“
The strongest people find the courage and caring to help others, even if they are going through their own storm.
”
”
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
“
We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.
”
”
Harold Bloom
“
One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
”
”
Albert Einstein
“
Sex is a powerful intent to create: the creation of pleasure, creation of love, and ultimately the creation of life. It connects and syncs two beings emotionally, physically, and mentally and is one of the strongest expressions of love that exists in this World.
”
”
Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
“
I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.
”
”
Albert Einstein (The World As I See It)
“
Love is a seed that we diligently plant and requires tender care and watering in order for the tree to ever grow. Just as we cannot foresee the future and what is to become of this love later in life, the tree cannot tell what the weather will be like in the future. The strongest of winds and pouring rain may befall on the tree, however as long as the foundation and roots remains strong, love is able to exist.
”
”
Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
“
One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness. Such men make this cosmos and its construction the pivot of their emotional life, in order to find the peace and security which they cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Einstein: His Life and Universe)
“
Love is eternal. It has been the strongest motivation for human actions throughout history. Love is stronger than life. It reaches beyond the dark shadow of death.
”
”
Vera Caspary
“
Because we are saturated with life, because we are human, our strongest motive is life, humanity; and the stronger the motive back of the line the stronger, and therefore more beautiful, the line will be.
”
”
Robert Henri
“
It may be that the strongest instinct of the human race, stronger than sex or hunger, is curiosity: the absolute need to know. It can and often does motivate a lifetime, it kills more than cats, and the prospect of satisfying it can be the most exciting of emotions.
”
”
Jack Finney (Time and Again (Time, #1))
“
Don’t be afraid of criticism; the tallest trees are always confronted by the strongest winds.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Love is the strongest motivator of all Reagan. Stronger than fear, stronger than hate, stronger than whatever else.
”
”
Rachel Higginson (Love and Decay, Vol. One (Love and Decay, #1-6))
“
Hope may seem frail. But in the face of adversity, hope can be our strongest ally.
”
”
Imania Margria (Secrets of My Heart)
“
One of the strongest motivations for rereading is purely selfish: it helps you remember what you used to be like. Open an old paperback, spangled with marginalia in a handwriting you outgrew long ago, and memories will jump out with as much vigor as if you’d opened your old diary. These book-memories, says Hazlitt, are “pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours.” Or our unhappiest. Rereading forces you to spend time, at claustrophobically close range, with your earnest, anxious, pretentious, embarrassing former self, a person you thought you had left behind but who turns out to have been living inside you all along.
”
”
Anne Fadiman (Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader)
“
Keep striving, for God gives His hardest battles to His strongest soldiers.
”
”
Habeeb Akande
“
It is the strongest, not the prettiest birds that conquer the sky.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Love of Truth is one of the strongest motives for replacing what really happens by a streamlined account or, to express it in a less polite manner -- love of truth is one of the strongest motives for deceiving oneself and others.
”
”
Paul Karl Feyerabend (Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction versus the Richness of Being)
“
Fear is there. It's the strongest motivator. Don't allow it to paralyze you.
”
”
Debasish Mridha
“
Don’t be afraid of criticism, the tallest trees are always confronted by the strongest winds.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct.
”
”
Adam Smith (The Theory of Moral Sentiments)
“
The story of Samson, whose secret to strength was his uncut hair, may well typify the power we have when God is on our head; but it also illustrates the power that persistence holds to weaken our strength. Even the strongest resolve becomes weak when faced with negative thoughts time and again.
”
”
Candace Cameron Bure (Reshaping It All: Motivation for Physical and Spiritual Fitness)
“
Truth, by all means is the ultimate reward for all the sufferings of the human mind that often compel even the strongest of characters to get down on his or her knees.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
“
that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver.
”
”
Daniel H. Pink (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
“
Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as an inferior power,—that was the strongest of motives.
”
”
Nitobe Inazō (Bushido, the Soul of Japan)
“
As Jonathan Edwards observed a long time ago, we act on our strongest motive. If our strongest motive, our deepest desire, is to know God, it will generate the discipline that we need to pursue this, because we will want to know God more than anything else. If this is not our strongest motive, we will find ourselves with multiple, alternative, and competing foci.
