Attributed Motivational Quotes

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Ah cher ami, how poor in invention men are! They are They always think one commits suicide for a reason. But it's quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what's the good of dying intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs, cher ami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood--never!
Albert Camus (The Fall (Vintage International))
The Lotus in Buddhism is a sacred symbol that represents purity and resurrection as attributes that develop through a spiritual awakening of the self. With humble beginnings in swamplands, the Lotus flower exquisitely blooms, pure and untainted, from this murky world it thrives in. The Lotus flower represents a higher state of mind, a strong spirit cultivated far from the suffering and temptations of this muddied world that personifies beauty through the present moment.
Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
She certainly did not hate him. No; hatred had vanished long ago, and she had almost as long been ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him, that could be so called. The respect created by the conviction of his valuable qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some time ceased to be repugnant to her feelings; and it was now heightened into somewhat of a friendlier nature, by the testimony so highly in his favour, and bringing forward his disposition in so amiable a light, which yesterday had produced. But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good will 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 who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister. Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment but gratitude--for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed; and as such its impression on her was of a sort to be encouraged, as by no means unpleasing, though it could not exactly be defined.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
It is a human failing, to attribute the best of motives to those we know the least, and the worst to those we love best.
Jacqueline Carey (Kushiel's Dart (Phèdre's Trilogy, #1))
Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. The mind is an attribute of the individual. The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary. No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.
Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)
Your shyness alone will bring you more emotional and material losses than all of your other negative attributes.
Amit Kalantri
I know it's not strictly sex that accounts for my straying the motive usually attributed to men. I think it's just too tempting to have two lives rather than one. Some people think that too much travel begets infidelity: Separation and opportunity test the bonds of love. I think it's more likely that people who hate to make choices to settle on one thing or another are attracted to travel. Travel doesn't beget a double life. The appeal of the double life begets travel.
Elisabeth Eaves (Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents)
But, if I dare say it, it wasn't until I had helped kill a man that I realized how elusive and complex an act a murder can actually be, and not necessarily attributable to one dramatic motive.
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Henchard's motives in opening the matter at all; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a power of consistent action which we never find in ourselves or or in our friends...
Thomas Hardy (The Mayor of Casterbridge)
She felt puzzled and ashamed, as always when people attributed to her emotions and motives they possessed and thought she shared.
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
It should be noted, as with so many legends and popularly accepted truths created out of political motivation: There, in fact, is no evidence that the hundreds of murders historically attributed to the werewolves of Gévaudan were actually caused by wolves. As with all witchhunts, the endless battle against ignorance requires one to always keep an open mind and sharp wits when considering such rumors - especially the rumors we choose to enjoy.
Zeena Schreck (Beatdom #11: The Nature Issue)
Let us not attribute to malice and cruelty what may be referred to less criminal motives.’ I make it a point never to assume the worst about people.
Elle Cosimano (Finlay Donovan Is Killing It (Finlay Donovan, #1))
Early on, Abraham revealed a keystone attribute essential to success in any field—the motivation and willpower to develop every talent he possessed to the fullest.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
Don’t assume sabotage when obliviousness is the more likely answer. Human beings are inclined to attribute things to malice that are best explained by apathy, and when we falsely identify other people’s motivations, we create a situation in our minds that not only doesn’t exist but colors all of our future interactions.
Rachel Hoffman (Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess)
Laura also thought that the law had done a great deal to spoil Henry. It had changed his natural sturdy stupidity into a browbeating indifference to other people's point of view. He seemed to consider himself briefed by his Creator to turn into ridicule the opinions of those who disagreed with him, and to attribute dishonesty, idiocy, or a base motive to every one who supported a better case than he.
Sylvia Townsend Warner (Lolly Willowes)
She was a plain-faced old woman, without graces and without any great elegance, but with an extreme respect for her own motives. She was usually prepared to explain these—when the explanation was asked as a favour; and in such a case they proved totally different from those that had been attributed to her
Henry James (The Portrait of a Lady)
There is a classic psychology experiment that seems to confirm Brewer's point. Children who enjoy drawing were given marker pens and allowed to go at it. Some were rewarded for drawing (they were given a certificate with a gold seal and a ribbon, and told ahead of time about this arrangement, whereas for others the issue of rewards was never raised. Weeks later, those who had been rewarded took less interest in drawing, and their drawings were judged to be lower in quality, whereas those who had not been rewarded continued to enjoy the activity and produced higher-quality drawings. The hypothesis is that the child begins to attribute his interest, which previously needed no justification, to the external reward, and this has the effect of reducing his intrinsic interest in it. That is, an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, an interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling.
Matthew B. Crawford (Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work)
motives of people, she was inclined to credit any extraordinary happening attributed to the whimsical perambulations of the buried. The desperate squeakings about the old house on
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
Survivors don't allow the word QUIT in their dictionary because they know the art of staying positive in any kind of negative situation." "BE A SURVIVOR
Dipika Agarwal (The Better Side - 16 Positive Attributes To Lead A Better Life)
Uniqueness is an attribute of people who choose to live life on their own terms.
Ozan Kulcu (A Lean Mind: Managing the Mind Process to Reach Emotional Balance)
Even the tiny protests help
Patsy Mink
People mock, laugh, and make memes about things that are beyond their level of comprehension. And when people hate, they hate everything about you, even the things you do with good intentions.
Verliza Gajeles
The conference is geared to people who enjoy meaningful discussions and sometimes "move a conversation to a deeper level, only to find out we are the only ones there." . . . When it's my turn, I talk about how I've never been in a group environment in which I didn't feel obliged to present an unnaturally rah-rah version of myself. . . . Scientists can easily report on the behavior of extroverts, who can often be found laughing, talking, or gesticulating. But "if a person is standing in the corner of a room, you can attribute about fifteen motivations to that person. But you don't really know what's going on inside." . . . So what is the inner behavior of people whose most visible feature is that when you take them to a party they aren't very pleased about it? . . . The highly sensitive tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive . . . . They dream vividly, and can often recall their dreams the next day. They love music, nature, art, physical beauty. They feel exceptionally strong emotions--sometimes acute bouts of joy, but also sorrow, melancholy, and fear. Highly sensitive people also process information about their environments--both physical and emotional--unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss--another person's shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly. . . . [Inside fMRI machines], the sensitive people were processing the photos at a more elaborate level than their peers . . . . It may also help explain why they're so bored by small talk. "If you're thinking in more complicated ways," she told me, "then talking about the weather or where you went for the holidays is not quite as interesting as talking about values or morality." The other thing Aron found about sensitive people is that sometimes they're highly empathic. It's as if they have thinner boundaries separating them from other people's emotions and from the tragedies and cruelties of the world. They tend to have unusually strong consciences. They avoid violent movies and TV shows; they're acutely aware of the consequences of a lapse in their own behavior. In social settings they often focus on subjects like personal problems, which others consider "too heavy.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
I don’t think of you as a typical beauty. I never once did. To me your hair mimics asphalt more than the lustrous feathers of ravens. Comparing your eyes to heavenly lights seems a stretch when they are the common color of dirt. I can’t imagine you as a tall, pole-slender image; your God-given shape is right bulky. But I never cared about such pointless things anyway. What good have trivial attributes ever done the world? When I look at you, I see you—or in other words, all of you that really matters. I see a kind heart and compassionate arms. I see a patient, gentle spirit abounding with love towards all of God’s creatures. I see the perfect blend of humility and strength of character. I see a wise intellect as well as an endearing sense of humor. I see all the qualities that make you the person I love, regardless of the bodily package you’re bound in. So forgive me if I don’t think you’re beautiful, because I find you to be far superior to that worthless and pointless nonsense the world calls beauty.
Richelle E. Goodrich (Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year)
Owing to the shape of a bell curve, the education system is geared to the mean. Unfortunately, that kind of education is virtually calculated to bore and alienate gifted minds. But instead of making exceptions where it would do the most good, the educational bureaucracy often prefers not to be bothered. In my case, for example, much of the schooling to which I was subjected was probably worse than nothing. It consisted not of real education, but of repetition and oppressive socialization (entirely superfluous given the dose of oppression I was getting away from school). Had I been left alone, preferably with access to a good library and a minimal amount of high-quality instruction, I would at least have been free to learn without useless distractions and gratuitous indoctrination. But alas, no such luck. Let’s try to break the problem down a bit. The education system […] is committed to a warm and fuzzy but scientifically counterfactual form of egalitarianism which attributes all intellectual differences to environmental factors rather than biology, implying that the so-called 'gifted' are just pampered brats who, unless their parents can afford private schooling, should atone for their undeserved good fortune by staying behind and enriching the classroom environments of less privileged students. This approach may appear admirable, but its effects on our educational and intellectual standards, and all that depends on them, have already proven to be overwhelmingly negative. This clearly betrays an ulterior motive, suggesting that it has more to do with social engineering than education. There is an obvious difference between saying that poor students have all of the human dignity and basic rights of better students, and saying that there are no inherent educationally and socially relevant differences among students. The first statement makes sense, while the second does not. The gifted population accounts for a very large part of the world’s intellectual resources. As such, they can obviously be put to better use than smoothing the ruffled feathers of average or below-average students and their parents by decorating classroom environments which prevent the gifted from learning at their natural pace. The higher we go on the scale of intellectual brilliance – and we’re not necessarily talking just about IQ – the less support is offered by the education system, yet the more likely are conceptual syntheses and grand intellectual achievements of the kind seldom produced by any group of markedly less intelligent people. In some cases, the education system is discouraging or blocking such achievements, and thus cheating humanity of their benefits.
Christopher Michael Langan
This is your life, not someone else's. It is your own feeling of what is important, not what people will say. Sooner or later, you are bound to discover that you cannot please all of the people around you all of the time. Some of t hem will attribute to you motives you never dreamed of. Some of them will misinterpret your words and actions, making them completely alien to you. So you had better learn fairly early that you must not expect to have everyone understand what you say and what you do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
If you want to be happy, try never to be negative. As a plan, it is unproductive and does not work.
Gordon Roddick
Saying nothing must be saying something.
Gordon Roddick
Just like trust that takes time to build, healing also takes time to feel.
Verliza Gajeles
motives for greed and selfishness are often attributed to toil and source of riches.
Michael Bassey Johnson
When you become confident of what you deserve , dont allow yourself to settle for less. The power lies in YOU because no one else can be YOU." DREAM , WORK AND ACHIEVE !!!
Dipika Agarwal (The Better Side - 16 Positive Attributes To Lead A Better Life)
Your vibes define your character. Be the one for whom people demand, When you know you are destined for greatness, You feel incomplete until you succeed.
Dipika Agarwal (The Better Side - 16 Positive Attributes To Lead A Better Life)
The child is father of the man….attributed to Sigmund Freud, but believed to have been coined by a well-known poet years before Freud's time
Shirl Solomon (Knowing Your Child through His Handwriting and Drawings)
when potential greatness meets with actual greatness, the future is inspired with hope.
Chidi Prosper Agbugba
Never for even one second be concerned about the attribution of false motive.
Robin Blair-Crawford
A responsible person accepts the results of his choices, attributing blame or praise to himself; that is what makes you happy with the way you turned out.
Innocent Mwatsikesimbe (Mirror (Mere Reflections #2))
In business, the size of our success is partly attributable to the fear of failure that has prevented some people from being our competitors.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
In 2007, Stanford Business School Advisory committee asserted that self awareness was the most important attribute a leader should develop. The challenge for the modern entrepreneur is to take that path.
Kevin Kelly DO the pursuit of xceptional execution
Even with all its positive attributes, capitalism in its imperialistic form is the most treacherous system mankind ever devised. It is driven by a selfishness that has an almost religious underlining to it.
Janvier Chouteu-Chando
I felt that the metal of my spirit, like a bar of iron that is softened and bent by a persistent flame, was being gradually softened and bent by the troubles that oppressed it. In spite of myself, I was conscious of a feeling of envy for those who did not suffer from such troubles, for the wealthy and the privileged; and this envy, I observed, was accompanied—still against my will—by a feeling of bitterness towards them, which, in turn, did not limit its aim to particular persons or situations, but, as if by an uncontrollable bias, tended to assume the general, abstract character of a whole conception of life. In fact, during those difficult days, I came very gradually to feel that my irritation and my intolerance of poverty were turning into a revolt against injustice, and not only against the injustice which struck at me personally but the injustice from which so many others like me suffered. I was quite aware of this almost imperceptible transformation of my subjective resentments into objective reflections and states of mind, owing to the bent of my thoughts which led always and irresistibly in the same direction: owing also to my conversation, which, without my intending it, alway harped upon the same subject. I also noticed in myself a growing sympathy for those political parties which proclaimed their struggle against the evils and infamies of the society to which, in the end I had attributed the troubles that beset me—a society which, as I thought, in reference to myself, allowed its best sons to languish and protected its worst ones. Usually, and in the simpler, less cultivated people, this process occurs without their knowing it, in the dark depths of consciousness where, by a kind of mysterious alchemy, egoism is transmuted into altruism, hatred into love, fear into courage; but to me, accustomed as I was to observing and studying myself, the whole thing was clear and visible, as though I were watching it happen in someone else; and yet I was aware the whole time that I was being swayed by material subjective factors, that I was transforming purely personal motives into universal reasons.
Alberto Moravia (Contempt)
It is as much about input – the conversation of imaginative men (women and children not excluded) has a rhythm, a phrase that follows a thought and precedes the development of further thought … try not to be a cunt.
Gordon Roddick
We usually judge people by our own reactions fears, and desires. We do not see them as separate people . . . but as part of ourselves and our lives. We attribute to them motives which we would have in the same circumstances.
Caryll Houselander
The modern mind, which regards itself as having transcended the domain of the magical, is nonetheless still endlessly capable of “irrational” (read motivated) reactions. We fall under the spell of experience whenever we attribute our frustration, aggression, devotion or lust to the person or situation that exists as the proximal “cause” of such agitation. We are not yet “objective,” even in our most clear-headed moments (and thank God for that).
Jordan B. Peterson (Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief)
Happiness is that which occurs when you know what sadness is, and that you possess neither it nor the attributes of it. So is sadness, that you know what happiness is, and that you possess neither happiness nor its attributes.
