so they believe. Without their husbands, they seem to doubt that they can fully express themselves. The motives of women in power political couples may be foreign to women in private life, but we should consider that the women who hold or aspire to great power have unique pressures and uncompromising standards. Does that compromise make sense when the couple can do so much good in the world, accomplish their political and policy goals, and build a platform and legacy for their children and grandchildren? Political women struggle with these questions.
Anne Michaud (Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives)
It is not blindly pushing your own agenda that will enrich the world. It’s is your ability and willingness to understand, appreciate, anticipate, address, serve and support the lives of others that will.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
We reflect God's character the most when we give freely of ourselves with no strings attached, no secret motives, no hidden agenda.
Craig Groeschel (Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working)
But the world is a nicer place when you think everyone is telling the truth. There are no agendas, no hidden motives; no one lies for dramatic effect.
Claire Fuller (Bitter Orange)
Be wary of someone who has never failed, or seem to have no faults... Too good to be true usually is. Perfection hides something.
Henry Cloud
His appearance in reality a hidden masquerade
Justin Bienvenue (The Macabre Masterpiece)
Convincing other people to think again isn’t just about making a good argument—it’s about establishing that we have the right motives in doing so. When we concede that someone else has made a good point, we signal that we’re not preachers, prosecutors, or politicians trying to advance an agenda. We’re scientists trying to get to the truth. “Arguments are often far more combative and adversarial than they need to be,” Harish told me. “You should be willing to listen to what someone else is saying and give them a lot of credit for it. It makes you sound like a reasonable person who is taking everything into account.
Adam M. Grant (Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know)
I must not reflect on what I’m doing. Rather, I must do one of the most difficult things imaginable and reflect on ‘why’ I’m doing it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Within the first twenty years of our lives, before we are really adult, we make choices motivated by insecurity, fear, and other people's expectations; certinly not guided by clarity and wisdom. We plod along for years living with the wrong career or spousal choice, in a location we did not choose and perhaps do not like, and much more. One day we wake up restless and confused, and acknowledge that we have no agenda of our own, and that we have been living someone else's passion, their dream.
Joan Medlicott (Come Walk with Me)
When it comes to the education of our young, this privilege should only be given to those whose visions are solely in the uplifting benefit of the child. There is no room for the ego in the education of children! Children should not be looked after, nor educated, by those who have not made a sacrifice within their hearts, laying down their own personal agenda and dreams, for the total ascension of the child. Even if you are to educate the children simply sitting under a tree; if you have the vision and the heart of a sage, those children will grow to be mighty men and women under your watch! And even if you wine and dine the children, putting them up in a palace; if you do not have the vision and the selfless heart of a sage, all you do is in utter vanity!
C. JoyBell C.
Over the years, I’d convinced myself that good rarely exists in this world, and if it does, it comes with ulterior motives and hidden agendas. But the truth is that good is everywhere. It’s harder to see, but often it’s right in front of you.
Dete Meserve (Good Sam)
Many outsiders clarified that they believe Christians have a right (even an obligation) to pursue political involvement, but they disagree with our methods and our attitudes. They say we seem to be pursuing an agenda that benefits only ourselves; that we expect too much out of politics; they question whether we are motivated by our economic status rather than faith perspectives when we support conservative politics; they claim we act and say things in an unchristian manner; they wonder whether Jesus would use political power as we do; and they are concerned that we overpowered the voices of other groups.
David Kinnaman (unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters)
The smear artist reveals himself by his disparate treatment of people and situations. He drapes himself in a superhero cape, claiming to defend the aggrieved. He pretends to right societal wrongs. In fact, though, he's motivated primarily by paid interests and his own selfish agendas. By definition, the job requires that morality and conscience be cast aside
Sharyl Attkisson (The Smear: How the Secret Art of Character Assassination Controls What You Think, What You Read, and How You Vote)
The problem is that you guys are taking advices and making conclusions. Based on statements made by people who are pushing an agenda.
D.J. Kyos
Standing before the awesome majesty and magnitude of the universe is so intimidating that many of us cry out for mediators—the state, gurus, evangelists with coifed hair—all with their own agendas of gain. The purveyors of the marketplace frequently denounce those who learn to respect their own encounter with mystery as "gnostics." Well, gnosis means "knowledge." If I can learn from my direct experience of the universe, and am haunted by them when I ignore them, then why not live my life according what I have learned directly, rather than what is mediated by others, however sincere their motivation may be?
James Hollis (Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives)
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
Do you approach people with a heart of service or with a hidden agenda? Make no mistake, will feel your intentions, even when not spoken.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Connection: 8 Ways to Enrich Rapport & Kinship for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #6))
The enemies agenda is destruction, his strategy is division and his tactics is on little differences. Mind you he is not going to be happy until he sees you divided.
Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
Leaders ought never to allow the least motivated members of an organization to set the pace for the others. Rather,
Henry T. Blackaby (Spiritual Leadership: Moving People on to God's Agenda)
Everyone had their own agenda. She just had to stop reacting emotionally: decipher the real motives for their behaviour without taking every word as a personal attack.
Abby McDonald (The Popularity Rules)
Many people have never discovered the power generated from a heart of service. They show up to life projecting a right of entitlement in which their needs are their first priority and they will do whatever it takes to forward their own agenda without any concern for how it impacts others. This behavior pushes people away, creates barriers to trust and communication, and leaves a bad impression.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Being: 8 Ways to Optimize Your Presence & Essence for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #1))
What the person high in narcissistic traits doesn’t do constitutes a pattern of its own and, in many ways, makes him easier to identify. Once you’ve focused on what he isn’t doing, you can see that what motivates him isn’t the need to connect to you in any meaningful way—which is, of course, what you’ve been hoping for all along—but a very private and specific agenda which is making sure that his vision of himself stays protected and invulnerable.
Peg Streep
For Eric, Columbine was a performance. Homicidal art. He actually referred to his audience in his journal: “the majority of the audience wont even understand my motives,” he complained. He scripted Columbine as made-for-TV murder, and his chief concern was that we would be too stupid to see the point. Fear was Eric’s ultimate weapon. He wanted to maximize the terror. He didn’t want kids to fear isolated events like a sporting event or a dance; he wanted them to fear their daily lives. It worked. Parents across the country were afraid to send their kids to school. Eric didn’t have the political agenda of a terrorist, but he had adopted terrorist tactics. Sociology professor Mark Juergensmeyer identified the central characteristic of terrorism as “performance violence.” Terrorists design events “to be spectacular in their viciousness and awesome in their destructive power. Such instances of exaggerated violence are constructed events: they are mind-numbing, mesmerizing theater.” The audience—for Timothy McVeigh, Eric Harris, or the Palestine Liberation Organization—was always miles away, watching on TV. Terrorists rarely settle for just shooting; that limits the damage to individuals. They prefer to blow up things—buildings, usually, and the smart ones choose carefully. “During that brief dramatic moment when a terrorist act levels a building or damages some entity that a society regards as central to its existence, the perpetrators of the act assert that they—and not the secular government—have ultimate control over that entity and its centrality,” Juergensmeyer wrote. He pointed out that during the same day as the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993, a deadlier attack was leveled against a coffee shop in Cairo. The attacks were presumably coordinated by the same group. The body count was worse in Egypt, yet the explosion was barely reported outside that country. “A coffeehouse is not the World Trade Center,” he explained. Most terrorists target symbols of the system they abhor—generally, iconic government buildings. Eric followed the same logic. He understood that the cornerstone of his plan was the explosives. When all his bombs fizzled, everything about his attack was misread. He didn’t just fail to top Timothy McVeigh’s record—he wasn’t even recognized for trying. He was never categorized with his peer group. We lumped him in with the pathetic loners who shot people.