”
”
David F. Wells (God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients Our World)
“
Yes, being gay is just one of a thousand traits that make up my character, no more remarkable than my love of M&M's or my ability to mess up a room in fifteen seconds flat or my failure to understand the appeal of Luke and Owen Wilson.
But I believe that the desire to love and be loved is the strongest force on earth. And in that way, being gay affects every interaction in which straight people take part. Every human motive is in the end a yearning for companionship, and every act of every person on this planet is an effort not to be alone.
”
”
Joel Derfner (Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever)
“
The human desire to experience union with others is rooted in the specific conditions of existence that characterize the human species and is one of the strongest motivators of human behavior.
”
”
Erich Fromm (To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche)
“
Love is the strongest motivator of all, Reagan. Stronger than fear, stronger than hate, stronger than whatever else is out there. Love is more than enough to survive with; it’s enough to live with.
”
”
Rachel Higginson (Love and Decay, Volume One (Love and Decay #1-6))
“
When a guru tells me
about my infinite creative power
at times I believe it
at others, doubts are louder
But by observing nature
this truth flows strongest
when I glance at a seed
and see a whole forest
”
”
Valentina Quarta (The Purpose Ladder)
“
One of the strongest motivations for rereading is purely selfish: it helps you remember what you used to be like. Open an old paperback, spangled with marginalia in a handwriting you outgrew long ago, and memories will jump out with as much vigor as if you’d opened your old diary. These book-memories, says Hazlitt, are ‘pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours.’ Or our unhappiest. Rereading forces you to spend time, at claustrophobically close range, with your earnest, anxious, pretentious, embarrassing former self, a person you thought you had left behind but who turns out to have been living inside you all along.
”
”
Anne Fadiman (Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love)
“
As Jonathan Edwards observed a long time ago, we act on our strongest motive. If our strongest motive, our deepest desire, is to know God, it will generate the discipline that we need to pursue this, because we will want to know God more than anything else. If this is not our strongest motive, we will find ourselves with multiple, alternative, and competing foci. These will inevitably distract us.
”
”
David F. Wells (God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients Our World)
“
The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can't get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I do anything I feel that I have a choice, and that influences what I do; but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe it was inevitable from all eternity.'
'What do you deduce from that?'
'Why merely the futility of regret. It's no good crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham
“
Someday we will realize that man is not controlled by laws, but byb passions. it is the strongest of passions that led to mankind's finest artistic creations. Men who aren't motivated by strong passions are nothing more than mediocre creatures. Great passions yield great men. If there is no passions, there is decrepitude and stupidity. - Marquis De Sade
”
”
Anthony Rudel (Imagining Don Giovanni)
“
The secret to living a strong life is right in front of you, calling to you every day. It can be found in your emotional reaction to specific moments in your life.
”
”
Marcus Buckingham (Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently)
“
The strongest foundation for success is laid by the merit of your actions nothing in the world can shake it.
”
”
Apoorve Dubey (The Flight Of Ambition)
“
There is no doubt that sometimes we hit the ground, and we hit the ground hard. When we get hit the hardest, is when we bounce back the strongest.
”
”
Tony Curl
“
That the Will is always determined by the strongest motive,
”
”
Jonathan Edwards (Freedom Of The Will)
“
they found “that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver.
”
”
Daniel H. Pink (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
“
If a tree has strong roots, not even the strongest hands can pluck it from where it stands.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
If we were to dispense with punishment and reward, we would lose the strongest motives driving men away from certain actions and toward other actions.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits)
“
Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don’t want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a POLITICAL purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
”
”
George Orwell (Essays)
“
has not been wasted, since it has proved that he has the very strongest motives for standing in the way of anything of the sort. And now, Watson, this is too serious for dawdling, especially as
”
”
Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)
“
There is a frequent tendency in the presentation of mechaincs to use problems mainly as a vehicle to illustrate theory rather than to develop theory for the purpose of solving problems. When the first view is allowed to predominate, problems tend to become overly idealized and unrelated to engineering with the result that the exercise becomes dull, academic, and uninteresting. This approach deprives the students of valuable experience in formulating problems and thus of discovering the need for and meaning of theory. The second view provides by far the stronger motive for learning theory and leads to a better balance between theory and application. The crucial role played by interest and purpose in providing the strongest possible motive for learning cannot be overemphasized." Glenn Kraige, from Merriam & Kraige's Dynamics text, 7th Edition.