David Benedict Zumbo
When you make eye contact with another person, you can send thousands of silent messages without even speaking a word. No wonder eye contact can be both a direct form of communication and an elusive attribute at the same time.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Body Language: 8 Ways to Optimize Non-Verbal Communication for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #3))
Beautiful relations are based on bricks of trust, sometimes situations become unfriendly with no logical reasons behind it, some are eye-openers and some make you realize your faults , but if your intentions are right be bold enough to face all oppositions.
Dipika Agarwal (The Better Side - 16 Positive Attributes To Lead A Better Life)
Hannah Arendt once wrote that the great success of Stalinism among the intellectuals could be attributed to one annihilating tactic. Stalinism replaced all debate about the merit of an argument, or a position, or even a person, with an inquiry about motive.
Christopher Hitchens (No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton)
... people with a secure attachment style view their partners' well-being as their responsibility. As long as they have reason to believe their partner is in some sort of trouble, they'll continue to back him or her. Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver, in their book Attachment in Adulthood, show that people with a secure attachment style are more likely than others to forgive their partner for wrongdoing. They explain this as a complex combination of cognitive and emotional abilities: "Forgiveness requires difficult regulatory maneuvers . . . understanding a transgressor's needs and motives, and making generous attributions and appraisals concerning the transgressor's traits and hurtful actions . . . Secure people are likely to offer relatively benign explanations of their partners' hurtful actions and be inclined to forgive the partner." Also, as we've seen previously in this chapter, secure people just naturally dwell less on the negative and can turn off upsetting emotions without becoming defensively distant. The good news is that people with a secure attachment style have healthy instincts and usually catch on very early that someone is not cut out to be their partner. The bad news is that when secure people do, on occasion, enter into a negative relationship, they might not know when to call it quits--especially if it's a long-term, committed relationship in which they feel responsible for their partner's happiness.
Amir Levine & Rachel S.F. Heller (Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love)
efficiently means providing slots in our schedules where we can maintain an attentional set for an extended period. This allows us to get more done and finish up with more energy. Related to the manager/worker distinction is that the prefrontal cortex contains circuits responsible for telling us whether we’re controlling something or someone else is. When we set up a system, this part of the brain marks it as self-generated. When we step into someone else’s system, the brain marks it that way. This may help explain why it’s easier to stick with an exercise program or diet that someone else sets up: We typically trust them as “experts” more than we trust ourselves. “My trainer told me to do three sets of ten reps at forty pounds—he’s a trainer, he must know what he’s talking about. I can’t design my own workout—what do I know?” It takes Herculean amounts of discipline to overcome the brain’s bias against self-generated motivational systems. Why? Because as with the fundamental attribution error we saw in Chapter 4, we don’t have access to others’ minds, only our own. We are painfully aware of all the fretting and indecision, all the nuances of our internal decision-making process that led us to reach a particular conclusion. (I really need to get serious about exercise.) We don’t have access to that (largely internal) process in others, so we tend to take their certainty as more compelling, in many cases, than our own. (Here’s your program. Do it every day.)
Daniel J. Levitin (The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload)
They always think one commits suicide for a reason. But it is quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what is the good of dying intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs,cherami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood--never! Besides, let us not beat about the bush; I love life--that is my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life. Such avidity has something plebeian about it, don't you think?
Albert Camus (The Fall (Vintage International))
Everything we do, then, as teachers, has moral overtones. Through dialogue, modeling, the provision of practice, and the attribution of best motive, the one-caring as teacher nurtures the ethical idea. She cannot nurture the student intellectually without regard for the ethical ideal unless she is willing to risk producing a monster" (p. 179).
Nel Noddings (Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education)
Anyone who engages in social media witnesses the attribution error on a regular basis. Not only is there a tendency to assume other people’s motivations; we hastily infer their arguments and positions, based upon the pigeonhole into which we think they fit. Without listening to what they are actually saying, charitably interpreting that, and giving them an opportunity to clarify their position, we risk attributing a position to them that they don’t have, attacking a straw man, and then looking foolish. I’ve seen these exchanges rapidly degrade into mutual accusations of being a troll. There are real trolls out there, but sometimes trolling is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes we can be the troll.
Steven Novella (The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake)
Most of our failures in love involve self-deception. The other was not all that excited about the relationship, but we projected our enthusiasm onto the other and charged ahead. Or the other was hopeful, but we were cynical and attributed that same motivation to the other. We can ignore the needs of an other because they are not impulses we feel; we can ignore warning signs because they do not fit into our vision of what should be.
Brett Stevens (Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity)
Militant atheists seek to discredit religion based on a highly selective reading of history. There was a time not long ago—just a couple of centuries—when the Western world was saturated by religion. Militant atheists are quick to attribute many of the most unfortunate aspects of history to religion, yet rarely concede the immense debt that civilization owes to various monotheist religions, which created some of the world’s greatest literature, art, and architecture; led the movement to abolish slavery; and fostered the development of science and technology. One should not invalidate these achievements merely because they were developed for religious purposes. If much of science was originally a religious endeavor, does that mean science is not valuable? Is religiously motivated charity not genuine? Is art any less beautiful because it was created to express devotion to God? To regret religion is to regret our civilization and its achievements.
Bruce Sheiman (An Atheist Defends Religion)
Attention is malleable. We can intensify it, shift it either voluntarily or involuntarily. We can soften it, diffuse it. We can deploy global attention toward tangible external objects, or to their intangible attributes. We can direct attention internally to retrieve items that we have stored in memory. We can sustain attention by infusing a component of motivation, either from the top-down (by intention) or by much more subtler means related to our habitual ongoing attitudes.
James H. Austin (On the Varieties of Attention: A BIT of Selfless Insight (MIT Press BITS))
When people say things that we find offensive, civic charity asks that we resist the urge to attribute to immorality or prejudice views that can be equally well explained by other motives. It asks us to give the benefit of doubts, the assumption of goodwill, and the gift of attention. When people say things that agree with or respond thoughtfully to our arguments, we acknowledge that they have done so. We compliment where we can do so honestly, and we praise whatever we can legitimately find praiseworthy in their beliefs and their actions. When we argue with a forgiving affection, we recognize that people are often carried away by passions when discussing things of great importance to them. We overlook slights and insults and decline to respond in kind. We apologize when we get something wrong or when we hurt someone's feelings, and we allow others to apologize to us when they do the same. When people don't apologize, we still don't hold grudges or hurt them intentionally, even if we feel that they have intentionally hurt us. If somebody is abusive or obnoxious, we may decline to participate in further conversation, but we don't retaliate or attempt to make them suffer. And we try really hard not to give in to the overwhelming feeling that arguments must be won - and opponents destroyed - if we want to protect our own status or sense of worth. We never forget that our opponents are human beings who possess innate dignity and fellow citizens who deserve respect.
Michael Austin (We Must Not Be Enemies: Restoring America's Civic Tradition)
But what," said she, after a pause, "can have been his motive? What can have induced him to behave so cruelly?" "A thorough, determined dislike of me—a dislike which I cannot but attribute in some measure to jealousy. Had the late Mr. Darcy liked me less, his son might have borne with me better; but his father's uncommon attachment to me irritated him, I believe, very early in life. He had not a temper to bear the sort of competition in which we stood—the sort of preference which was often given me.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
Thou seest therefore that by this reasoning Aristotle doth attribute to God extensive infinity but not absolute intensive infinity withal, whence I would conclude that as his infinite motive power is constrained to motive action in conformity with finite speed, so also the same power of creating the immense and the innumerable is limited by his own will to the finite and numerable. Some theologians have argued almost in the same way, since besides admitting infinity in extension, whereby God conveyeth perpetual motion to the universe, they require also intensive infinity with which he can create and move innumerable worlds, and cause each of them and all at once to move instantaneously; nevertheless God hath thus limited by his will the number of the innumerable multitude of worlds, and also the quality of utterly intensive motion. And as this motion, which proceedeth indeed from infinite power (nothing interfering), is recognized as finite, so also the number of worlds may easily be believed to be determinate.
Giordano Bruno (On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds: Five Cosmological Dialogues (Collected Works of Giordano Bruno Book 2))
Herod was a king. He was not just responsible for himself alone. He couldn't tell himself, as I do: Let others do what they want, I refuse to procreate. Herod was a king and knew that he had to decide not only for himself but also for others, and he decided on behalf of all mankind that man would no longer reproduce. This is how the massacre of the newborns came about. His motives were not as vile as the ones tradition attributes to him. Herod was driven by a most generous wish finally to free the world from mankind's clutches.
Milan Kundera (Farewell Waltz)
That speech of Mr. Daubeny’s will never be forgotten by any one who heard it. Its studied bitterness had perhaps never been equalled, and yet not a word was uttered for the saying of which he could be accused of going beyond the limits of parliamentary antagonism. It is true that personalities could not have been closer, that accusations of political dishonesty and of almost worse than political cowardice and falsehood could not have been clearer, that no words in the language could have attributed meaner motives or more unscrupulous conduct.
Anthony Trollope (Complete Works of Anthony Trollope)
This isn’t some libertarian mistrust of government policy, which is healthy in any democracy. This is deep skepticism of the very institutions of our society. And it’s becoming more and more mainstream. We can’t trust the evening news. We can’t trust our politicians. Our universities, the gateway to a better life, are rigged against us. We can’t get jobs. You can’t believe these things and participate meaningfully in society. Social psychologists have shown that group belief is a powerful motivator in performance. When groups perceive that it’s in their interest to work hard and achieve things, members of that group outperform other similarly situated individuals. It’s obvious why: If you believe that hard work pays off, then you work hard; if you think it’s hard to get ahead even when you try, then why try at all? Similarly, when people do fail, this mind-set allows them to look outward. I once ran into an old acquaintance at a Middletown bar who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early. I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the “Obama economy” and how it had affected his life. I don’t doubt that the Obama economy has affected many, but this man is assuredly not among them. His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he’s made, and his life will improve only through better decisions. But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself. There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day. Here is where the rhetoric of modern conservatives (and I say this as one of them) fails to meet the real challenges of their biggest constituents. Instead of encouraging engagement, conservatives increasingly foment the kind of detachment that has sapped the ambition of so many of my peers. I have watched some friends blossom into successful adults and others fall victim to the worst of Middletown’s temptations—premature parenthood, drugs, incarceration. What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault. My dad, for example, has never disparaged hard work, but he mistrusts some of the most obvious paths to upward mobility. When
J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
This was his glory and his guilt-- that he let them teach him to feel guilty of his glory, to accept the part of a sacrificial animal and, in punishment for the sin of intelligence, to perish on the altars of the brutes. The tragic joke of human history is that on any of the altars men erected, it was always man whom they immolated and the animal whom they enshrined. It was always the animal's attributes, not man's, that humanity worshipped: the idol of instinct and the idol of force--the mystics and the kings-- the mystics, who longed for an irresponsible consciousness and ruled by means of the claim that their dark emotions were superior to reason, that knowledge cam in blind, causeless fits, blindly to be followed, not doubted-- the kings, who ruled by means of claws and muscles, with conquest as their method and looting as their aim, with a club or a gun as sole sanction of their power. The defenders of man's soul were concerned with his feelings, and the defenders of man's body were concerned with his stomach-- but both were united against his mind. Yet no one, not the lowest of humans, is ever able fully to renounce his brain. No one has ever believed in the irrational; what they do believe in is the unjust. Whenever a man denounces the mind, it is because his goal is of a nature the mind would not permit him to confess. When he preaches contradictions, he does so in the knowledge that someone will accept the burden of the impossible, someone will make it work for him at the price of his own suffering or life; destruction is the price of any contradiction. It is the victims who made injustice possible. It is the men of reason who made it possible for the rule of the brute to work. The despoiling of reason has been the motive of every anti-reason creed on earth. The despoiling ability has been the purpose of every creed that preached self-sacrifice.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
Long before George Orwell, she understood how language could be perverted for political aims; how noble motives could be ascribed, post hoc, to ignoble actions. ‘When . . . they had wanted to sanction every crime, they called the Government the Committee of Public Safety; thereby proclaiming the well-known maxim, that the security of the people is the supreme law. The supreme law is justice.’ And ‘those guilty of doing harm in every period, have tried to attribute some generous pretext to themselves to excuse their actions; there are almost no crimes in existence which their perpetrators have not attributed to honour, religion or liberty.
Maria Fairweather (Madame de Stael)
What the biblical narrative tells me – and, in particular the account of Christ’s passion- is that while I may not be able to trace the artists hand at all times, I can always trust his motives. The God who is in control of all things, who acts behind the scenes in all things, is also the God who willingly suffers. He is the one I can shout at, cry with and find comfort in. His heart, if not all his ways, is clear to me because the cross wore it on his sleeve for all to see. This God is able to sympathise with those who suffer not simply because his is 'all knowing' - an attribute ascribed to any version of divinity - because he has experienced pain first hand.
John Dickson
They always think one commits suicide for a reason. But it is quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what is the good of dying intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs,cherami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood--never! Besides, let us not beat about the bush; I love life--that is my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining whatis not life. Such avidity has something plebeian about it, dont you think?
Albert Camus (The Fall (Vintage International))
Mr Bold,” said the other, stopping, and speaking with some solemnity, “if you act justly, say nothing in this matter but the truth, and use no unfair weapons in carrying out your purposes, I shall have nothing to forgive. I presume you think I am not entitled to the income I receive from the hospital, and that others are entitled to it. Whatever some may do, I shall never attribute to you base motives because you hold an opinion opposed to my own and adverse to my interests: pray do what you consider to be your duty; I can give you no assistance, neither will I offer you any obstacle. Let me, however, suggest to you, that you can in no wise forward your views nor I mine, by any discussion between us.