Dave Cullen (Columbine)
Every now and then a person with no agenda, no ulterior motive and no self-interest will take pleasure in helping you succeed, grow and live your purpose. This person will operate in love, will seek no praise, and will want nothing in return. This person is a gift.
Craig Harper
In December 1790, with other options foreclosed, Hamilton revived a proposal he had floated in his Report on Public Credit: an excise tax on whiskey and other domestic spirits. He knew the measure would be loathed in rural areas that thrived on moonshine, but he thought this might be more palatable to farmers than a land tax. Hamilton confessed to Washington an ulterior political motive for this liquor tax: he wanted to lay “hold of so valuable a resource of revenue before it was generally preoccupied by the state governments.” As with assumption, he wanted to starve the states of revenue and shore up the federal government. Jefferson did not exaggerate Hamilton’s canny capacity to clothe political objectives in technical garb. There were hidden agendas buried inside Hamilton’s economic program, agendas that he tended to share with high-level colleagues but not always with the public.
Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton)
that good people fought valiantly for disgraceful causes. . . . But by joining the Confederate war machine, all of them, irrespective of their personal motivations, advanced their nation’s political agenda—the perpetuation and territorial expansion of human bondage and the misery that it entailed.”9
Edward H. Bonekemper III (The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won)
Before you work with me you must know that I am an atheist and I believe in neither supreme powers of any God or the trickery of the Devil, I am student of the criminal psychology and believe that behind every murder there is psychopath at work with some insidious agenda at play and motive unknown to human mind.
Adhish Mazumder
Jealous has made lot of people fake activists. They choose sides not the truth or facts. They choose whom to fight. They choose what must happen to the person, they are hating and fighting. They choose violence not redemption , justice or peace. Choose to have a purpose and not a hidden agenda, In other people lives.
D.J. Kyos
their footfalls? Finally some combination thereof, or these many things as permutations of each other—as alternative vocabularies? However it was, by January I was winnowed, and soon dispensed with pills and analysis (the pills I was weaned from gradually), and took up my unfinished novel again, Our Lady of the Forest, about a girl who sees the Virgin Mary, a man who wants a miracle, a priest who suffers spiritual anxiety, and a woman in thrall to cynicism. It seems to me now that the sum of those figures mirrors the shape of my psyche before depression, and that the territory of the novel forms a map of my psyche in the throes of gathering disarray. The work as code for the inner life, and as fodder for my own biographical speculations. Depression, in this conceit, might be grand mal writer’s block. Rather than permitting its disintegration at the hands of assorted unburied truths risen into light as narrative, the ego incites a tempest in the brain, leaving the novelist to wander in a whiteout with his half-finished manuscript awry in his arms, where the wind might blow it away. I don’t find this facile. It seems true—or true for me—that writing fiction is partly psychoanalysis, a self-induced and largely unconscious version. This may be why stories threaten readers with the prospect of everything from the merest dart wound to a serious breach in the superstructure. To put it another way, a good story addresses the psyche directly, while the gatekeeper ego, aware of this trespass—of a message sent so daringly past its gate, a compelling dream insinuating inward—can only quaver through a story’s reading and hope its ploys remains unilluminated. Against a story of penetrating virtuosity—The Metamorphosis, or Lear on the heath—this gatekeeper can only futilely despair, and comes away both revealed and provoked, and even, at times, shattered. In lesser fiction—fiction as entertainment, narcissism, product, moral tract, or fad—there is also some element of the unconscious finding utterance, chiefly because it has the opportunity, but in these cases its clarity and force are diluted by an ill-conceived motive, and so it must yield control of the story to the transparently self-serving ego, to that ostensible self with its own small agenda in art as well as in life. * * * Like
David Guterson (Descent: A Memoir of Madness (Kindle Single))
When somebody tells us something that would be disturbing or inconvenient for us to believe, we reflexively scrutinize that person for some excuse to discredit him. Their disdain for emotion and dogged, blindered focus on Evidence and the Facts makes it tempting to speculate that people like Ken, rather than simply being more objective than the rest of us - which might threaten to make us feel stupid - just have more deeply buried agendas and are driven by unconscious forces about which they're in even better-defended denial. It's unusually not hard to find such ulterior motives in anyone, especially not in the sorts of people who are most likely to bring us such news.
Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing)
You'd think that it would make them all the more credible to be free of any obvious agenda or emotional bias, motivated only by objective logic. But there's something off-putting about these hyperrational types; they're immune to any appeals to common sense or humor, the for fuck's sake defense. [...] As Kim Stanley Robinson writes, "An excess of reason is in itself a form of madness".
Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing)
Any person who wishes to make a difference in the life of the addict should first conduct a compassionate self-inquiry. They need to examine their own anxieties, agendas, and motives. “Purity and impurity belong to oneself,” the Buddha taught. “No one else can purify another.” Before any intervention in the life of another, we need to ask ourselves: How am I doing in my own life? I may not have the addiction I’m trying to exorcise in my friend or son or coworker, but how am I faring with my own compulsions? As I try to liberate this other, how free am I—do I, for example, have an insistent need to change him for the better? I want to awaken this person to their genuine possibilities, but am I on the path to fulfilling my own? These questions will help to keep us from projecting our unconscious anxieties and concerns onto the other—a burden the addict will instinctively reject. Nobody wants to perceive himself as someone’s salvage project. If
Gabor Maté (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction)
So instead of providing another intellectual answer that would be ignored, David cut right to the heart. He said, “You’re raising all of these objections because you’re sleeping with your girlfriend. Am I right?” All the blood drained from the young man’s face. He was caught. He was rejecting God because he didn’t like God’s morality. And he was disguising it with feigned intellectual objections. This young man wasn’t the first atheist or agnostic to admit that his desire to follow his own agenda was keeping him out of the kingdom. In the first chapter of his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul revealed this tendency we humans have to “suppress the truth” about God in order to follow our own desires. In other words, unbelief is more motivated by the heart than the head. Some prominent atheists have admitted this. Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously wrote, “God is dead and we have killed him,” also wrote, “If one were to prove this God of the Christians to us, we should be even less able to believe in him.”[24] Obviously Nietzsche’s rejection of God was not intellectual! Professor Thomas Nagel of NYU more recently wrote, “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My
Frank Turek (Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case)
Fear is a powerful motivator and is one of the many emotions that guides our choices in our daily life. One of the bonuses of critical thinking is making choices based on rationale and facts, not just emotion. Science does not say God does not exist, it says that it is not yet proven. This can be frustrating for people who have a more emotional approach to life and a static understanding of the world, but critical thinking challenges us to keep questioning so that our world view stays dynamic.