Anthony Trollope (Complete Works of Anthony Trollope)
Feminist “theory,” as it is grandiloquently called, is simply whatever the women in the movement come up with in post facto justification of their attitudes and emotions. A heavy focus on feminist doctrine seems to me symptomatic of the rationalist fallacy: the assumption that people are motivated primarily by beliefs. If they were, the best way to combat an armed doctrine would indeed be to demonstrate that its beliefs are false. (…) A feminist in the strict and proper sense may be defined as a woman who envies the male role. By the male role I mean, in the first place, providing, protecting, and guiding rather than nurturing and assisting. This in turn envolves relative independence, action, and competition in the larger impersonal society outside the family, the use of language for communication and analysis (rather than expressiveness or emotional manipulation), and deliberate behavior aiming at objective achievement (rather than the attainment of pleasant subjective states) and guided by practical reasoning (rather than emotional impulse). Both feminist and nonfeminist women sense that these characteristically male attributes have a natural primacy over their own. I prefer to speak of“primacy” rather than superiority in this context since both sets of traits are necessary to propagate the race. One sign of male primacy is that envy of the female role by men is virtually nonexistent — even, so far as I know, among homosexuals. Normal women are attracted to male traits and wish to partner with a man who possesses them. (…) The feminists’ response to the primacy of male traits, on the other hand, is a feeling of inadequacy in regard to men—a feeling ill-disguised by defensive assertions of her “equality.”She desires to possess masculinity directly, in her own person, rather than partnering with a man. That is what leads her into the spiritual cul de sac of envy. And perhaps even more than she envies the male role itself, the feminist covets the external rewards attached to its successful performance: social status, recognition, power, wealth, and the chance to control wealth directly (rather than be supported).
F. Roger Devlin (Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization)
We worry so much about negative peer pressure- whether from the toxic coworkers who infect us with their pessimism, the classmates constantly getting our kids into trouble, or the wealthy friends who pressure us into taking vacations we can't afford- that we often forget all about the power of positive peer pressure. Just as being around negative, unmotivated people drains our energy and potential, surrounding ourselves with positive, engaged, motivated, and creative people causes our positivity, engagement, motivation and creativity to multiply. In my work with companies, I created a formula to highlight the basic principle at the heart of this strategy: Big Potential = individual attributes X (positive influences - negative influences)
Shawn Achor (Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being)
It is tempting to attribute an unhealthy work environment to some nefarious driving force—someone, or some group, usually at the top—actively planning a negative experience for employees. But in our experience, it is just what happens when not enough attention is paid to the structure and culture in which individuals come to work each day. It isn’t that the people at the top are bad people, or have bad intentions. They are typically under more pressure than most, and their way of leading and managing is mostly a reaction to that pressure. So consumed are they by tactical and operational matters that they rarely find time to do the strategic work on structure and culture that would unleash the talent and motivation latent in their organization
David Allen (Team: Getting Things Done with Others)
Starting with Theodor Adorno in the 1950s, people have suggested that lower intelligence predicts adherence to conservative ideology. Some but not all studies since then have supported this conclusion. More consistent has been a link between lower intelligence and a subtype of conservatism, namely right-wing authoritarianism (RWA, a fondness for hierarchy). ... The standard, convincing explanation for the link is that RWA provides simple answers, ideal for people with poor abstract reasoning skills. The literature has two broad themes. One is that rightists are relatively uncomfortable with ambiguity; ... . The other is that leftists, well, think harder, have a greater capacity for what the political scientist Philip Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania calls "integrative complexity". In one study, conservatives and liberals, when asked about the causes of poverty, both tended toward personal attributions (“They’re poor because they’re lazy”). But only if they had to make snap judgments. Give people more time, and liberals shifted toward situational explanations (“Wait, things are stacked against the poor”). In other words, conservatives start gut and stay gut; liberals go from gut to head. ... Why? Some have suggested it’s a greater respect for thinking, which readily becomes an unhelpful tautology. Linda Skitka of the University of Illinois emphasizes how the personal attributions of snap judgments readily feel dissonant to liberals, at odds with their principles; thus they are motivated to think their way to a more consonant view. In contrast, even with more time, conservatives don’t become more situational, because there’s no dissonance.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
For all we know, the larger part of the motive for trying to expand science is not self-serving; it is merely mistaken. The idealistic element in it is its desire to achieve in the understanding of man what science has achieved in the understanding of matter. Its mistake is in not seeing that the tools for the one are of strictly limited utility for the other, and that the practice of trying to see man as an object which the tools of science will fit leads first to underrating and then to losing sight of his attributes those tools miss. (The mere titles of B.F. Skinner's “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” and Herbert Marcuse's “One-Dimensional Man” will, in opposite ways, suffice.) If it be asked, “But what did the nonscientific approach to man and the world give us?” The answer is: “Meaning, purpose, and a vision in which everything coheres
Huston Smith (Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World's Religions – The Classic Companion to the Unity Underlying World Religions)
Hitherto, Aubrey had had no opportunity of studying Lord Ruthven’s character, and now he found, that, though many more of his actions were exposed to his view, the results offered different conclusions from the apparent motives to his conduct. His companion was profuse in his liberality;—the idle, the vagabond, and the beggar, received from his hand more than enough to relieve their immediate wants. But Aubrey could not avoid remarking, that it was not upon the virtuous, reduced to indigence by the misfortunes attendant even upon virtue, that he bestowed him alms;—these were sent from the door with hardly suppressed sneers; but when the profligate came to ask something, not to relieve his wants, but to allow him to wallow in his lust, or to sink him still deeper in his iniquity, he was sent away with rich charity. This was, however, attributed by him to the greater importunity of the vicious, which generally prevails over the retiring bashfulness of the virtuous indigent.
John William Polidori (The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre)
In addition to work, ADHD can significantly impact family life and relationships. The effects of ADHD on relationships are not necessarily negative; in fact, they can bring out many positive attributes. Loved ones may feel energized around you and recognize that your sense of spontaneity and creative expression brings a lot of joy into their lives. On the flip side, friends and family may complain about imbalanced relationships, issues with intimacy, and/or fraught dynamics. If you get easily sidetracked, you may be late to dates with friends and family (or completely forget to meet). You may forget to respond to emails, calls, and test. Family and friends may take these behaviors personally. This can feel hurtful to you when you are trying your best with a brain that works differently than theirs. Of course, this does not have anything to do with how much you care for your loved ones, so communicating what you're going through and strengthening your organizational skills to respect important commitments can keep your treasured relationships humming along smoothly.
Christy Duan MD (Managing ADHD Workbook for Women: Exercises and Strategies to Improve Focus, Motivation, and Confidence)
Altogether, these observations suggest that several processes contribute to psychotic experience: the loss of familiarity with the world, hypothetically associated with noisy information processing; increased novelty detection mediated by the hippocampus; associated alterations of prefrontal cortical processing, which have reliably been associated with impairments in working memory and other executive functions; increased top-down effects of prior beliefs mediated by the frontal cortex that may reflect compensatory efforts to cope with an increasingly complex and unfamiliar world; and finally disinhibition of subcortical dopaminergic neurotransmission, which increases salience attribution to otherwise irrelevant stimuli. Furthermore, increased noise of chaotic or stress-dependent dopamine firing can reduce the encoding of errors of reward prediction elicited by primary and secondary reinforcers, thus contributing to a subjective focusing of attention on apparently novel and mysterious environmental cues while reducing attention and motivation elicited by common and natural and social stimuli.
Andreas Heinz
Implicit motives are needs that people acquire in childhood that have become automatic and nonconscious. Self-attributed motives are people’s conscious theories about their needs that may often differ from their nonconscious needs. McClelland reports a study, for example, that measured people’s need for affiliation with both the TAT and a self-report questionnaire. People’s affiliation needs, as assessed by the TAT, predicted whether they were talking with another person when they were beeped at random intervals over several days, whereas a self-report measure of affiliation did not. Affiliation needs as assessed with the self-report measure were a better predictor of more deliberative behavioral responses, such as people’s choices of which types of behaviors they would prefer to do alone or with others (e.g., visit a museum). The picture McClelland paints is of two independent systems that operate in parallel and influence different types of behaviors. In our terms, the adaptive unconscious and the conscious explanatory system each has its own set of needs and motives that influence different types of behaviors.
Timothy D. Wilson (Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious)
The flesh was to be eaten. It is not enough even that we believe on Christ for the forgiveness of sin; we must by faith be constantly receiving spiritual strength and nourishment from him through his word. Said Christ, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life.” John 6:53, 54. And to explain his meaning he said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” Verse 63. Jesus [278] accepted his Father’s law, wrought out its principles in his life, manifested its spirit, and showed its beneficent power in the heart. Says John, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” John 1:14. The followers of Christ must be partakers of his experience. They must receive and assimilate the word of God so that it shall become the motive power of life and action. By the power of Christ they must be changed into his likeness, and reflect the divine attributes. They must eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of God, or there is no life in them. The spirit and work of Christ must become the spirit and work of his disciples.
Ellen Gould White (Patriarchs and Prophets)
Now, who, according to Rousseau, is the bourgeois? Most simply, following Hegel's formula, he is the man motivated by fear of violent death, the man whose primary concern is preservation or comfortable preservation. Or, to de scribe the inner workings of his soul, he is the man who, when dealing with others, thinks only of himself, and, in his understanding of himself, thinks only of others. He is a role-player. The bourgeois is contrasted by Rousseau, on the one hand, with the natural man, who is whole and simply concerned with himself, and with the citizen, on the other, whose very being consists in his relation to his city, who understands his good to be identical with the common good. The bourgeois distinguishes his own good from the common good, but his good requires society, and hence he exploits others while depending on them. He must define himself in relation to them. The bourgeois comes to be when men no longer believe that there is a common good, when the notion of the father land decays. Rousseau hints that he follows Machiavelli in attributing this decay to Christianity, which promised the heavenly fatherland and thereby took away the supports from the earthly fatherland, leaving social men who have no reason to sacrifice private desire to public duty.
Allan Bloom (Giants and Dwarfs: Essays, 1960-1990)
Foreign nongovernment organizations (NGOs) that support Russian democratic civic groups are a particular target of Russian accusations of foreign economic intrigue. In 2004, President Putin accused Russian NGOs of pursuing "dubious group and commercial interests" for taking foreign money. FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev told the Russian State Duma in 2005 that the FSB had uncovered spies working in foreign-sponsored NGOs. He further claimed, "Foreign secret services are ever more actively using non-traditional methods for their work and, with the help of different NGOs educational programs, are propagandizing their interests, particularly in the former Soviet Union." Patrushev accused the United States of placing spies undercover within the Peace Corps, which was expelled from Russia in 2002, the Saudi Red Crescent, and the Kuwaiti NGO Society for Social Reform. Patrushev attributed an economic motive to these perceived foreign plots, alleging that industrialized states did not want "a powerful economic competitor like Russia." Echoing Soviet-era accusations of nefarious Western economic intent, he claimed that Russia had lost billions of dollars per year due to U.S., EU, and Canadian "trade discrimination. Pushing for stronger regulation of NGOs, Patrushev said, "The imperfectness of legislation and lack of efficient mechanisms for state oversight creates a fertile ground for conducting intelligence operations under the guise of charity and other activities. In 2012, Putin signed the "foreign agent law," which ordered Russian civil rights organizations that received any foreign funding to register as "foreign agents.
Kevin P. Riehle (Russian Intelligence: A Case-based Study of Russian Services and Missions Past and Present)
also been a white-collar worker in my career. In my experience, there are two types of people who do this type of work: Achievers and Hiders. Achievers are the people who want to perform at a high level. They are ambitious, motivated and energetic. They are full of ideas and want to move up the corporate ladder, which are great attributes to have. But there is a downside for the Achiever. The moment a person decides to be an Achiever, they become a target. Their boss sees them as threatening to their job, so they start to hold them down or take shots at their reputation. Their peers see them as a person who will either embarrass them or keep them from getting a promotion, so they start to do what they can to undermine their accomplishments. So, to remain an Achiever and survive in this hostile environment, a person must become good at one thing that has nothing to do with their productivity—and that’s politics. They must learn how to navigate the political world by diminishing their enemies and strengthening their relationship with powerful people. In fact, some of the most successful people in the corporate world aren’t Achievers at all. They are pure politicians. So if you decide to work in the corporate environment and to be an Achiever, you must accept the fact that you must become a good politician also. Now, let’s talk about the Hiders. These are the people who HATE politics, but still need a job. They learn not to be the ambitious Achiever. They don’t stand out. They don’t speak up in meetings. They don’t bring new ideas. They HIDE. They keep their heads down and do as they’re told. They do just enough so that they aren’t talked about negatively. They survive. And this has worked for decades. But in the New Economy, it’s becoming much more difficult to hide. And people are running out of time. So, back to our Perfect Career List: Can a white-collar job deliver on the list? Again, the clear answer is no—certainly not in very many areas. Sales
Eric Worre (Go Pro - 7 Steps to Becoming a Network Marketing Professional)
We believe that the caregiver’s capacity to observe the moment-to-moment changes in the child’s mental state is critical in the development of mentalizing capacity. The caregiver’s perception of the child as an intentional being lies at the root of sensitive caregiving, which attachment theorists view as the cornerstone of secure attachment (Ainsworth et al. 1978; Bates, Maslin, and Frankel 1985; Belsky and Isabella 1988; Egeland and Farber 1984; Grossmann, Grossmann, Spangler, Suess, and Unzner 1985; Isabella 1993; Isabella and Belsky 1991). Secure attachment, in its turn, provides the psychosocial basis for acquiring an understanding of mind. The secure infant feels safe in making attributions of mental states to account for the behavior of the caregiver. In contrast the avoidant child shuns to some degree the mental state of the other, while the resistant child focuses on its own state of distress, to the exclusion of close intersubjective exchanges. Disorganized infants may represent a special category: hypervigilant of the caregiver’s behavior, they use all cues available for prediction; they may be acutely sensitized to intentional states and thus may be more ready to construct a mentalized account of the caregiver’s behavior. We would argue (see below) that in such children mentalization may be evident, but it does not have the central role in self-organization that characterizes securely attached children. We believe that what is most important for the development of mentalizing self-organization is the exploration of the mental state of the sensitive caregiver, which enables the child to find in the caregiver’s mind (that is, in the hypothetical representation of her mind that he constructs to explain her behavior toward him) an image of himself as motivated by beliefs, feelings, and intentions. In contrast, what the disorganized child is scanning for so intently is not the representation of his own mental states in the mind of the other, but the mental states of that other that threaten to undermine his own self.