Ian Tuhovsky (Critical Thinking: Think Clearly in a World of Agendas, Bad Science, and Information Overload)
I think the reason this was so important to Jesus was that He wanted people to know that God is relational—truly relational without any impure or selfish motives. He wanted His Father to be trusted, and therefore He needed men and women who represented this. The psychology of agendas is that they make relationships transactional, which means that people are used for a purpose. People become a means to someone else’s end, and this erodes a person’s belief that he or she is valued regardless of any production.
Hugh Halter (Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth)
The most radical approach to resistance is acceptance--and acceptance does not mean accepting the world as it is. It means accepting our pain as it is. If we refuse to accept our pain, then we're just trying to make ourselves feel better--and when our hidden motive is to make ourselves feel better, there is no limit to the damage we can do in the name of justice. Great leaders never combine a call for justice with a cry for vengeance. Leaders who can master their pain have taken self-interest off the agenda, so their voice rings with moral power. They are no longer speaking their truth. They are speaking truth.
Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
But as a Puerto Rican woman, she belonged to not one but two minority groups. New research suggests that her double minority status may have amplified the costs and the benefits of speaking up. Management researcher Ashleigh Rosette, who is African American, noticed that she was treated differently when she led assertively than were both white women and black men. Working with colleagues, she found that double minority group members faced double jeopardy. When black women failed, they were evaluated much more harshly than black men and white leaders of both sexes. They didn’t fit the stereotype of leaders as black or as female, and they shouldered an unfair share of the blame for mistakes. For double minorities, Rosette’s team pointed out, failure is not an option. Interestingly, though, Rosette and her colleagues found that when black women acted dominantly, they didn’t face the same penalties as white women and black men. As double minorities, black women defy categories. Because people don’t know which stereotypes to apply to them, they have greater flexibility to act “black” or “female” without violating stereotypes. But this only holds true when there’s clear evidence of their competence. For minority-group members, it’s particularly important to earn status before exercising power. By quietly advancing the agenda of putting intelligence online as part of her job, Carmen Medina was able to build up successes without attracting too much attention. “I was able to fly under the radar,” she says. “Nobody really noticed what I was doing, and I was making headway by iterating to make us more of a publish-when-ready organization. It was almost like a backyard experiment. I pretty much proceeded unfettered.” Once Medina had accumulated enough wins, she started speaking up again—and this time, people were ready to listen. Rosette has discovered that when women climb to the top and it’s clear that they’re in the driver’s seat, people recognize that since they’ve overcome prejudice and double standards, they must be unusually motivated and talented. But what happens when voice falls on deaf ears?
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
Only awe of him can define in you and me a true sense of what we actually need. So many of our prayers are self-centered grocery lists of personal cravings that have no bigger agenda than to make our lives a little more comfortable. They tend to treat God more as our personal shopper than a holy and wise Father-King. Such prayers forget God’s glory and long for a greater experience of the glories of the created world. They lack fear, reverence, wonder, and worship. They’re more like pulling up the divine shopping site than bowing our knees in adoration and worship. They are motivated more by awe of ourselves and our pleasures than by a heart-rattling, satisfaction-producing awe of the Redeemer to whom we are praying.
Paul David Tripp (Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do)
These georgoi in turn shaped the ideals, institutions, and culture that gave rise to the polis. Unlike any prior civilization, the culture of the Greek polis combined citizen militias with the rule of law. That involved having a broad middle class of independent small landowners that met in assemblies where the votes of these nonelite determined laws, and foreign and domestic policy. These smallholders gained in status as population growth in the ninth and eighth centuries forced an agricultural revolution. Labor-intensive farming of marginal lands came to replace the Dark Age pastoral economy. This required a growth in private landownership, which motivated georgoi to assume the risks involved in cultivating land that was unproductive using traditional farming techniques. These farmers created the ritual of hoplite warfare to decide disputes in a manner that did not contradict their agrarian agenda. The georgoi and their agrarian ideology became the driving force behind the hoplite revolution during the early seventh century.
Donald Kagan (Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece)
I am a graduate of Calcutta University and employed as an Assistant Inspector, Calcutta Corporation. I am also a writer and used to visit the College Street Coffee House where young writers of Calcutta generally assembled in the evening. Samir Roychoudhury is a personal friend of mine. I came to know the sponsors of Hungry Generation, namely Shakti Chattopadhyay, Malay Roychoudhury and others. Although I am not directly connected with the Hungry Generation I was interested in the literary movement. Some of the manifesto of the Hungry Generation contain advertisement of my literary work. In one of the publication my name was cited as editor. This was probably done with a motive to exploit my reputation as writer but since my prior consent was not taken I took exception. The present publication in question also came to my notice. As a poet myself I do not approve either the theme or the language of the poem of Malay Roychoudhury captioned প্রচণ্ড বৈদ্যুতিক ছুতার ; I have severed all connection with Hungry Generation. I had correspondence with Malay Roychoudhury who often sought my advise in literary matters. Sandipan Chattopadhyay ( alias Pashupati Chatterjee ) 15 March 1965
Sandipan Chattopadhyay (জঙ্গলের দিনরাত্রি)
Sociologist Barry Glassner (1999) has documented many of the biases introduced by “If it bleeds, it leads” news reporting, and by the strategic efforts of special interest groups to control the agenda of public fear of crime, disease, and other hazards. Is an increase of approximately 700 incidents in 50 states over 7 years an “epidemic” of road rage? Is it conceivable that there is (or ever was) a crisis in children’s day care stemming from predatory satanic cults? In 1994, a research team funded by the U.S. government spent 4 years and $750,000 to reach the conclusion that the myth of satanic conspiracies in day care centers was totally unfounded; not a single verified instance was found (Goodman, Qin, Bottoms, & Shaver, 1994; Nathan & Snedeker, 1995). Are automatic-weapon-toting high school students really the first priority in youth safety? (In 1999, approximately 2,000 school-aged children were identified as murder victims; only 26 of those died in school settings, 14 of them in one tragic incident at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.) The anthropologist Mary Douglas (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982) pointed out that every culture has a store of exaggerated horrors, many of them promoted by special interest factions or to defend cultural ideologies. For example, impure water had been a hazard in 14th-century Europe, but only after Jews were accused of poisoning wells did the citizenry become preoccupied with it as a major problem. But the original news reports are not always ill-motivated. We all tend to code and mention characteristics that are unusual (that occur infrequently). [...] The result is that the frequencies of these distinctive characteristics, among the class of people considered, tend to be overestimated.
Reid Hastie (Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making)
ON THE MODUS OPERANDI OF OUR CURRENT PRESIDENT, DONALD J. TRUMP "According to a new ABC/Washington Post poll, President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a new high." The President's response to this news was "“I don’t do it for the polls. Honestly — people won’t necessarily agree with this — I do nothing for the polls,” the president told reporters on Wednesday. “I do it to do what’s right. I’m here for an extended period of time. I’m here for a period that’s a very important period of time. And we are straightening out this country.” - Both Quotes Taken From Aol News - August 31, 2018 In The United States, as in other Republics, the two main categories of Presidential motivation for their assigned tasks are #1: Self Interest in seeking to attain and to hold on to political power for their own sakes, regarding the welfare of This Republic to be of secondary importance. #2: Seeking to attain and to hold on to the power of that same office for the selfless sake of this Republic's welfare, irregardless of their personal interest, and in the best of cases going against their personal interests to do what is best for this Republic even if it means making profound and extreme personal sacrifices. Abraham Lincoln understood this last mentioned motivation and gave his life for it. The primary information any political scientist needs to ascertain regarding the diagnosis of a particular President's modus operandi is to first take an insightful and detailed look at the individual's past. The litmus test always being what would he or she be willing to sacrifice for the Nation. In the case of our current President, Donald John Trump, he abandoned a life of liberal luxury linked to self imposed limited responsibilities for an intensely grueling, veritably non stop two year nightmare of criss crossing this immense Country's varied terrain, both literally and socially when he could have easily maintained his life of liberal leisure. While my assertion that his personal choice was, in my view, sacrificially done for the sake of a great power in a state of rapid decline can be contradicted by saying it was motivated by selfish reasons, all evidence points to the contrary. For knowing the human condition, fraught with a plentitude of weaknesses, for a man in the end portion of his lifetime to sacrifice an easy life for a hard working incessant schedule of thankless tasks it is entirely doubtful that this choice was made devoid of a special and even exalted inspiration to do so. And while the right motivations are pivotal to a President's success, what is also obviously needed are generic and specific political, military and ministerial skills which must be naturally endowed by Our Creator upon the particular President elected for the purposes of advancing a Nation's general well being for one and all. If one looks at the latest National statistics since President Trump took office, (such as our rising GNP, the booming market, the dramatically shrinking unemployment rate, and the overall positive emotive strains in regards to our Nation's future, on both the left and the right) one can make definitive objective conclusions pertaining to the exceptionally noble character and efficiency of the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And if one can drown out the constant communicative assaults on our current Commander In Chief, and especially if one can honestly assess the remarkable lack of substantial mistakes made by the current President, all of these factors point to a leader who is impressively strong, morally and in other imperative ways. And at the most propitious time. For the main reason that so many people in our Republic palpably despise our current President is that his political and especially his social agenda directly threatens their licentious way of life. - John Lars Zwerenz
John Lars Zwerenz
Know Your Father’s Heart Today’s Scripture Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 JOHN 4:10 KJV Today, I want you to reread the parable of the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32). As you read, keep in mind that this son utterly rejected and completely humiliated and dishonored his father, then only returned home when he remembered that even his father’s hired servants had more food than he did! It was not the son’s love for his father that made him journey home; it was his stomach. In his own self-absorbed pride, he wanted to earn his own keep as a hired servant rather than to receive his father’s provision by grace or unmerited favor. God wants us to know that even when our motivations are wrong, even when we have a hidden (usually self-centered) agenda and our intentions are not completely pure, He still runs to us in our time of need and showers His unmerited, undeserved, and unearned favor upon us. Oh, how unsearchable are the depths of His love and grace toward us! It will never be about our love for God. It will always be about His magnificent love for us. The Bible makes this clear: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10 KJV). Some people think that fellowship with God can only be restored when you are perfectly contrite and have perfectly confessed all your sins. Yet we see in this parable that it was the father who was the initiator, it was the father who had missed his son, who was already looking out for him, and who had already forgiven him. Before the son could utter a single word of his rehearsed apology, the father had already run to him, embraced him, and welcomed him home. Can you see how it’s all about our Father’s heart of grace, forgiveness, and love? Our Father God swallows up all our imperfections, and true repentance comes because of His goodness. Do I say “sorry” to God and confess my sins when I have fallen short and failed? Of course I do. But I do it not to be forgiven because I know that I am already forgiven through Jesus’ finished work. The confession is out of the overflow of my heart because I have experienced His goodness and grace and because I know that as His son, I am forever righteous through Jesus’ blood. It springs from being righteousness-conscious, not sin-conscious; from being forgiveness-conscious, not judgment-conscious. There is a massive difference. If you understand this and begin practicing this, you will begin experiencing new dimensions in your love walk with the Father. You will realize that your Daddy God is all about relationship and not religious protocol. He just loves being with you. Under grace, He doesn’t demand perfection from you; He supplies perfection to you through the finished work of His Son, Jesus Christ. So no matter how many mistakes you have made, don’t be afraid of Him. He loves you. Your Father is running toward you to embrace you! Today’s Thought My Father God runs to me in my time of need and showers His unmerited, undeserved, and unearned favor upon me. Today’s Prayer Father, thank You that I can experience Your love even when I have failed. No matter how many mistakes I may have made, I don’t have to be afraid to come to You. I am still Your beloved child, and I always have fellowship with You because of the finished work of Jesus. I thank You that You don’t demand perfection from me, but You supply perfection to me through the cross. It blesses my heart to know that You just love being with me. Thank You for running to embrace me. Amen.
Joseph Prince (100 Days of Right Believing: Daily Readings from The Power of Right Believing)
To become a neutral writer is the hardest way or else, one can say, impossible. The pledges work in the back of the mind; thus, no one is neutral. Such a claim displays itself as the motives with an agenda.
Ehsan Sehgal
These are politically-motivated events, meant to further an agenda, which in this case is the Police State in America. Now bear with me, all we’re going to do is analyze the facts that raise the suspicion
J. Micha-el Thomas Hays (Rise of the New World Order: The Culling of Man)
A great deal of original research, much of it conducted by Western-trained Saudi sociologists, went into finding out who joined al-Qaeda and what motivated them. The results, gathered from scores of interviews, made interesting reading. These Saudi terrorists were, for the most part, urban high-school graduates in their twenties from lower middle-class backgrounds. Most were unmarried and had jobs with steady, but modest, incomes. Most had been to Afghanistan or had relatives who had been on jihad abroad. They were motivated not by oppression at home but largely by events outside of Saudi Arabia, and what the sociologists called “humiliation rage.” Fueled by religious zeal, this boiled down to a three-part agenda: defend foreign Muslims who were being abused by non-Muslims; get the foreigners and their non-Islamic values out of Saudi Arabia; and overthrow the Al Saud, who were clearly aligned with the non-Muslim foreigners.