Peter Fonagy (Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook])
True beauty is found not in the exceptional but in the commonplaces Where does the beauty lie, in the exceptional or the commonplace? Some people believe, true beauty can be find only in exceptional and there isn’t any beauty in commonplaces, and it seems, they are all quotidian objects; but yet, another group of people attribute to the factual beauty of commonplaces and believe the beauty of exceptional seems artificial and it’ll be ephemeral. After weighing the evidence, it is certain that the true beauty lie in the commonplace not in the exceptional. People are most move by natural feature than the artificial ones. Those people that believe the beauty lie in the exceptional prefer the artificial beauties, which is made by human, to the natural beauties. Consider Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Liza, one of the most beautiful painting in the world. For sure it is beautiful and few people who view the painting are not moved by the sheer beauty of it. But how much time a person can enjoy watching this art work and praise it? One hour? Two hours? One week? Like Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Liza, the cathedral of north dame in Paris is another exceptional object which is wonderful and there are too many tourist that travel untold miles to view cathedral. Nobody can tell it is not beautiful; but, does it sacrifice people’s tendency as much as the original beauties do? People interest to visit these beautiful building and wonderful painting at least one time to be familiar with those great art work but it cannot be considered as a true beauty which is one of the requirement of human to be alive. On the other hand, the natural beauties which are around us are fantastic and eternal. They are always improve motivation on people and make them pleased. Consider a flower, although every people have seen many kind of flowers, it is always beautiful and move people to appropriate them. Like flower, plants, stars, sun, moon, sky, sea every object in the nature can be caused of an excited on people and motivate them to be alive. The common place beauties are the most part of the human’s life. If people every time don’t appreciate every beauty around him, and he praise exceptional object when he encounter, it cannot be a fair conclusion that the exceptional objects are true beauty. Indeed people believe nature is constantly compeer of human along the history, like one of his organs, he is not praising them every time, but it is incredible for human to feel he must be alive without common place beauty. Ultimately, after considering both sides of the issue, it must be concluded that the true beauty lie in the commonplace not in the exceptional. Exceptional are the beauties which can be as a complementary for the natural beauties. Because people’s life can be current even without exceptional but without commonplace beauties it is impossible for people to be alive.
Haleh Moghaddasi
Then if it is denied that the unity at that level is the interconnection of the plurality or dissimilarity of religions as of parts constituting a whole, rather that every one of the religions at the level of ordinary existence is not part of a whole, but is a whole in itself-then the 'unity' that is meant is 'oneness' or 'sameness' not really of religions, but of the God of religions at the level of transcendence (i.e. esoteric), implying thereby that at the level of ordinary existence (i.e. exoteric), and despite the plurality and diversity of religions, each religion is adequate and valid in its own limited way, each authentic and conveying limited though equal truth. The notion of a plurality of truth of equal validity in the plurality and diversity of religion is perhaps aligned to the statements and general conclusions of modern philosophy and science arising from the discovery of a pluraity and diversity of laws governing the universe having equal validity each in its own cosmological system. The trend to align modern scientific discovery concerning the systems of the universe with corresponding statements applied to human society, cultural traditions,and values is one of the characteristic features of modernity. The position of those who advocate the theory of the transcendent unity of religions is based upon the assumption that all religions, or the major religions of mankind, are revealed religions. They assume that the universality and transcendence of esotericism validates their theory, which they 'discovered' after having acquainted themselves with the metaphysics of Islam. In their understanding of this metaphysics of the transcendent unity of existence, they further assume that the transcendent unity of religions is already implied. There is grave error in all their assumptions, and the phrase 'transcendent unity of religions' is misleading and perhaps meant to be so for motives other than the truth. Their claim to belief in the transecendent unity of religions is something suggested to them inductively by the imagination and is derived from intellectual speculation and not from actual experience. If this is denied, and their claim is derived from the experience of others, then again we say that the sense of 'unity' experienced is not of religions, but of varying degrees of individual religious experience which does not of neccesity lead to the assumption that the religions of inviduals who experienced such 'unity', have truth of equal validity as revealed religions at the level of ordinary existence. Moreover, as already pointed out, the God of that experience is recognized as the rabb, not the ilah of revealed religion. And recognizing Him as the rabb does not necessarily mean that acknowledging Him in true submission follows from that recognition, for rebellion, arrogance, and falsehood have their origin in that very realm of transcendence. There is only one revealed religion. There is only one revealed religion. It was the religion conveyed by all the earlier Prophets, who were sent to preach the message of the revelation to their own people in accordance with the wisdom and justice of the Divine plan to prepare the peoples of the world for the reception of the religion in its ultimate and consummate form as a Universal Religion at the hands of the last Prophet, who was sent to convey the message of the revelation not only to his own people, but to mankind as a whole. The essential message of the revelation was always the same: to recognize and acknowledge and worship the One True and Real God (ilah) alone, without associating Him with any partner, rival, or equal, nor attributing a likeness to Him; and to confirm the truth preached by the earlier Prophets as well as to confirm the final truth brought by the last Prophet as it was confirmed by all the Prophets sent before him.
Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas (Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam)
Being able to review capabilities of a subject is also referred to as a before the fact audit and enables resource discovery. Before the fact audit has been noted as a key motivating feature behind the deployment of RBAC and includes being able to review the access consequences of assigning a user to a role. Resource discovery includes the capability for a user or administrator to discover or see accessible objects. Being able to review the access control entries of an object is equally important. Who are the subjects that can access this object and what are the consequences of assigning an object to an attribute or deleting an assignment?
Vincent C Hu (Attribute-Based Access Control (Artech House Information Security and Privacy))
Purify your actions and words, so that you will not add more fuel to those who lack these attributes within them.
Mwanandeke Kindembo (Resistance To Intolerance)
I rise, Mr President, for the purpose of announcing to the Senate that I have satisfactory evidence that the State of Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people in convention assembled, has declared her separation from the United States. Under these circumstances, of course, my functions terminate here. It has seemed to me proper, however, that I should appear in the Senate to announce that fact to my associates, and I will say but very little more.” His voice faltered at the outset, but soon it gathered volume and rang clear—“like a silver trumpet,” according to his wife, who sat in the gallery. “Unshed tears were in it,” she added, “and a plea for peace permeated every tone.” Davis continued: “It is known to senators who have served with me here, that I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union.… If I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation … I should still, under my theory of government, because of my allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action.” He foresaw the founding of a nation, inheritor of the traditions of the American Revolution. “We but tread in the paths of our fathers when we proclaim our independence and take the hazard … not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children.” England had been a lion; the Union might turn out to be a bear; in which case, “we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may.
Shelby Foote (The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville)
I must always write this way. I must always feel – and deeply.
Gordon Roddick
The more I travel, the less I know and can fathom out. I have learned a lot about people and places but still haven’t learned to live with myself. It will be a slow process. I suspect my every motive and every action is too conscious.
Gordon Roddick, 1963
Pay no attention to the rules – be anarchic. My definition of anarchy is 'do what you want but don't hurt anyone in the doing’.
Gordon Roddick
Only develop friendships with people you admire. I admired people who broke the rules when the rules made no sense!
Gordon Roddick
Above all, surround yourself with friends who make you laugh, especially if you live with them. When they no longer make you laugh, throw them out and recycle them.
Gordon Roddick
Contribute. Be bold!
Gordon Roddick
In my life, I had no one to disappoint or to let down. Spectres did not haunt me. I very ably created my own prissy set of standards: hesitant, over-polite, submissive. I only became attractive (to myself) when I broke out of that and had bursts of rip-roaring, disgusting behaviour. It was funny and hurt no one.
Gordon Roddick
Dare to live completely. I dare you.
Gordon Roddick
Words are very good, but it is actions going forward that count!
Gordon Roddick
A running theme. There are no rules.
Gordon Roddick
There was a running theme through my friendships, and it was that of anarchy. I just loved people who were clear and definite in the proposition of life.
Gordon Roddick
What do you want to do with your life?
Gordon Roddick
Dreams are nothing if not acted upon and turned into reality.
Gordon Roddick
From the ability to fail. Not a conscious fear of failure, just terror of everyday life.
Gordon Roddick
Search out the pretensions, the rubbish, the gloss, the whitewash, the emulsions of life covering the real feeling, real examination, real creativity
Gordon Roddick
So begins a new process designed to wake up your creative impulse.
Gordon Roddick
Don't lead a life consumed by triviality. Let others do that.
Gordon Roddick
Keep fixed on the important things like love, loving and being loved.
Gordon Roddick
Give service and meditate if you can.
Gordon Roddick
We are never fucking brave enough.
Gordon Roddick
Life from the other end.
Gordon Roddick
Live by your own conventions.
Gordon Roddick
The great beauty in the English language, innumerable ways of continuing the graphic with explosive, the lyrical, the loving with the spiritual – like dogs nuzzling, cleaning, co-piloting thoughts into the ether of creativity.
Gordon Roddick
The smug grin of a thought well described, the laughter as others connect with the thought well received, a light of recognition, a delight of recognition switched on, triggered by words.
Gordon Roddick
Don’t talk bollocks.
Gordon Roddick
Passion is not something you can teach.
Gordon Roddick
Passion is the master of all disciplines.
Gordon Roddick
Passion is always attractive.
Gordon Roddick
Passion is one of the prime motivators and the best in the field of all the various disciplines.
Gordon Roddick
Build moral integrity where none previously existed. It's not hard to know where to begin. Here. Just light.
Gordon Roddick
2:32. six hundred three thousand five hundred fifty. Add to this the underage and elderly men, the women of all ages, and the Levites, and the total number of Israelites must approach two million. It has been calculated that by these numbers, marching eight across, when the first Israelites reach Mount Sinai, half of them would still be in Egypt! The extraordinary size of this population is a famous old problem in traditional and critical biblical scholarship. The numbers appear far too high; but they do not appear to be entirely invented either, because what would be the motive for contriving them in all of this tribe-by-tribe detail for the first four chapters of Numbers? Some suggest that the word for "thousand" here means rather a "clan," but that is not correct (see the comment on Num 3:43). One possibility is that these are the numbers from the census that is attributed to King David (2 Samuel 24; see the comment in Exod 30:12). (There are just three censuses in the Tanak, the two censuses of Moses and the census of David.) Coming centuries later, in a period in which Israel is settled in the land, the numbers are more understandable in the Davidic era (though they are questionably high even for that period). In this scenario, the records here would have come from old documents among the archives which would have come to be mixed in with documents that were used as sources for the Torah.
Richard Elliott Friedman (Commentary on the Torah)
These seven attributes of the worldview Jesus initiated account for an obvious truth; Jesus followers have had an oversized impact on the sciences. 1. Christ followers believed matter was good and worthy of study 2. Christ followers believed their world was the product of a singular, orderly, rational God 3. Christ followers believed God was distinct from his creation 4. Christ followers were motivated by their desire to worship the God of the universe 5. Christ followers believed they could better understand God by observing His activity in the 'book of nature' 6. Christ followers pursued physical and intellectual investigations of their environment 7. Christ followers created a place to advance the sciences
J. Warner Wallace (Person of Interest: Why Jesus Still Matters in a World that Rejects the Bible)
Let us not attribute to malice and cruelty what may be referred to less criminal motives.’ I make it a point never to assume the worst about people
Elle Cosimano (Finlay Donovan Is Killing It (Finlay Donovan, #1))
To lovers out there ... When your dating or in relationship. You can choose a partner based on their looks, riches, wealth, physical attributes. It doesn't matter, But when your getting married. You have to choose a person based on their character. It matters.
D.J. Kyos
Worry is an unwanted legacy passed down from grandparents to parents to children. Children are like sponges. They simply absorb the body language and attitude of the parents. The parents are not even aware this is happening. For example, if a child hears the mother repeating a certain worry four or five times, the child simply internalizes the habit.He grows up repeating statements unnecessarily, which is one attribute of worry.
Paramahamsa Nithyananda
You are beautiful in your own imperfect ways.
Verliza Gajeles
Human beings are inclined to attribute things to malice that are best explained by apathy, and when we falsely identify other people’s motivations, we create a situation in our minds that not only doesn’t exist but colors all of our future interactions.
Rachel Hoffman (Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess)
Bacon believed this tendency to see humanlike agency in nature was an outgrowth of our search for meaning. Because we ourselves have goals and ends and see our actions in terms of cause and effect, we attribute similar motivations to all natural phenomena. We are eager to create narratives about the physical world as though it were composed of agents embroiled in some grand cosmic drama. This tendency, he argued, is exacerbated by confirmation bias. Human consciousness is a meaning-making machine, and once it takes note of some coincidence or pattern, it will obsessively search for more evidence to corroborate it. “Human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion…draws all things else to support and agree with it,” he writes in his Novum Organum. As a result, we are destined to find more order and regularity in the world than there actually is, and will always prefer scientific explanations that flatter our subjective longings. We reject “sober things, because they narrow hope.
Meghan O'Gieblyn (God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning)
What to Do Tonight Support autonomy, support autonomy, support autonomy. Explore where your child’s true inner motivation lies. You can do this by asking when in life he or she feels “really happy.” Kids with a healthy self-drive will commonly think of times when they perform well in school or in sports, are engaged in pleasurable pastimes, or do something fun with their friends or family. In contrast, kids who are obsessively motivated or have difficulty sustaining motivation and effort will often say that they feel happiest when they have no responsibilities, when nothing is expected of them, and when they feel no pressure. Make a point of speaking with your kids about what it is they want in life. What do they love to do? What do they feel they’re good at? If there’s a reason they’re here, what might that be? Help your child articulate (and write down) goals. We will explore this in more depth in Chapter Ten. For now, simply the act of voicing where she wants to get is a remarkably constructive step. Encourage flow in any activity by giving your kids the space and time they need to do what they love. Teach and model a love of challenge and persistence in the face of difficulty. Attribute positive motivational qualities to young kids (e.g., “I’ve noticed that you don’t give up on things.”). Teach your kids not to be overly preoccupied with pleasing others. If they’re focused on external feedback, consider occasionally saying something like, “Everybody feels good when they’re successful at things and get positive feedback from other people. It’s completely normal. My experience, though, is that the wisest thing is to evaluate your own performance and to focus on getting better at doing the right thing.” If your child doesn’t seem to have a passion, remember that there are many people and experiences that will positively influence their lives. Seek out mentors or role models in different fields, and expose them to a range of careers and life choices.