David Rundell (Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads)
Kennedy picked Clark Clifford, who’d been President Truman’s counselor, to be his liaison with the outgoing Eisenhower staff. An astute observer of men and power, Clifford recognized early on John Kennedy’s ability to detach himself from himself. You’d see him sitting at meetings, Clifford once told me, and you could almost imagine JFK’s spirit assuming a form of its own and rising up, the better to look down on the group and assess its various members’ motives and agendas. It was the same uncanny detachment Chuck Spalding had seen in Jack on his wedding day.
Chris Matthews (Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero)
Isn't it time you stood on the high steps, or in front of the podium, and started making your address to the world? What's your message? If you don't have one, what then?
Steve Madison (The Quality Agenda: The Search for Excellence)
You’d think that it would make them all the more credible to be free of any obvious agenda or emotional bias, motivated only by objective logic. But there’s something off-putting about these hyperrational types; they’re immune to any appeals to common sense or humor, the “for fuck’s sake” defense. (Think of hard-core libertarians carefully explaining to you why the fire department should be privatized or heroin should be legal or everyone should be allowed to have automatic weapons.) As Kim Stanley Robinson writes, “An excess of reason is in itself a form of madness.
Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing)
Every nation and every culture Since the beginning of time Has tried to make sense of this Intelligence, Whatever IT truly is. We all, every one of us, Want to know what IT is And what IT wants. We want our existence To make sense. We want our existence To have a reason, A meaning, a purpose, An ultimate destination. And we want to know That we go on After the death of these bodies. In our mission to understand, In our mission to make sense of it all, Mankind has given IT, Whatever IT truly is, Many different names And forms and motives And desires and agendas, Down to even the most petty Of the human emotions Of jealousy and greed and pride, And the need for praise. We have made IT racist. We have made IT sexist. We have given IT preferences Among races and creeds and cultures And nations and sexes and political parties. We have even used these beliefs To wage wars on each other. Yet the beliefs and the preferences That we have given IT Are our own doing. They represent Our feeble attempts At comprehending something That is far beyond our kin. Something that is beyond names And beyond agendas, Beyond human motives and understandings and desires, Beyond time and space, Beyond form and dimension, Beyond all that we, in our current level of understanding, Could possibly grasp.
Matthew Barnes (The Kybalion 101: a modern, practical guide, plain and simple)
Foundation of everything is more important that the walls. If the foundation is not built proper. The foundation is built with lies, deceits, scams, fabrication, and an agenda. The walls won’t stand for long. Make sure that whatever you are doing. Whatever you are starting. It being a business, party, career, hobby, relationship, friendship, or qualification. Make sure you build a good proper strong foundation, so that whatever you are building can stand the tests of time and the storms.
D.J. Kyos
But his sister Ivy was worse. She really did not care for material wealth. The alms she got was no bigger than ours, and she went about in scuffed, flat-heeled shoes and shirtwaists—just to show how selfless she was. She was our Director of Distribution. She was the lady in charge of our needs. She was the one who held us by the throat. Of course, distribution was supposed to be decided by voting—by the voice of the people. But when the people are six thousand howling voices, trying to decide without yardstick, rhyme or reason, when there are no rules to the game and each can demand anything, but has a right to nothing, when everybody holds power over everybody’s life except his own—then it turns out, as it did, that the voice of the people is Ivy Starnes. By the end of the second year, we dropped the pretense of the ‘family meetings’—in the name of ‘production efficiency and time economy,’ one meeting used to take ten days—and all the petitions of need were simply sent to Miss Starnes’ office. No, not sent. They had to be recited to her in person by every petitioner. Then she made up a distribution list, which she read to us for our vote of approval at a meeting that lasted three-quarters of an hour. We voted approval. There was a ten-minute period on the agenda for discussion and objections. We made no objections. We knew better by that time. Nobody can divide a factory’s income among thousands of people, without some sort of a gauge to measure people’s value. Her gauge was bootlicking. Selfless? In her father’s time, all of his money wouldn’t have given him a chance to speak to his lousiest wiper and get away with it, as she spoke to our best skilled workers and their wives. She had pale eyes that looked fishy, cold and dead. And if you ever want to see pure evil, you should have seen the way her eyes glinted when she watched some man who’d talked back to her once and who’d just heard his name on the list of those getting nothing above basic pittance. And when you saw it, you saw the real motive of any person who’s ever preached the slogan: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
In the second year of the Trump presidency, I attended a dinner of American hedge funders in Hong Kong. I was there as a guest speaker, to survey the usual assortment of global hot spots. A thematic question emerged from the group—was the “Pax Americana” over? There was a period of familiar cross-talk about whether Trump was a calamitous force unraveling the international order or merely an impolitic Republican politician advancing a conventional agenda. I kept interjecting that Trump was ushering in a new era—one of rising nationalist competition that could lead to war and unchecked climate change, to the implosion of American democracy and the accelerated rise of a China that would impose its own rules on the world. Finally, one of the men at the table interrupted with some frustration. He demanded a show of hands—how many around the table had voted for Trump, attracted by the promise of tax cuts and deregulation? After some hesitation, hand after hand went up, until I was looking at a majority of raised hands. The tally surprised me. Sure, I understood the allure of tax cuts and deregulation to a group like that. But these were also people who clearly understood the dangers that Trump posed to American democracy and international order. The experience suggested that even that ambiguous term “Pax Americana” was subordinate to the profit motive that informed seemingly every aspect of the American machinery. I’d come to know the term as a shorthand for America’s sprawling global influence, and how—on balance—the Pax Americana offered some stability amid political upheavals, some scaffolding around the private dramas of billions of individual lives. From the vantage point of these bankers, the Pax Americana protected their stake in international capital markets while allowing for enough risk—wars, coups, shifting energy markets, new technologies—so that they could place profitable bets on the direction of events. Trump was a bet. He’d make it easier for them to do their business and allow them to keep more of their winnings, but he was erratic and hired incompetent people—so much so that he might put the whole enterprise at risk. But it was a bet that enough Americans were willing to make, including those who knew better. From the perspective of financial markets, I had just finished eight years in middle management, as a security official doing his small part to keep the profit-generating ocean liner moving. The debates of seemingly enormous consequence—about the conduct of wars, the nature of national identity, and the fates of many millions of human beings—were incidental to the broader enterprise of wealth being created.
Ben Rhodes (After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made)
In the advanced age in which I find myself, I am no longer surprised by humanity. I witnessed the hypocrisy of the so-called evolution with my own eyes, observing humanity consistently deny history and repeat the same mistakes. However, there were exceptions, there are always exceptions, and Xióng was one of them. This old gentleman achieved enlightenment, leaving the temples when he was young after standing before me. He returned when he was old, realizing that he would never be a wise old man stagnating in a temple for his entire life. He became an adventurer, dedicating his life to it, helping people, challenging their warriors, always offering mercy in the end. Eventually, he meditated until he took root in his surroundings, until his soul left him and returned to the world of the living, defying death with his fulfilled life. Thus, I created an "exception". "Exceptions" are the reason we must fight, a motive not to let them suffer in a world of hypocrisies, degenerations, and virtues of facades. - Kahn's books.
Psycho Agenda's Danilo Barbosa
Trust the One who entrusted you with life. He does not have any hidden agenda.
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
Validation is an integral part of life, but do not expect people who do not know what your life is about to help you with that. They may have their own agenda.
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
Systems willing to be brutally honest are systems ready for newfound health. In this church, the bold and courageous people who came to the mic were recognized as loving truth-tellers, motivated by the church’s health and not by their self-serving agendas. The congregation’s trust in them led to a collective agreement to enter into a transparent process toward health guided by an outside consultant.
Chuck DeGroat (When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse)
Three of the leading opponents of behavioral genetics collaborated on a book that set out to deconstruct the new science and reverse the biological tide. The book was Not in Our Genes, and the authors were three of the most vigilant critics of the genetic view: Richard Lewontin, a population geneticist at Harvard; the indefatigable Leon Kamin, who was then at Princeton’s psychology department; and Steven Rose, a neurobiologist at England’s Open University. Although the book had slight impact, it is worth examining as a compendium of the arguments and methods of the opponents of behavioral genetics, arguments that these critics, and their shrinking band of allies, continue to make despite repeated refutations. Throughout the text the authors, with admirable candor, proclaim their Marxist perspective and their “commitment to … a more socially just—a socialist—society.” Few pages go by without references to “dialectics,” “bourgeois society,” and “capitalist values.” The authors’ apparently feel their clean breast about their politics permitted wholesale assumptions about those of their opponents. We are leftists is their implicit claim; but you on the other side of the scientific fence are reactionaries. Liberals, they appeared to be saying, can have only one scientific view, theirs; any other must be right-wing and antiliberal. “Biological determinist ideas,” they say, “are part of the attempt to preserve the inequalities of our society and to shape human nature in its own image.” It must surely have come as unpleasant news to Sandra Scarr, Jerome Kagan, and other liberal psychologists to learn that they were striving to preserve society’s inequalities. In addition, the authors’ nasty assumptions of their opponents’ motives must have been an eye-opener to the hundreds of microbiologists, lab technicians, DNA scanners, rat-runners, statistical analysts, and all the others engaged in behavioral genetics research who learned from the book that they were going to work each day “to preserve the interests of the dominant class, gender, and race.” But the falsity of the authors’ premise goes well beyond slandering a few individuals. Throughout the text, the writers deny the possibility that scientists could exist who place their curiosity about the world ahead of their political agendas. Lewontin, Kamin, and Rose deny as well the possibility of any man or woman, including themselves, separating science from politics. (“Science is not and cannot be above ‘mere’ politics.”) They leave no room for the scientist who is so intrigued by new information, in this case gene-behavior discoveries, that he or she is oblivious to alleged political consequences. For the authors, all scientists who seek out biological influences on behavior, from Darwin to Robert Plomin, are willing servants of the status quo, if not promoters of a return to feudalism.
William Wright (Born That Way: Genes, Behavior, Personality)
It is no accident that the primary motive, the hidden agenda in any relationship, is the yearning to return. It is the cardinal's project, the Eden project, the professed aim of the Romantic poets, the yearning for the Beloved. It is essentially a religious search, as attested to by the etymology of the word "religion," from Latin religare, to tie back to, reconnect with. Consciousness is achieved only through the loss of the Other, and the perception that the Other is truly Other.
James Hollis
~Misinterpreting intentions can lead to missed opportunities for meaningful connections. Avoid primitive thinking. Seeing every gesture as a hidden agenda is a disservice to both ourselves and others. Let's evolve beyond primitive thinking and embrace a more inclusive mindset. It really pains me when I go an extra mile trying to secure opportunities & connections that might favor you and actually benefit you, for your own good. However, some of you still possess outdated beliefs, wrongly associating any friendly message with ulterior sexual motives. It's time to shed these misconceptions and elevate your level of intellectual maturity.
CARSON ANEKEYA
privatization of prisons in the United States highlights the potential dangers of this approach. Private prisons operate on a for-profit basis, incentivizing cost-cutting measures that often compromise safety and rehabilitation programs. Studies have shown that private prisons tend to have higher rates of violence and poorer conditions compared to public facilities. Moreover, the profit motive can lead to policies that increase incarceration rates, exacerbating issues of mass incarceration and social injustice.
Carl Young (Project 2025: Exposing the Hidden Dangers of the Radical Agenda for Everyday Americans (Project 2025 Blueprints))
I have noticed that if a good foundation is not laid among those who join a new church early on, there will be a corresponding weakness in the church that is built. These are some of the things I have noticed: • Sometimes when a new church is planted in a nation where there are already many churches, some of those who join early on may be existing Christians dissatisfied with the church they previously belonged to. Often such people come with particular agendas or ‘pet doctrines’, and it is very important that the foundational values of the new church are clearly stated and implemented early on to avoid confusion and division, and to ensure that the church is built on agreed positive values, rather than negative ones of discontent and dissension.
David Devenish (Fathering Leaders, Motivating Mission: Restoring the Role of the Apostle in Today's Church)
Every time our great Country has been critically challenged either by dictators or terrorists, we as a Country have put aside our personal agendas and focused on doing what we need to do to win when threatened.
George M. Gilbert (Team Of One: We Believe)
You’ve approached the opportunity before you at a leisurely pace, but now it’s time to grab it and go for it with gusto. By meeting this challenging situation head-on, you’ll discover that you have some powerful gifts and skills that you were unaware of. If one way isn’t working, try another; and don’t get stuck in any single approach. Spend a day or two with no plans or agenda, guided only by your intuition—whether a day of activity, quiet reflection, or a combination. Take full responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, and actions, rather than blaming others or life circumstances. GREAT BLUE HERON Take some time for self-examination, reflecting dispassionately on your goals, motivations, actions, feelings, strengths, and limiting beliefs. Only you know what’s best for you, so follow your inner wisdom and guidance rather than the dictates and pressures of others.