William Stixrud (The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives)
For some people, it is not easy to recognize positive attributes in others. That is why you must not take it to heart when someone says you are not good enough. Pay attention to how you think and what you allow in your mind. You cannot afford to let anyone determine your value in life. Make an effort to understand who you are. Distil your thoughts and beliefs, so no one can bring you down.
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
Underperformance can be attributed to three key factors: emotions, motivations, or lack of knowledge in a specific area
Asuni LadyZeal
While success and failure are not hereditary, they can be influenced by the attributes of our parents, friends, and family.
Asuni LadyZeal
To break free from wrong associations, identify the specific attributes needed for success, such as skills, talents, abilities, motivations, associations, and mindset, and actively choose a different path. A growth mindset can be very instrumental in making this choice.
Asuni LadyZeal
If those around you lack success, they may have the wrong attributes that lead to success, which can be passed on you through association. However, you have the power to reject this influence.
Asuni LadyZeal
For some people, it is not easy to recognize positive attributes in others. That is why you must not take it to heart when someone says you are not good enough. Pay attention to how you think and what you allow in your mind. You cannot afford to let anyone determine your value in life. Make an effort to understand who you are. Distil your thoughts and beliefs so no one can bring you down.
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
Maturity is when you realized that you don't want travel photos. You want achievements.
Verliza Gajeles
So what are the cognitive adaptations of which religion is hypothesized to be a by-product? The first is our hyperactive agency detection device, which leads us to infer that unseen forces are human agents (Thompson & Aukofer, 2011). This likely evolved as a protection or precaution adaptation (Boyer, 1992). We mistake a shadow for a burglar but never mistake a burglar for a shadow—an error management mechanism that helps us to avoid costly errors such as being robbed or mugged. This adaptation leads to misapplied anthropomorphism, as when we say “the sun is trying to come out” or “the clouds look angry.” Clouds and skies, of course, don’t have agency, yet we attribute human-like motivations to them as if they were agents with motives and intentions. Again, it is a small step to infer a god with human-like agency—a god that wants us to pray to him, worship him, sacrifice for him, and will punish us if we disobey him. Even children have what is called “promiscuous teleology,” the tendency to attribute purposes to people, groups, societies, cultures, mother earth, the universe, and god. A second class of cognitive mechanisms consists of theory of mind adaptations, by which we infer unseen beliefs, desires, and intentions in other people. Theory of mind adaptations are extremely useful in predicting the behavior of other people, their proper function. It is a small extrapolation to go from “there are people watching me who have a desire for my well-being” to “there is an all-seeing god watching me who has a desire for my well-being.” That is, we imbue these agents with motives, goals, and desires. Next comes the attachment system, which originally evolved in the context of mother–child bonds for protection and nurturance (Kirkpatrick, 2005). A 2-year-old reaching out to a mother to be soothed bears resemblance to a worshiper reaching out to a god: “we never lose the longing for a caretaker… [and] a god is always there for us” (Thompson & Aukofer, 2011, p. 45). Adaptations to form attachments, in short, get transferred to supernatural agents. Reciprocity adaptations are also activated, as when we make sacrifices for gods or make covenants with gods and expect that the gods will provide us with benefits in return.
David M. Buss (Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind)
Everyone, irrespective of physical attributes, culture of origin, race, skin color, mother tongue, or family heritage is part of a system colored with beauty and spread across the globe in style. Humanity is beautiful in its variety.
Dele Ola (Pursuit of Personal Leadership: Practical Principles of Personal Achievement)
There's a part of you that can never change. That's the inner you. That's your BEAUTIFUL SOUL.
Verliza Gajeles
The “elite” themselves of course don’t believe any such thing, never professing such ideas publicly, nor in private, nor, I would say, is it in their minds, consciously or not, as their true motivation. Their motivation is humanitarian and egalitarian, just as they claim: to temper the excesses of the free market, to protect the weak, the minorities—especially blacks—and the poor from traditional oppressors; to fight everywhere emanations of distinction or “privilege,” to uplift the meek and the weak, to “make the last be the first.” To the extent they appear to be antidemocratic, it is in the name of a purer democracy and a more pure humanitariaism: thus they feel justified in crushing now the Dutch farmers who rise up against “climate restrictions” because they believe by doing so they are helping the far larger masses of poor in the Third World. It’s the same for all their behavior, the promotion of transsexualism, of the gays—it is part of protecting the weak. If they are cruel, authoritarian to some it’s because they believe they’re fighting bullies. If they often engage in corrupt behavior, hypocrisy and so on, well, that’s just human frailty and you can look the other way: “I still think I’m trying to do good, and that’s what matters.” In other words, they’re acting like almost any other ideological mandarin Party incompetent class in history, but, I would say, with less, far less self-conscious cynicism or nihilism than what you’d find among East Bloc apparatchiks. Not one embraces amoralism, Nietzscheanism, eugenicism, or any of the vampiric dark traits attributed to them by their political opponents. They are not gangsters or mad scientists. They are genuine moralists, and without that egalitarian moralism no one would accept their rule and none of their insanity would be possible.
Bronze Age Pervert
The “elite” themselves of course don’t believe any such thing [amoral aristocratic radicalism], never professing such ideas publicly, nor in private, nor, I would say, is it in their minds, consciously or not, as their true motivation. Their motivation is humanitarian and egalitarian, just as they claim: to temper the excesses of the free market, to protect the weak, the minorities—especially blacks—and the poor from traditional oppressors; to fight everywhere emanations of distinction or “privilege,” to uplift the meek and the weak, to “make the last be the first.” To the extent they appear to be antidemocratic, it is in the name of a purer democracy and a more pure humanitariaism: thus they feel justified in crushing now the Dutch farmers who rise up against “climate restrictions” because they believe by doing so they are helping the far larger masses of poor in the Third World. It’s the same for all their behavior, the promotion of transsexualism, of the gays—it is part of protecting the weak. If they are cruel, authoritarian to some it’s because they believe they’re fighting bullies. If they often engage in corrupt behavior, hypocrisy and so on, well, that’s just human frailty and you can look the other way: “I still think I’m trying to do good, and that’s what matters.” In other words, they’re acting like almost any other ideological mandarin Party incompetent class in history, but, I would say, with less, far less self-conscious cynicism or nihilism than what you’d find among East Bloc apparatchiks. Not one embraces amoralism, Nietzscheanism, eugenicism, or any of the vampiric dark traits attributed to them by their political opponents. They are not gangsters or mad scientists. They are genuine moralists, and without that egalitarian moralism no one would accept their rule and none of their insanity would be possible.
Bronze Age Pervert
It is the height of folly to attribute motive to a random confluence of phenomena,
Joshua Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Fabius Bile: Warhammer 40,000))
If we were to make a list of the goals that are most important in life, surely the desire for close relationships, success in life (e.g., a career), and power would make most people’s short list. There is a long tradition in personality psychology of studying these three motives; indeed, psychologists such as H. A. Murray and David McClelland have argued that people’s level of needs for affiliation, achievement, and power are major components of human personality. There is growing evidence that these motives are an important part of the personality of the adaptive unconscious. Murray and McClelland assumed that these basic motives are not necessarily conscious and must therefore be measured indirectly. They advocated the use of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), in which people make up stories about a set of standard pictures, and these stories are then coded for how much of a need for affiliation, power, or achievement people expressed. Other researchers have developed explicit, self-report questionnaires of motives, with the assumption that people are aware of their motives and can freely report them. A controversy has ensued over which measure of motivation is the most valid: the TAT or self-report questionnaires. The answer, I suggest, is that both are valid measures but tap different levels of motivation, one that resides in the adaptive unconscious and the other that is part of people’s conscious explanatory system. David McClelland and his colleagues made this argument in an influential review of the literature. First, they noted that the self-report questionnaires and the TAT do not correlate with each other. If Sarah reports on a questionnaire that she has a high need for affiliation, we know virtually nothing about the level of this need that she will express, nonconsciously, on the TAT. Second, they argued that both techniques are valid measures of motivation, but of different types. The TAT assesses implicit motives, whereas explicit, self-report measures assess self-attributed motives.
Timothy D. Wilson (Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious)
David McClelland and his colleagues offer the hypothesis that nonconscious motives are rooted in early infancy, whereas conscious, self-attributed motives result from more explicit, parental teachings. To test this idea, McClelland and his colleagues interviewed a sample of adults in their early thirties, measuring both their nonconscious motives (i.e., their responses to TAT pictures) and their conscious, explicit motives (their responses on a self-report questionnaire). The fascinating thing about this study is that the participants’ mothers had been interviewed twenty-five years earlier about their childrearing practices, allowing the researchers to test the extent to which people’s implicit and explicit motives, as adults, were related to the childrearing practices of their mothers twenty-five years earlier. There was some evidence that early, prelingual childrearing experiences were correlated with implicit but not explicit motives. For example, the extent to which mothers used scheduled feedings correlated with the implicit but not explicit need for achievement in the adult sample, and the extent to which the mothers were unresponsive to their infants’ crying was correlated with the implicit but not explicit need for affiliation. Postlingual childhood experiences were more likely to correlate with explicit than with implicit motives. For example, the extent to which children were taught not to fight back when provoked was correlated with the explicit but not implicit need for affiliation, and the children of parents who set explicit tasks for them to learn were more likely to have an explicit but not implicit need for achievement.28 The nonconscious and conscious selves thus seem to be influenced by one’s cultural and social environment, but in different ways. The kinds of early affective experiences that shape a child’s adaptive unconscious surely have a cultural basis, given that childrearing practices differ markedly from culture to culture. The conscious theories people develop about themselves also are shaped by the cultural and social environment.
Timothy D. Wilson (Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious)
We typically see ourselves as more benign than we are, and are quicker to attribute malign motives to potential adversaries
Graham Allison (Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?)
Your failures must be attributed to trying to make something happen, not to make you feel stupid.
Nelly Ferrari (The Kodach Secrets) (The Kodach Secrets: The Book of Real-Life Transformation)
Motif Petrify in fairy tales, as multiple aesthetical, has complex origins and development. Forgotten Transformed ritual foundation motive is revealed in the ritual killing of old people. The cyclical myth dismissal of growth and decline is attributed to old people stopping power of life. In order to preserve the life force Penina points out that it took to destroy the creatures that personified their weakening. Mythological justification for the ritual murder of the demonized old lady is a representative of an old man’s death. In doing so, there is no risk of punishment or retaliation for the killing done, because in the moral and mythological plane victim turns into a bully who needs to catch up with retribution. Deeply rooted in the mythical magical notion of the sacred, ritual killing old people is not completely lost in the genres of oral tradition, but is largely hidden in fairy tales. Another basis Petrify in fairy tales is tied for proofing hero. In this type of Petrify emphasized the dependence of suffering from violations of the ban. Offense prohibiting turning into a demonic time and space, or prohibiting speech that is not necessarily related to the hazards arising from the proximity of the demons in lyrical songs, ballads, and some traditions and psychologically conditioned, but the tales he has not shown in the light of personal motives, since the clash of two sacred place in the framework of fulfilling the task of the hero. The power of the heroes in the face of a hostile beings Petrifying people in fairy tales to finalize a victory over the demon, a demon or a subsequent grace which frees the victim of the killed hero of his unfortunate fate, eventually expires Penina Mezei.
Penina Mezei (Penina Mezei West Bank Fairy Tales)
Knowledge is only the first step. It is the foundation of further learning processes.” – Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 102 “Students engage in learning when two conditions are fulfilled. The goals, standards, or objectives must be of value for them. But it is not sufficient that they attribute personal value to the goal: They must be convinced that they can reach it.” – Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 108 “The expertise of a teacher does not consist only of his ability to plan a lesson or a comprehensive teaching unit and put it into practice; at least as important as these basic tools of the teaching profession are knowledge and flexibility regarding how to surmount unexpected difficulties.” – Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 119 “When planning a teaching intervention, the most important question often remains unasked: In what ways does the chosen learning content or skill refer to the needs and interests of the students?” – Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 122 “Teaching is more effective and learning more successful when students participate in planning and starting the lesson.” – Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 136 “What is a good explanation? Explanations should be clear and well-structured. They should take students’ age and their prior knowledge into account. They are supposed to correspond to the interests of the learners.” – Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 144 “There is an unjustified differentiation between tasks for learning and tasks for testing. • First, all tasks should be meaningful and motivating, not only those destined for classroom practice. … • Second, all tasks have to contribute to an improvement of learning.” – Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 159 “Deepening the learning processes during independent practice should at least prepare the transfer of new concepts or schemata to other situations than those in which the new content first occurred.” – Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 172 “Cooperative learning and problem-/project-based approaches aim at further deepening the new learning content. They offer the learners multiple and motivating opportunities to lead to automaticity of knowledge and skills, and to promote the desired attitudes.” – Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 176 “During the lesson, feedback should have three directions: from teachers to students, among the learners, and from students to teachers.” – Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 199 “During work in small groups, teachers cannot eliminate peer feedback. It occurs as such because feedback is frequent in the life contexts of children, adolescents and adults. Therefore adequate training is of utmost importance not only for classroom learning but also with regard to future professional and private requirements.” – Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 210
Inez De Florio (Effective Teaching and Successful Learning: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice)
Happiness is that which occurs when you know what sadness is, and that you possess neither it nor the attributes of it. So is sadness, that you know what happiness is, and that you possess neither happiness nor its attributes.
David B Zumbo
So, at a minimum, our educational systems must be retooled to maximize these needed skills and attributes: strong fundamentals in writing, reading, coding, and math; creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration; grit, self-motivation, and lifelong learning habits; and entrepreneurship and improvisation—at every level. The
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
Flotsam Some people figuratively, although sometimes literately, washed up on the barren beaches of West Africa because they were unwelcome in most other countries. Adventurers, seamen, construction contractors, military mercenaries, as well as missionaries and professional government employees, found themselves here. Money was frequently the motivating factor for people who came to this third world country and most of the typical tropical tramps I knew were involved in the many unsavory activities going on. The dank weather which is usually heavy with moisture from May until October, with a short reprieve of a week or two in July or August, contributed to the bleak attitude people had. What passes for a dry season lasts from November through April with the least likely chance of rain in December and January. The frequent heavy showers and rainstorms make Liberia and Sierra Leone the wettest climatic region in Africa. One way or another, everyone was always wet…. This in turn attributed to the heavy drinking and it was said that if the moisture didn't come from the sky it certainly came from the pores... Generally speaking in West Africa near the Equator the climate is tropical, hot and humid all year round! There were numerous meeting places or drinking holes for the expats. Guaranteed, there was no way any of us would be able to survive the conditions of West Africa without occasionally imbibing, which in reality we did constantly. The most popular bars for Europeans, which in Liberia included Americans, were run by foreigners to the country and these included the more upscale American Hotel and the old Ducor Hotel, near the Cape Mesurado Lighthouse on Mamba Point.