Steven D. Farmer (Pocket Guide to Spirit Animals: Understanding Messages from Your Animal Spirit Guides)
So many of our prayers are self-centered grocery lists of personal cravings that have no bigger agenda than to make our lives a little more comfortable. They tend to treat God more as our personal shopper than a holy and wise Father-King. Such prayers forget God’s glory and long for a greater experience of the glories of the created world. They lack fear, reverence, wonder, and worship. They’re more like pulling up the divine shopping site than bowing our knees in adoration and worship. They are motivated more by awe of ourselves and our pleasures than by a heart-rattling, satisfaction-producing awe of the Redeemer to whom we are praying.
Paul David Tripp (Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do)
The conscious mind and the unconscious mind jointly govern human beings’ desires, thoughts, and behavior, which unified totally in a singular human body houses what we term the self. The conscious mind frequently assist facilitate the agenda of the unconscious mind. Incompatible cravings of the conscious and unconscious mind generate tension and emotional turmoil, which can manifest itself in erratic behavior that produces self-doubt and self-questioning. One of the main conundrums of human beings is that the unconscious mind, which guides important aspects of human behavior and motivation, is virtually unknowable. The power of conscious thought – the ability to rationalize – misleads us into thinking we are primary logical entities, when we live most of our lives by unconsciously scanning external stimuli and reacting to events in real time without conscious reflection.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
The world is not a great place because racist people come with a race type of agenda, and it don't make the world great, it makes it worst than ever.
Werley Nortreus (Best Quotes of Werley Nortreus)
the government-slashing agenda of the Koch network was a problem for these voters. Fink acknowledged, “We want to decrease regulations. Why? It’s because we can make more profit, okay? Yeah, and cut government spending so we don’t have to pay so much taxes. There’s truth in that.” But the “middle third” of American voters, he warned, was uncomfortable with positions that seemed motivated by greed.
Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
If you say that something is technically correct, you are suggesting that it is wrong – the adverb before “correct” implies a “but”. However, to say that a statement is politically correct hints at something more insidious. Namely, that the speaker is acting in bad faith. He or she has ulterior motives, and is hiding the truth in order to advance an agenda or to signal moral superiority. To say that someone is being “politically correct” discredits them twice. First, they are wrong. Second, and more damningly, they know it.
Moira Weigel
Moreover, the bureaucracy will be of the noblest and most virtuous sort, with no personal, political, or ideological agenda, motivated solely and completely by its technical know-how in and public-spiritedness for the general good and welfare.
Mark R. Levin (Rediscovering Americanism: And the Tyranny of Progressivism)
Tripolar spirituality is not a desirable consequence or an optional third way; it is not an extra or additive dimension. Rather, it is a radical alternative to both monopolar and bipolar spirituality. When love for God and neighbor are interdependent and inseparable, a pivotal redirection results, and an acute deviation from social norms ensues. Committing oneself to tripolar spirituality is making a painful decision to depart from cultural mandates and to risk countercultural actions motivated by a new agenda that becomes the prime factor revolutionizing one’s life.
David Augsburger (Dissident Discipleship: A Spirituality of Self-Surrender, Love of God, and Love of Neighbor)
There is no evidence from anywhere in the world that harm reduction measures encourage drug use. Denying addicts humane assistance multiplies their miseries without bringing them one inch closer to recovery. There is also no contradiction between harm reduction and abstinence. The two objectives are incompatible only if we imagine that we can set the agenda for someone else’s life regardless of what he or she may choose. We cannot. Short of extreme coercion there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to induce another to give up addiction, except to provide the island of relief where contemplation and self-respect can, perhaps, take root. Those ready to choose abstinence should receive every possible support — much more support than we currently provide. But what of those who don’t choose that path? The impossibility of changing other people is not restricted to addictions. Try as we may to motivate another person to be different or to do this or not to do that, our attempts founder on a basic human trait: the drive for autonomy. “And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests and sometimes one positively ought,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in Notes from the Underground. “What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.” The issue is not whether the addict would be better off without his habit — of course he would — but whether we are going to abandon him if he is unable to give it up. Are we willing to care for human beings who suffer because of their own persistent behaviours, mindful that these behaviours stem from early life misfortunes they had no hand in creating? The harm reduction approach accepts that some people — many people — are too deeply enmeshed in substance dependence for any realistic “cure” under present circumstances. There is, for now, too much pain in their lives and too few internal and external resources available to them. In practising harm reduction we do not give up on abstinence — on the contrary, we may hope to encourage that possibility by helping people feel better, bringing them into therapeutic relationships with caregivers, offering them a sense of trust, removing judgment from our interactions with them and giving them a sense of acceptance. At the same time, we do not hold out abstinence as the Holy Grail and we do not make our valuation of addicts as worthwhile human beings dependent on their making choices that please us. Harm reduction is as much an attitude and way of being as it is a set of policies and methods.
Gabor Maté (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction)
The first and only item on the agenda of the ad hoc meeting of the Residents’ Association: new mobility-scooter regulations, motivated by a head-on collision between two motorized chairs turning a corner from opposite directions.
Hendrik Groen (The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old)
So, he explained, the government-slashing agenda of the Koch network was a problem for these voters. Fink acknowledged, “We want to decrease regulations. Why? It’s because we can make more profit, okay? Yeah, and cut government spending so we don’t have to pay so much taxes. There’s truth in that.” But the “middle third” of American voters, he warned, was uncomfortable with positions that seemed motivated by greed.
Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
Christians often fail to get in touch with the shocking message that can lie at the heart of evangelism: “I am here to change you, and I’m going to change you so that you become like me.” There are some obvious dangers here once we think about all this. If we approach people in this way, we are not treating them as people. We are not respecting them. We are treating them as part of our own program, like an objective and a statistic, and this is self-centered as well as disrespectful. An obnoxious smell of superiority is apparent. Further, we are judging people as fundamentally inadequate. *We* are okay, of course. Missionary work conducted in this spirit is a well-intentioned but self-centered power-play… We can avoid this instrumentalizing of potential converts - a making of them into something like an instrument or tool that then does something for us - only by approaching them for their own sakes and hence not as potential converts at all. We must value our initial relationships with people for what they are and not in terms of what we want out of them. This means that we must want to become their friends. Moreover, it must be a friendship with no strings attached. We must seek out relationships because we are interested in and value other people for who they are, right where they are. Conversions would be nice, but they are not our main agenda. We hope and pray for the best for our new friends, but that is not our principal motivation for relating to them. In this way and only in this way do we avoid colonizing people as we convert them.
Douglas A. Campbell (Paul: An Apostle's Journey)
This is the magic of nonverbal communication. It allows us to pursue illicit agendas, even ones that require coordinating with other people, while minimizing the risk of being attacked, accused, gossiped about, and censured for norm violations. This is one of the reasons we’re strategically unaware of our own body language, and it helps explain why we’re reluctant to teach it to our children.60
Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
Accomplices listen with respect for the range of cultural practices and dynamics that exist within various indigenous communities. Accomplices aren't motivated by personal guilt or shame; they may have their own agenda, but they are explicit. Accomplices are realized through mutual consent and build trust. They don't just have our backs; they are at our side, or in their own spaces confronting and unsettling colonialism. As accomplices, we are compelled to become accountable and responsible to each other; that is the nature of trust. Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex. Taking Sides.