Hank Bracker
And therein is a lesson that can be learned by all who fight the purveyors of hatred and lies. Though the battle against our opponents is exceptionally important, the opponents themselves are not. Their arguments make as much sense as flat-earth theory. However, in dramatic contrast to flat-earthers, they can cause tremendous pain and damage. Some of them use violence. Others, as Hajo Funke said in Berlin as we sat in the shadow of the Reichstag, use words that, in turn, encourage others to do harm. It was words that motivated those who blew up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, dragged an African-American down a logging road to his death, tortured a young homosexual in Wyoming, stabbed a Jewish student to death on the streets of Crown Heights, blew up Israeli families about to celebrate the Passover Seder, and flew planes into the World Trade Center. We must conduct an unrelenting fight against those who encourage—directly or indirectly—others to do these things. But, even as we fight, we must not imbue our opponents with a primordial significance. We certainly must never attribute our existence to their attacks on us or let our battle against them become our raison d’etre. And as we fight them, we must dress them—or force them to dress themselves—in the jester’s costume. Ultimately, our victory comes when, even as we defeat them, we demonstrate not only how irrational, but how absolutely pathetic, they are.
Deborah E. Lipstadt (Denial: Holocaust History on Trial)
service. He gives a vague answer, along the lines of wanting to look after the little guy. His questioner is skeptical. She says, disbelievingly, “You care about the little guy?” “Not really,” Reacher admits. “I don’t really care about the little guy. I just hate the big guy. I hate big smug people who think they can get away with things.” That’s what motivates him. The world is full of unfairness and injustice. He can’t intervene everywhere. He needs to sense a sneering, arrogant, manipulative opponent in the shadows. Then he’ll go to work. Partly because he himself is arrogant. In a sense, each book is a contest between Reacher’s arrogance and his opponent’s. Arrogance is not an attractive attribute, but I don’t hide Reacher’s because I think the greatest mistake a series writer can make is to get too chummy with his main character. I aim to like Reacher just a little less than I hope you will. Because basically a book is a simple psychological transaction. “I’m the main character,” the main character announces. The reader asks: “Am I going to like you?” There are several possible answers to that question. The worst is: “Yes, you really are, and I’ll tell you why!” But Reacher answers: “You might, or you might not, and either way is fine with me.” Because, as an author, I believe that kind
Lee Child (Killing Floor (Jack Reacher, #1))
Some people argue that economics is an exception to this general story. Economics, they say, provides a much more analytically precise and tightly integrated body of theory—a theory that is explicitly linked to a small set of generally accepted assumptions about human beings’ motivations and decision-making procedures, and that has been rigorously tested against quantified empirical evidence. Among all the social sciences, economics alone, these boosters contend, has a defensible claim to true scientific status. Economics certainly deserves to be regarded as the queen of the social sciences; unlike the others, it has unquestionably produced useful knowledge on a wide range of issues that affect our daily lives. Yet we should be suspicious of its bold claims to scientific status. Modern neoclassical economic theory is firmly grounded in the kind of mechanistic worldview (described in “Complexities”) that sees the economy as a machine, and to explain the operation of this machine it imports many of the concepts of nineteenth-century classical physics. So it stresses the natural tendency of the economy to find a stable equilibrium and the possibility of isolating the effect of changes in different economic factors (like changes in interest rates) on economic performance.25 As well, to achieve its simplicity and elegance, the theory focuses on the behavior of independent individuals operating in a market—individuals who are atomized, rational, similar in preferences, and stripped of any social attributes. But this makes the theory largely asocial and ahistorical: there’s generally no place in it for large-scale historical, cultural, and political forces that sometimes have a huge impact on our economies—forces like the emancipation of women, rising environmental consciousness, or democratization in poor countries. Because it’s insensitive to broad social forces, modern economic theory is also surprisingly insensitive to its own tight relationship with capitalism. Nevertheless, it’s clearly a product of capitalism—a specific, historically rooted economic system—and it only makes sense in the context of capitalism.26
Thomas Homer-Dixon (The Ingenuity Gap: How Can We Solve the Problems of the Future?)
As A and B interact, in whatever manner, typifications will be produced quite quickly. A watches B perform. He attributes motives to B’s actions and, seeing the actions recur, typifies the motives as recurrent. As B goes on performing, A is soon able to say to himself, “Aha, there he goes again.” At the same time, A may assume that B is doing the same thing with regard to him. From the beginning, both A and B assume this reciprocity of typificatíon. In the course of their interaction these typifications will be expressed in specific patterns of conduct. That is, A and B will begin to play roles vis-à-vis each other. This will occur even if each continues to perform actions different from those of the other. The possibility of taking the role of the other will appear with regard to the same actions performed by both. That is, A will inwardly appropriate B’s reiterated roles and make them the models for his own role-playing. For example, B’s role in the activity of preparing food is not only typified as such by A, but enters as a constitutive element into A’s own food-preparation role. Thus a collection of reciprocally typified actions will emerge, habitualized for each in roles, some of which will be performed separately and some in common.22 While this reciprocal typification is not yet institutionalization (since, there only being two individuals, there is no possibility of a typology of actors), it is clear that institutionalization is already present in nucleo. At
Peter L. Berger (The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge)
Ultimately, the imperative to be practical in our field hinges on a deep (if somewhat paradoxical) individualism. In spite of overtones of inclusivity, it treats critical work as self-contained, suggesting that truly ethical work in the library world requires each of us to come up with complete sets of questions and complete sets of answers, to individually balance what is understood to be theory with what is understood to be practice, to ensure that our language is always going to be intelligible to everyone. We in the library world ought to understand that this is neither possible nor desirable, as so much of what we do points to the fact that all work is both necessarily incomplete and necessarily interdependent--the citation, the bibliography and its community of complicated absences, the shelf with more than one item, the marginalia and corporeal micro-residues (visible and invisible) left on magazines pulled through circulation, the reference interaction in which knowledge reveals itself to be created between subjects rather than springing forth ex nihilo as the stuff of individual genius. But the individualist myth of exhaustiveness is pervasive, even if it is persistently exhausting. Such tiresome individualism is, of course, profoundly entangled with whiteness, serving as an animating force in well-worn colonial narratives of race: the unhinged white loner as mass shooter, as contrasted with the terrorist motivated by collective cultural allegiance; the intrepid white explorer 'discovering' the land through economic enterprise; the dark masses of migrants threatening to flood the white nation's border, containable only through mass detention, expulsion, or assimilation; the dispossession of a black single mother read as black cultural pathology. More specifically, it aligns epistemologically with the individualism of liberal racial politics: racism as an attribute of individuals, anti-racism as self-work, the problem and solution collocated and self-contained
David James Hudson
Thus with the question of the Being of truth and the necessity of presupposing it, just as with the question of the essence of knowledge, an 'ideal subject' has generally been posited. The motive for this, whether explicit or tacit, lies in the requirement that philosophy should have the '*a priori*' as its theme, rather than 'empirical facts' as such. There is some justification for this requirement, though it still needs to be grounded ontologically. Yet is this requirement satisfied by positing an 'ideal subject'? Is not such a subject *a fanciful idealization*? With such a conception have we not missed precisely the *a priori* character of that merely 'factual' subject, Dasein? Is it not an attribute of the *a priori* character of the factical subject (that is, an attribute of Dasein's facticity) that it is in the truth and in untruth equiprimordially? The ideas of a 'pure "I"' and of a 'consciousness in general' are so far from including the *a priori* character of 'actual' subjectivity that the ontological characters of Dasein's facticity and its state of being are either passed over or not seen at all. Rejection of a 'consciousness in general' does not signify that the *a priori* is negated, any more than the positing of an idealized subject guarantees that Dasein has an *a priori* character grounded upon fact. Both the contention that there are 'eternal truths' and the jumbling together of Dasein's phenomenally grounded 'ideality' with an idealized absolute subject, belong to those residues of Christian theology within philosophical problematics which have not as yet been radically extruded. The Being of truth is connected primordially with Dasein. And only because Dasein is as constituted by disclosedness (that is, by understanding), can anything like Being be understood; only so is it possible to understand Being." ―from_Being and Time_. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, p. 272
Martin Heidegger
Animation. Enthusiasm. Sincerity. Excitement. Acceptance. Have I just described your family dog? You’re happy to see him because he is so happy to see you. It is no wonder dogs are called “Man’s Best Friend” with attributes like that. Their natural propensity for joy makes them among the most personable and friendly creatures on the planet. Human beings could learn a thing or two from their eager and earnest approach to life.
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))
Investment theory claims that the convergence of six elements constitutes creativity. The six elements are intelligence, knowledge, thinking styles, personality, motivation, and environment. It is important that the reader not mistake the word intelligence for an IQ score. On the contrary, Sternberg (1985) suggests a triarchic theory of intelligence that consists of synthetic (ability to generate novel, task appropriate ideas), analytic, and practical abilities. Knowledge is defined as knowing enough about a particular field to move it forward. Thinking styles are defined as a preference for thinking in original ways of one’s choosing, the ability to think globally as well as locally, and the ability to distinguish questions of importance from those that are not important. Personality attributes that foster creative functioning are the willingness to take risks, overcome obstacles, and tolerate ambiguity. Finally, motivation and an environment that is supportive and rewarding are essential elements of creativity (Sternberg, 1985).
Bharath Sriraman (The Characteristics of Mathematical Creativity)
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)
When love is your motivation, almost anything can be achieved. First, however, it may be necessary to learn the difference between love and control. Love and guilt. Love and fear. Love and attraction. Love and hate.
Abhysheq Shukla
Religious fetichism finds its original motive in the delusion that its object, i.e., the idol, is not a mere symbol, but possesses divine attributes, and ascribes to it peculiar wonder-working (relics) or protective (amulets) virtues.
Richard von Krafft-Ebing (Psychopathia Sexualis: The Classic Study of Deviant Sex)
He told the associate that there was a lot of economic value in the work the desk did—that helping companies hedge their energy costs was a legitimate function of the capital markets, and that Goldman was the best place on the Street to do it. The associate took a moment to contemplate, then said, “You know, helping the world is great and all, but you need to be motivated by money.” He’d said it so bluntly that Jeremy attributed it to the booze, but the next day, as he came down from his hangover, he couldn’t help but think that the associate might have been telling the truth.
Kevin Roose (Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits)
Through a diversity of Bible-based beliefs, Colonial America firmly founded its culture, laws, and government on the Judeo-Christian worldview. That common faith was clearly expressed in the founding documents of all thirteen American colonies: The Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter recorded an intent to spread the “knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Savior of mankind, and the Christian faith,” much as the Mayflower Compact cited a commitment to “the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian faith.” Connecticut’s Fundamental Orders officially called for “an orderly and decent Government established according to God” that would “maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.” In New Hampshire, the Agreement of the Settlers at Exeter vowed to establish a government “in the name of Christ” that “shall be to our best discerning agreeable to the Will of God.” Rhode Island’s colonial charter invoked the “blessing of God” for “a sure foundation of happiness to all America.” The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England stated, “Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel …” New York’s Duke’s Laws prohibited denial of “the true God and his Attributes.” New Jersey’s founding charter vowed, “Forasmuch as it has pleased God, to bring us into this Province…we may be a people to the praise and honor of his name.” Delaware’s original charter officially acknowledged “One almighty God, the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the World.” Pennsylvania’s charter officially cited a “Love of Civil Society and Christian Religion” as motivation for the colony’s founding. Maryland’s charter declared an official goal of “extending the Christian Religion.” Virginia’s first charter commissioned colonization as “so noble a work, which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the…propagating of Christian Religion.” The charter for the Colony of Carolina proclaimed “a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith.” Georgia’s charter officially cited a commitment to the “propagating of Christian religion.”27
Rod Gragg (Forged in Faith: How Faith Shaped the Birth of the Nation 1607-1776)
correcting errors is a waste of time if the one you are correcting attributes his own beliefs to principled, unprejudiced inquiry, while attributing the beliefs of those who disagree with him to bias and ulterior motives.
Robert Carroll (Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!)
Unforgettable…that’s who you are... I have always loved this song. But I am forgettable to anyone - I even try to forget myself, at times. But I have hope that the new Janey will become more beautiful,motivated, and intellectually stimulating. Need I go on? My wish list of attributes is so long that it would qualify for a Guinness World Record, if they have a category for number of fanciful ideas about oneself.
J.C. Patrick (The Reinvention of Janey)
The one principle which has controlled my conduct while a cadet, and which is apparent throughout my narrative, is briefly this: to find, if possible, for every insult or other offence a reason or motive which is consistent with the character of a gentleman. Whenever I have been insulted, or any thing has been done or said to me which might have that construction, I have endeavored to find some excuse, some reason for it, which was not founded on prejudice or on baseness of character or any other ungentlemanly attribute; or, in other words, I wanted to prove that it was not done because of my color. If I could find such a reason—and I have found them—I have been disposed not only to overlook the offence, but to forgive and forget it.
Henry Ossian Flipper (The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, U. S. A., First Graduate of Color from the U. S. Military Academy (Blacks in the American West))
our misperceptions interfere with compromise. We are overconfident creatures. We also assume others think like us, value the same things we do, and see the world the same way. And we demonize our enemies and attribute to them the worst motives. We hold on to all sorts of mistaken beliefs, even in big groups, and when we do, it hijacks our ability to find a bargain we and our enemies can agree to. Competition and conflict make all
Christopher Blattman (Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace)
People mock, laugh, and make memes about something that is beyond their level of comprehension. And when people hate, they hate everything about you, even the things you do with good intentions.