Indigenous Action Media
Uh-Oh . . . One year I was the guest speaker at an annual conference. The person who coordinated the agenda mistakenly typed my name as “Sue” rather than “Susan.” I felt odd and a little disrespected because they didn’t take the time to ask the spelling of my name. It felt awkward when I saw it on all the tables throughout the ballroom, to say the least. I asked, “Please make sure that you introduce me as Susan because I’ve never been called Sue.” The initial impression was sticky for an instant, but they quickly made it right. The correction was shared and everything turned out fine. Even an innocent and unintentional name error can impact your first impressions. Making a joke about it once I was on stage was a light-hearted way to confirm my real name.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Communication: 8 Ways to Confirm Clarity & Understanding for Positive Impact(The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #5))
What is the motive behind your services? If it is self-centered, self-serving, and lacking consideration for others, then earning people’s trust, rapport, and business will inevitably be more of a struggle. A self-serving agenda throws up red flags which stop relationships dead in their tracks. It can destroy trust, make people wary of your intentions, and push customers to your competition.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Action: 8 Ways to Initiate & Activate Forward Momentum for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #4))
However, if your agenda is truly to serve, your ROI (return on investment) will substantially expand. As we know from the "Law of Reciprocity," what you give is what you get. If you are helping people only to see what you can get out of it, your pie stays small and your opportunities stay limited. However, if you sincerely want to help people succeed, you will not only enjoy more success, but expand your possibilities beyond your expectations. Once you see the benefits from all directions, you will not want it any other way!
Susan C. Young (The Art of Action: 8 Ways to Initiate & Activate Forward Momentum for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #4))
Do you attend networking events to give out as many cards as possible or is it your intention to deliver something of value? When you are busy charging ahead with your own agenda, you're not meeting the needs of anyone but yourself—and it's obvious!
Susan C. Young (The Art of Communication: 8 Ways to Confirm Clarity & Understanding for Positive Impact(The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #5))
We all have individual ideas and agendas for managing our days and our lives. However, it is when we foster a sense of wonder and nurture a sincere curiosity that we can move beyond the predictable and mundane.
Susan C. Young
It is not in God’s nature to control us, so if we begin to work in a lesser way than we were designed to, he can only invite us into a higher place. If we do not respond to God when he draws us, then we become stumbling blocks because of our own self-centered desires. Even good Christian people can become the enemies of what God wants to accomplish: If their agenda and will do not imitate his, then they are against His. This is why it is so important to let our spirit and understanding be disciplined by God’s Word so that we can comprehend his desires and will. The main reason our desires do not match those of heaven is that we are motivated by materialism and pride, which Satan loves to play off of and manipulate. We may then use the very attributes God has given us to gain a selfish status that is counterproductive.
Shawn Bolz (Keys to Heaven's Economy: An Angelic Visitation from the Minister of Finance)
A discerning spirit will always reveal a deceitful agenda
T.M. Haddock (Revealed: Book One (Now & Then))
Espousing antiscience—that the absence of absolute certainty is grounds for inaction or doubt, or that we should then hear out all perspectives equally—is evidence of either a lack of understanding of the most basic tenets of reason, or of motivation by an unreasonable agenda.
Shawn Lawrence Otto (the war on Science)
To become a neutral writer is the hardest way or else, one can say, impossible. The pledges work in the back of the mind; thus, no one is neutral. Such claim displays itself as the motives with an agenda.
Ehsan Sehgal
Over the years, I'd convinced myself that good rarely exists in this world, and if it does, it comes with ulterior motives and hidden agendas. But the truth is that good is everywhere. It's harder to see, but often it's right in front of you.
Dete Meserve (Good Sam (Kate Bradley Mystery, #1))
Jihadists are following their agenda, doing what they believe Allah has told them to do – kill unbelievers (kafir) and conquer the world, including every nation, for Allah. Much of what motivates Jihadists may be found in examining Muslim prophecies of the Last Day. It is likely, few of us knew that Muslim even had “prophecies”, or that they also believed in a “Last Day,” but they certainly do.
John Price (The End of America: The Role of Islam in the End Times and Biblical Warnings to Flee America)
Expository preaching will impact your congregation, because it helps you be faithful to the text and be relevant to your context in regular ministry implement a strategy for equipping and energizing your people for long-term faithfulness to God and the ministry overcome your tendency to target a sermon to a particular person or group and be protected from that charge avoid skipping over what does not suit your taste or temperament on any given day carry on a cohesive ministry in the middle of multiple dimensions and demands on you as a pastor enhance the dignity of the pastoral work since you stand under the authority of God’s Word as you preach integrate the conversation of the church around the message of the week communicate the intentions of God for your congregation as seen by its human leaders orient people around a common vision, thus helping you surface the voluntary labor force needed to achieve the vision motivate people to action in implementing the program of the church with God’s sanction garner the credibility needed to lead the church to change model effective ministry to present and future teachers and preachers outline the agenda for corporate spirituality make your congregation biblically literate
Ramesh Richard (Preparing Expository Sermons: A Seven-Step Method for Biblical Preaching)
The Cross enables each of God’s children to learn to say no. In the Gospels, Jesus did not do everything others wanted him to do (see John 2:3—4; 4:43—54; 6:15, 26—27, 30—40; 7:3—10; 8:48—59; 10:30—39; 11:1—6, 21—27; 13:8—10; 18:19—24, 33—37). Instead, he was motivated by his Father’s will. Christian love does not make us slaves to the agenda of others; it makes us slaves and servants of Christ, and therefore willing to serve others. There will be times when my allegiance to Christ means that it is loving and right to say no to other people’s requests.
Timothy S. Lane (How People Change)
Your love for me is transparent, no hidden agenda, no ulterior motive.
Euginia Herlihy
Critical thinking helps us to more clearly understand situations, patients, colleagues, and our agendas, negative emotions, attitudes, motivations, talents, and growing edges. This not only helps us to have a greater grasp of reality but also stops the drain of psychological energy that is necessary to be defensive or to protect our image. Because critical thinking is not natural, although we may think it is for us, it takes discipline, a willingness to face the unpleasant, and a stamina that allows one not to become unduly frustrated when we do not achieve results as quickly as we prefer with respect to our insights and growth.
Robert J. Wicks (Overcoming Secondary Stress in Medical and Nursing Practice: A Guide to Professional Resilience and Personal Well-Being)
Abba Father! Your love for me is transparent no hidden agenda, no ulterior motives because You are the Holy God. And the only thing abides us is the covenant of your love that will never be broken. In times of need I call unto You and You answer. When I feel alone you always beside me with Your loving and caring touch.
Euginia Herlihy