Verliza Gajeles
Once Trump had won, a panicked punditburo swung into action, insisting in a crescendo of consensus that trade had little to do with the country’s deindustrialization; that it was pretty much all due to technological factors; that what happened to manufacturing workers was therefore unavoidable. After the dust had settled, many commentators changed their mind on this question, quietly acknowledging the disastrous consequences of ill-crafted trade deals. But what matters for our purposes is the initial reaction, which was virtually unanimous and unfolded along the same lines as in 1896: the rationality of working-class grievances had to be denied.12 The outcome of the 2016 election, the same punditburo insisted, could not and must not be explained by reference to economic factors or to long-term, class-related trends. Yes, lots of Trump voters said they were motivated by economic concerns; yes, Trump talked about economic issues all the time; and yes, the economic stagnation of Trump-voting areas is obvious to anyone who has gone there. And also: every time our post-partisan liberal leaders deregulated banks and then turned around and told working-class people that their misfortunes were attributable to their poor education … every time they did this and then thought to themselves, “They have nowhere else to go” … they made the Trump disaster a little more likely. But to acknowledge those plain facts was to come dangerously close to voicing the intolerable heresy that the D.C. opinion cartel dubbed the “economic anxiety” thesis—the idea that people voted for Trump out of understandable worries about wages or opioids or unemployment or deindustrialization. The reason this was intolerable, one suspects, is because it suggested that there was a rational element to certain groups’ support for Trump and also that there was something less than A+ about the professional-class Camelot over which the Democrats presided for eight years.
Thomas Frank (The People, No: The War on Populism and the Fight for Democracy)
Based on what we know today, the environment conducive to optimal experience should: Provide a high intensity of interaction and feedback Have specific goals and established procedures Motivate Provide a continual feeling of challenge, one that is neither so difficult as to create a sense of hopelessness and frustration nor so easy as to produce boredom Provide a sense of direct engagement, producing the feeling of directly experiencing the environment, directly working on the task Provide appropriate tools that fit the user and task so well that they aid and do not distract Avoid distractions and disruptions that intervene and destroy the subjective experience
Don Norman (Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine)
Prayers to deities preserved from the ancient Near East share many of the same themes as Biblical prayers. Individuals sensed guilt and divine abandonment (see notes on Ps 6:1, 3; 13:1; 32:4; 51:1, 5); they felt physical suffering (see notes on Ps 22:14, 17; 38:2–3), emotional pain and shame (see notes on Ps 6:6; 25:2) and loss of friendship (see note on Ps 31:11); and they faced death (see note on Ps 16:10). At times their afflictions involved legal entanglements accompanied by slander and curses (see notes on Ps 17:2; 41:5–6; 62:4). They responded with cries for a divine hearing (see note on Ps 55:17) and justice (see the article “Imprecations and Incantations”). In ancient Mesopotamia, letters written to gods and deposited in the temple also served to bring requests before the deity. The use of rather generic names in these letters, as well as their transmission through the curriculum of scribal schools, suggests that anyone could relate his or her experience with those recorded in these prayers. In later tradition, similar prayers were cited orally by a priest rather than deposited in the temple. Much of the language of these prayers and letters, including the Biblical psalms, was general and metaphoric, allowing these texts to serve as examples for others to use in their specific circumstances. While the details of hardship might have differed, the emotional experiences and theological thoughts could be shared by anyone. As in Biblical psalms, the Mesopotamian prayers include protests of innocence, praise to the deity and vows to offer thanks for deliverance. Often specific attributes of the deity are named that correspond to the affliction and desired deliverance of the worshiper. Such elements function within the lament as motivation for the deity to respond to the worshiper’s plight. ◆ Key Concepts • Many psalms are an expression of emotion, and God responds to us in our emotional highs and lows. • Psalms is a book with purpose. • Psalms 1–2 embody the message of the book.
Anonymous (NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture)
Berlyne had put his finger on a paradoxical attribute of curiosity—it is stimulated by understanding and by the absence of understanding. This tells us something important about the motivation to learn. Loewenstein built his information-gap theory out of Berlyne’s insight. Information, he proposed, fuels curiosity by creating awareness of ignorance, which gives rise to a desire to know more. As soon as we know something about a subject, we start to become uncomfortably aware of what we don’t know, and that makes us want to close the gap. William
Ian Leslie (Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It)
It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any “conspiracy theory of history;” for a search for “conspiracies” means a search for motives and an attribution of responsibility for historical misdeeds. If, however, any tyranny imposed by the State, or venality, or aggressive war, was caused not by the State rulers but by mysterious and arcane “social forces,” or by the imperfect state of the world or, if in some way, everyone was responsible (“We Are All Murderers,” proclaims one slogan), then there is no point to the people becoming indignant or rising up against such misdeeds. Furthermore, an attack on “conspiracy theories” means that the subjects will become more gullible in believing the “general welfare” reasons that are always put forth by the State for engaging in any of its despotic actions. A “conspiracy theory” can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the State’s ideological propaganda.
Murray N. Rothbard (The Anatomy of the State (LvMI))
Ad hominem is where an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself ~ Webster’s Dictionary
Keith Linder (The Bothell Hell House: Poltergeist of Washington State)
Whether they are relatively healthy or relatively sick, the patients who come to my office are highly motivated to take responsibility for their own health. Motivated patients are a pleasure to work with. They are seeking information, which they will act on once they obtain it. Such patients tend to be intelligent and well educated, attributes consistent with the findings of surveys here and abroad of people who go to alternative practitioners.
Andrew Weil (Spontaneous Healing: How to Discover and Enhance Your Body's Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself)
If we keep attributing our successes to luck and our failures to ourselves, how are we going to be able to chase our dreams?
Coline Monsarrat (You Are Not an Imposter: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome: Unlock Your True Potential So You Can Thrive in Life)
What is guilt? People feel guilty when they think they have acted immorally or have hurt someone and worry that they may lose that person's favor. Guilt motivates a child to behave better toward a parent for fear of losing the parent's love. Like fear, guilt also has a maladaptive sibling, whose name is depression. Depression occurs when a person attributes guilt to him or herself and perceives it as a permanent condition, as opposed to being situational and absolvable.
Avi Tuschman (Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us)
A great deal of selfishness underlies human nature; it often works without our knowledge, and no one is exempt from it; honourable and kind people, not recognising selfish motives in themselves, quite honestly attribute their actions to other and more presentable causes; but they deceive themselves and others unintentionally.
Sergei Aksakov (A Russian Gentleman)
In the third chapter of this “Song of the Lord,” Krishna instructs Arjuna—and us—in what is called “skillful action.” Krishna argues that activity is an inseparable attribute of finite existence. Nothing that exists in the realm of Nature is, in the last analysis, inactive. The cosmos (prakriti), which is composed of three types of primary qualities (guna), is a perpetual motion machine. If it ceased to move even for a moment, the cosmos would collapse. This view coincides with the findings of modern physics, which has revealed to us a universe that is continually vibrating. Therefore, concludes Krishna, it does not make much sense to want to abstain from action. Mere inactivity is not the answer to our existential problems. It is fine to renounce the world and dedicate one’s life to contemplating the Divine, providing one can really do it. But few people have the necessary stamina for the rigors of such a solitary lifestyle. Besides, argues Krishna, there is a better way to Self-realization (or God-realization) than renunciation. And that is to continue to be active but to act free from egoic attachment. In this way, the continuation of human life is ensured, while at the same time it is being transformed by one’s self-transcending disposition. Krishna’s activist gospel, then, does not ask us to carry on as usual. True, the karma-yogin continues to get up in the morning, use the bathroom, eat breakfast, go to work, interact with people during the day, return home, eat dinner, spend time with the family, read, listen to music, make love, and sleep. But he endeavors, by degrees, to do all this with a subtle yet significant difference: All of these actions are engaged in the spirit of self-surrender. In other words, they are all opportunities to go beyond mere egoic preferences and fixations and to cultivate instead quiet awareness and communion with the Divine. An important aspect of the practice of Karma-Yoga is the nonneurotic disinterest in what Krishna calls the “fruit” (phala) of one’s actions. Ordinarily, our actions are governed by so-called ulterior motives—those mostly hidden expectations that would see us rewarded for our deeds. For instance, by putting in an extra hour at work, we secretly, or otherwise, hope to impress the boss. By taking our children to sporting events on Saturdays, we hope for them to share our own excitement, or by sending them to medical school, we seek to live out our own dreams through their lives. By helping an elderly or blind person cross the street, we expect, below the threshold of our conscious mind, to be thanked and thus receive an emotional boost. Or, more subtly, we may do things out of a sense of duty, but without heart. In that case, our actions remain as self-involved as ever. Grim determination is no substitute for the spirit of self-transcendence.
Georg Feuerstein (The Deeper Dimension of Yoga: Theory and Practice)
Another classic case in point is the reconstructive origins of the canonical Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, which is attributed to the seventh-century Chinese Zen master Huineng but in fact seems to have first appeared around 780 ce, "over a century after the events it describes were supposed to have taken place." The earliest versions of the autobiography and teachings of Huineng included in this text were in fact composed by Shenhui and other purported successors in the Southern School in order to differentiate their teachings from, and elevate them over, those of Shenxiu and other teachers of the rival Northern School. While the teachings presented in the Platform Sutra— the only Zen text to be audaciously designated a "sutra"—are indeed a "brilliant consummation" and "wonderful mélange of early Chan [i.e., Chinese Zen] teachings," they can hardly be attributed verbatim to the historical person Huineng. However spiritually inspiring and philosophically rich such classical texts of the Zen tradition may be, we cannot read them as unbiased and unembellished historical records or as innocent of sectarian politics and other mundane motives.
Bret W. Davis (Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism)
The contemptuous person is likely to experience feelings of low self-esteem, inadequacy, and shame. In a March 2019 New York Times opinion piece entitled Our Culture of Contempt, Arthur C. Brooks writes: “political scientists have found that our nation is more polarized than it has been at any time since the civil war. One in six Americans has stopped talking to a family member or close friend because of the 2016 election. Millions of people organized their social lives and their news exposure along with ideological lines to avoid people with opposing viewpoints.” What's our problem? A 2014 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on motive attribution asymmetry, the assumption that your ideology is based in love while your opponent’s is based in hate suggests an answer. The researchers found that the average republican and the average democrat today suffer from a level of motive attribution asymmetry that is comparable with that of Palestinians and Israelis. Each side thinks it's driven by a benevolence while the other side is evil and motivated by hatred, and is therefore an enemy with whom one cannot negotiate or compromise. People often say that our problem in America today is incivility or intolerance. This is incorrect. Motive attribution asymmetry leads to something far worse – contempt, which is a noxious brew of anger and disgust, and not just contempt for other people's ideas but also for other people. In the words of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, contempt is “the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.” Brooks goes on to say contempt makes political compromise and progress impossible. It also makes us unhappy as people. According to the American Psychological Association, “the feelings of rejection so often experienced after being treated with contempt increases anxiety, depression, and sadness. It also damages the contemptuous person by stimulating two stress hormones -- cortisol and adrenaline -- in ways both public and personal. Contempt causes us deep harm.
Brené Brown (Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience)
it is still rare to find a philosopher or a psychologist who fully comprehends that he is consuming the fruits of this long, agonizing struggle to state the exact relation between spirit and matter, every time he uses such key-words of thought as absolute, actual, attribute, cause, concept, deduction, essence, existence, intellect, intelligence, intention, intuition, motive, potential, predicate, substance, tendency, transcend; abstract and concrete, entity and identity, matter and form, quality and quantity, objective and subjective, real and ideal, general, special and species, particular, individual, and universal.
Owen Barfield (History in English Words)
As children our minds were remarkably flexible. We could learn at a rate that far surpasses our adult capacities. We can attribute much of the source of this power to our feelings of weakness and vulnerability. Sensing our inferiority in relation to those older than us, we felt highly motivated to learn. We were also genuinely curious and hungry for new information. We were open to the influence of parents, peers, and teachers.
Robert Greene (The Laws of Human Nature)
The topic of motivation often comes up when dealing with the issue of follow-through on plans. Many adults with ADHD may aspire to achieve a goal (e.g., exercise) or get through an unavoidable obligation (e.g., exam, paying bills), but fall prey to an apparent lack of motivation, despite their best intentions. This situation reminds us of a quote attributed to the late fitness expert, Jack LaLanne, who at the age of 93 was quoted as saying, “I’m feeling great and I still have sex almost every day. Almost on Monday, almost on Tuesday . . .” Returning to the executive dysfunction view of ADHD, motivation is defined as the ability to generate an emotion about a task that promotes follow-through in the absence of immediate reward or consequence (and often in the face of some degree of discomfort in the short-term). Said differently, motivation is the ability to make yourself “feel like” doing the task when there is no pressing reason to do so. Thus, you will have to find a way to make yourself feel like exercising before you achieve the results you desire or feel like studying for a midterm exam that is still several days away. You “know” logically that these are good ideas, but it is negative feelings (including boredom) or lack of feelings about a task that undercut your attempts to get started. In fact, one of the common thinking errors exhibited by adults with ADHD when procrastinating is the magnification of emotional discomfort associated with starting a task usually coupled with a minimization of the positive feelings associated with it. Adults with ADHD experience the double whammy of having greater difficulty generating positive emotions (i.e., motivation) needed to get engaged in tasks and greater difficulty inhibiting the allure of more immediate distractions, including those that provide an escape from discomfort. In fairness, from a developmental standpoint, adults with ADHD have often experienced more than their fair share of frustrations and setbacks with regard to many important aspects of their lives. Hence, our experience has been that various life responsibilities and duties have become associated with a degree of stress and little perceived reward, which magnifies the motivational challenges already faced by ADHD adults. We have adopted the metaphor of food poisoning to illustrate how one’s learning history due to ADHD creates barriers to the pursuit of valued personal goals. Food poisoning involves ingesting some sort of tainted food. It is an adaptive response that your brain and digestive system notice the presence of a toxin in the body and react with feelings of nausea and rapid expulsion of said toxin through diarrhea, vomiting, or both. Even after you have fully recuperated and have figured out that you had food poisoning, the next time you encounter that same food item, even before it reaches your lips, the sight and smell of the food will reactivate protective feelings of nausea due to the previous association of the stimulus (i.e., the food) with illness and discomfort. You can make all the intellectual arguments about your safety, and obtain assurances that the food is untainted, but your body will have this initial aversive reaction, regardless. It takes progressive exposure to untainted morsels of the food (sometimes mixing it in with “safe” food, in extreme cases) in order to break the food poisoning association. Similarly, in the course of your efforts to establish and maintain good habits for managing ADHD, you will encounter some tasks that elicit discomfort despite knowing the value of the task at hand. Therefore, it is essential to be able to manufacture motivation, just enough of it, in order to be able to shift out of avoidance and to take a “taste” of the task that you are delaying.
J. Russell Ramsay (The Adult ADHD Tool Kit)
Now only 20 percent of Norwegian prisoners are arrested in the two years after their release. In contrast, a recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that 44 percent of American state prisoners were arrested at least once in the first year after their release. Høidal attributes the Norwegian turnaround directly to the change in officers’ responsibilities. Each officer is designated as the “contact officer” for three inmates. The officer is assigned responsibility for these three inmates for the duration of their incarceration. “They’re like a coach, motivator, role model,” Høidal says of the contact officers. And “like a nurse when you’re in the hospital,” they are familiar with your case; they’re the person to whom you reach out first when you need something, whether that something is help in beginning a job, or classes in the prison, or finding housing or work in the community for the future.
Christine Montross (Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration)
It is characteristic of John’s Gospel that it goes with simple directness always to the bottom of things. Love lies at the bottom of compassion. And love is attributed to Jesus only once in the Synoptics, but compassion often; while with John the contrary is true — compassion is attributed to Jesus not even once, but love often. This love is commonly the love of compassion, or, rather, let us broaden it now and say, the love of benevolence; but sometimes it is the love of sheer delight in its object. Love to God is, of course, the love of pure complacency. We are surprised to note that Jesus’ love to God is only once explicitly mentioned (Jno. xiv. 31); but in this single mention it is set before us as the motive of his entire saving work and particularly of his offering of himself up. The time of his offering is at hand, and Jesus explains: “I will no more speak much with you, for the prince
B.B. Warfield (The Emotional Life of our Lord)
If you focus on problems you will be an expert on attributing blame and finding more problems, if you focus on solutions you can change the world... it's up to you!
Eduardo Clemente
If you focus on problems you will be an expert on attributing blame and finding more problems, if you focus on solutions you can change the world... it's up to you!
Eduardo Clemente
With this lesson in mind, Mullainathan and Shafir insist that certain characteristics that we attribute to individual personality (lack of motivation, inability to focus) may actually be a problem of limited bandwidth. The problem is scarcity, not the person.
Cass R. Sunstein (Sludge: What Stops Us from Getting Things Done and What to Do about It)
He seemed to consider himself briefed by his Creator to turn into ridicule the opinions of those who disagreed with him, and to attribute dishonesty, idiocy, or a base motive to every one who supported a better case than he.
Sylvia Townsend Warner (Lolly Willowes)
Concerning T.J. Cobden-Sanderson - I am unwilling to attribute [the destruction of Doves type] to the motive apparent on the surface and think that possibly he was suffering from some form of megalomania.
Emery Walker
What Info Should a Persona Provide? Good personas convey the relevant demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and needs-based attributes of your target customer. Personas should fit on a single page and provide a snapshot of the customer archetype that's quick to digest, and usually include the following information: Name Representative photograph Quote that conveys what they most care about Job title Demographics Needs/goals Relevant motivations and attitudes Related tasks and behaviors Frustrations/pain points with current solution Level of expertise/knowledge (in the relevant domain, e.g., level of computer savvy) Product usage context/environment (e.g., laptop in a loud, busy office or tablet on the couch at home) Technology adoption life cycle segment (for your product category) Any other salient attributes
Dan Olsen (The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback)
Horst (2005) used simplified readers in a study of vocabulary development among adult immigrants who were enrolled in an ESL programme in a community centre in Montreal, Canada. The 21 participants represented several language backgrounds and proficiency levels. In addition to the activities of their regular ESL class, students chose simplified readers that were made available in a class library. Over a six-week period, students took books home and read them on their own. Horst developed individualized vocabulary measures so that learning could be assessed in terms of the books each student actually read. She found that there was vocabulary growth attributable to reading, even over this short period, and that the more students read, the more words they learned. She concluded that substantial vocabulary growth through reading is possible, but that students must read a great deal (more than just one or two books per semester) to realize those benefits. As we saw in Chapter 2, when we interact in ordinary conversations, we tend to use mainly the 1,000 or 2,000 most frequent words. Thus, reading is a particularly valuable source of new vocabulary. Students who have reached an intermediate level of proficiency may have few opportunities to learn new words in everyday conversation. It is in reading a variety of texts that students are most likely to encounter new vocabulary. The benefit of simplified readers is that students encounter a reasonable number of new words. This increases the likelihood that they can figure out the meaning of new words (or perhaps be motivated to look them up). If the new words occur often enough, students may remember them when they encounter them in a new context.
Patsy M. Lightbown (How Languages are Learned)
Jazz musician Miles Davis once said, “If somebody told me I had only one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow.” bell hooks, a black professor of English at City College of New York who spells her name in lower case, once wrote, “I am writing this essay sitting beside an anonymous white male that I long to murder.” Demond Washington, a star athlete at Tallassee High School in Tallassee, Alabama, got in trouble for saying over the school intercom, “I hate white people and I’m going to kill them all!” Later he said he did not mean it. Someone who probably did mean it was Maurice Heath, who heads the Philadelphia chapter of the New Black Panther party. He once told a crowd, “I hate white people—all of them! . . . You want freedom? You’re gonna have to kill some crackers! You’re gonna have to kill some of their babies!” Another one who probably meant it is Dr. Kamau Kambon, black activist and former visiting professor of Africana Studies at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. In 2005, Prof. Kambon told a panel at Howard University Law School that “white people want to kill us,” and that “we have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem.” In 2005, James “Jimi” Izrael, a black editorial assistant for the Lexington, Kentucky, Herald- Leader, was on a radio program to talk about Prof. Kambon. Another guest mentioned other blacks who have written about the fantasy of killing whites, and Mr. Izrael began to laugh. “Listen,” he said, “I’m laughing because if I had a dollar for every time I heard a black person [talking about] killing somebody white I’d be a millionaire.” For some, killing whites is not fantasy. Although the press was quiet about this aspect of the story, the two snipers who terrorized the Washington, DC, area in 2002 had a racial motive. Lee Malvo testified that his confederate, John Muhammad, was driven by hatred of America because of its “slavery, hypocrisy and foreign policy.” His plan was to kill six whites every day for 30 days. For a 179-day period in 1973 and 1974, a group of Black Muslim “Death Angels” kept the city of San Francisco in a panic as they killed scores of randomly-chosen “blue-eyed devils.” Some 71 deaths were eventually attributed to them. Four of an estimated 14 Death Angels were convicted of first-degree murder. Most Americans have never heard of what became known as the Zebra Killings. A 2005 analysis of crime victim surveys found that 45 percent of the violent crimes blacks committed were against whites, 43 percent against blacks, and 10 percent against Hispanics. There was therefore slightly more black-on-white than black-on-black crime. When whites committed violence they chose black victims only 3 percent of the time. Violence by whites against blacks, such as the 1998 dragging death of James Byrd, is well reported, but racial murder by blacks is little publicized. For example, in Wilkinsburg, near Philadelphia, 39-year-old Ronald Taylor killed three men and wounded two others in a 2000 rampage, in which he targeted whites. At one point, he pushed a black woman out of his way, saying “Not you, sister. I’m not going to hurt any black people. I’m just out to kill all white people.
Jared Taylor (White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century)
These three attributes please me as they are persistent in their ways, above all, the fourth is the most diligent one and sure knows how to handle a sword: Ants are a persistent yet impotent bunch. The lion is a voracious fighter that, by no means, look back. The horse knows its value and walks with confidence. The eagle is so competent that it knows where to go all the time.
Alan Maiccon
Non-professionals can also misrepresent the personal characteristics, religious beliefs, and appearance, of these therapists, can name-call and otherwise mock them, and can attribute false agendas to them, such as assigning religious motives to secular therapists working with ritual abuse or mind control survivors. For example, there is little to prevent someone from claiming on his or her own website that a psychotherapist is a fundamentalist Christian zealot at war with Satan, when that therapist might be an atheist, Jew, Buddhist, etc., who places no stock in the existence of Satan. But such a claim, when spoken as if it is fact, accomplishes its intended purpose of maligning that therapist." - Common Forms of Misinformation and Tactics of Disinformation about Psychotherapy for Trauma Originating in Ritual Abuse and Mind Control (2012)
Ellen P. Lacter
2. Evolve and Be God: As we invoke the presence of Source, holding the focus through our mantras, we are drawing more and more proximity to the object of worship and gradually, we attain all the attributes we are invoking, i.e., we slowly evolve to be Angelic, invoking the presence of God/Source.
Nandhiji (Mastery of Consciousness: Awaken the Inner Prophet: Liberate Yourself with Yogic Wisdom.)
The cornerstone of the Roman legionnaires' astonishing fighting spirit can be attributed to their training.
Peter Heather (The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians)
what psychologists call the fundamental attribution error, where you frequently make errors by attributing others’ behaviors to their internal, or fundamental, motivations rather than external factors. You are guilty of the fundamental attribution error whenever you think someone was mean because she is mean rather than thinking she was just having a bad day. You
Gabriel Weinberg (Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models)
what psychologists call the fundamental attribution error, where you frequently make errors by attributing others’ behaviors to their internal, or fundamental, motivations rather than external factors. You are guilty of the fundamental attribution error whenever you think someone was mean because she is mean rather than thinking she was just having a bad day. You of course tend to view your own behavior in the opposite way, which is called self-serving bias. When you are the actor, you often have self-serving reasons for your behavior, but when you are the observer, you tend to blame the other’s intrinsic nature. (That’s why this model is also sometimes called actor-observer bias.)
Gabriel Weinberg (Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models)
There is an important difference between feeling guilty and taking responsibility. I once heard that guilt is what you feel because of what you did, but responsibility is what you take because of the kind of person you want to be. The distinction between guilt and responsibility is not simply a theoretical moral or linguistic distinction. It is a distinction that quite profoundly affects the way we deal with the issue at hand. When we feel guilty we usually feel powerless. We feel violated, either by our own abandonment of our values, or because somebody else “made us feel that way.” That’s why we often attribute our guilt to others (“Why are you always making me feel guilty?”). Guilt often leads to defensiveness, anxiety, and shame, and because we feel blamed, either by others, or ourselves, it also may lead to retaliation. This is one of the reasons there is such strong white male backlash around diversity and inclusion issues. White men are reacting to being blamed and “made” to feel guilty for things they often don’t realize that they’re doing, or for privileges they don’t realize they have had for longer than any of them have been alive. I want to be clear that I’m not suggesting that there are not a lot of white men who have done things, and do things, that have harmed others. On the contrary. However, for many, these behaviors occur without people ever realizing they are engaging in the behaviors. On the other hand, when we take responsibility for our actions, we empower ourselves. We can bring compassion to ourselves and to others for our blind spots. We are, by the very nature of the word, “able to respond” to the situation at hand. We can be motivated to grow, to develop, to improve ourselves and transform our ways of being. We have an opportunity to correct our mistakes and move forward and, we hope, improve the situation. In doing so, we can remove the “good person/bad person” stigma, and instead deal with each other as human beings, with all of us trying to figure out how to get along in this world. Again, I want to be very clear: I am not in any way suggesting we avoid dealing with people who are overtly hostile or biased. We have to establish a zero tolerance policy for that kind of behavior. But the evidence is very clear, and it is that, overwhelmingly, most bias is unconscious. When we treat people who don’t know they are demonstrating bias in a way that suggests there is something evil about them, we not only put them on the defensive, but we also lose the ability to influence them because they have no idea what we are focused on.
Howard J. Ross (Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives)
He thought of all that the newspapers were printing about him. Each man attributed to him his own hopes, his own motives and rancors, and his own secret misanthropy: it was in vain that he stated his own aims clearly; there was nothing he could do about it. And yet the truth was clear; it could hardly be clearer. He loved all those free roots that gave their beauty to the earth and to man’s life on it. He loved nature, and he had always done his best to defend it.
Romain Gary (The Roots of Heaven)
God has designed every component of his creation to display some aspect of his care, and each holds a unique fascination for the human observer. Thus, we can easily engage both young and older minds with some newly discovered feature or fact of nature. If we can make a connection between that discovery and one of God’s attributes or a component of God’s plan to redeem humanity, we will have provided a stronger motivation for people to seriously investigate the book of Scripture.
Hugh Ross (Always Be Ready: A Call to Adventurous Faith)
However, without its essential attributes the concept of ‘God’ is empty on its own. Like any other concept, it contains some essential features for your mind — at least God is either merely the Creator, or also Regulator of everything in the Universe, including your brain, mind and behavior. On the surface, maybe there is no serious distinction between them, since the majority looks at the surface only, the interchange of their meanings causes little or no discomfort for the intellect. But at the bottom there is clear-cut distinction between them. God as only the creator is the first cause of the Universe, which in turn also affects your brain and mind states through deterministic relationships between everything, visible or invisible for you, in the Universe. But even God itself cannot break that determinism and regulatory. In that context God is passive rather than active super power, he is not omnipotent, he can neither damn nor forgive you. Therefore, there is no need to worship, to perform numerous rituals, sacrifice, struggle for God against God’s enemies and so on and so forth. There is no appearance of any phenomenon, only the deep content related to ’emotional-motivational’ sub-system of mind such as the ultimate purpose of life and after death. The concept of ‘God’ with the meaning of just creator is more philosophical, and in some context more ‘scientific’, than the concept of 'God' with also the meaning of the regulator. In the former meaning you can substitute the concept of ‘energy’, ‘information’, ‘hard determinism’ and so on, in their broader sense, for the concept of ‘God’. But you cannot do it related to the latter meaning, because unlike the former, it is ideological rather than philosophical and ‘scientific’. There is no free thought there, there is no free conceptual analysis there, your contemplation cannot circulate in any direction only on the base of the logical investigation and logical argumentation. it is going to be confined at some point after which would come all-powerful God’s will, expressed in the holy scriptures, and ideological interpretation of that will according to various political-economic interests. (The Denotation and Connotation of the concept of God, Part 3)
Elmar Hussein