”
”
Glenn Kraige
“
Even the strongest people grow weary along the way and the wisest people do run out of answers every day. But God is unlimited in strength and wisdom. Have Faith in Him, He will give you strength and fill you with wisdom.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (The Essence of Faith: Daily Inspirational Quotes)
“
Neither punishment nor reward is anything that comes to one as one's own; they are given from motives of usefulness, without one having a right to claim them. Hence we must say, "The wise man gives no reward because the deed has been well done” just as we have said, "The wise man does not punish because evil has been committed, but in order that evil shall not be committed". If punishment and reward no longer existed, then the strongest motives which deter men from certain actions and impel them to certain other actions, would also no longer exist; the needs of mankind require their continuance; and inasmuch as punishment and reward, blame and praise, work most sensibly on vanity, the same need requires the continuance of vanity.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits)
“
Allah created angels with reason and no desires, animals with desires and no reason, and man with both reason and desires. So if a man's reason is stronger than his desire he is like an angel, and if his desires are stronger than his reason, then he is like an animal. The motive of religion is strongest in controlling and defeating the whims and desires. This level of control can only be achieved through consistent patience. When whims and desires prevail, the religious motive is diminished.
”
”
Ibn Al Qayyim
“
They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and color-blind, for whom body and spirit were forever and inevitably opposed.
The Semitic mind was strange and dark full of depressions and exaltations, lacking in rule, but with more of ardor and more fertile in belief than any other in the world. They were people of starts, for whom the abstract was the strongest motive, the process of infinite courage and variety, and the end nothing. The were unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail.
”
”
T.E. Lawrence (Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph)
“
But human motivation is also a thing of the mind, and fear has never been the strongest emotion. Throughout history, people have risked their lives for love, for patriotism, for principle, and for God far more often than fear has made them run away. Upon that fact depends progress.
”
”
Tom Clancy (Executive Orders (Jack Ryan, #8; Jack Ryan Universe #9))
“
… one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is flight from everyday life with its painful harshness and wretched dreariness, and from the fetters of one’s own shifting desires. A person with a finer sensibility is driven to escape from personal existence and to the world of objective observing (Schauen) and understanding. This motive can be compared with the longing that irresistibly pulls the town-dweller away from his noisy, cramped quarters and toward the silent, high mountains, where the eye ranges freely through the still, pure air and traces the calm contours that seem to be made for eternity.
”
”
Ilya Prigogine (Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature (Radical Thinkers))
“
As J.D. Salinger’s character Seymour says in Franny and Zooey, “This happiness is strong stuff!” Happiness is the strongest stuff in the world. It is more energizing than a cup of hot espresso on a cold morning. It is more mind-expanding than a dose of acid. It is more intoxicating than a glass of champagne under the stars.
”
”
Steve Chandler (100 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever)
“
The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can't get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I do anything I feel that I have choice, and that influences what I do; but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe that it was inevitable from all eternity
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)
“
Albert Einstein wrote, “One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness.… Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.
”
”
Leonard Mlodinow (The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos)
“
The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can't get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I do anything I feel that I have choice, and that influences what I do; but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe that it was inevitable from all eternity.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage (Classics To Go))
“
adolescent who expresses dissident opinion more or less vocally can end up in a place like that. Some of the children arrive there from orphanages. If a child tries to run away from an orphanage, it is considered normal in our country to commit him to a psychiatric facility and treat him with the strongest of sedatives, such as aminazine, used to suppress Soviet dissidents back in the 1970s. This is particularly shocking considering these institutions’ general punitive trend and the absence of psychological help as such. All communication there is based on fear and the children’s forced subjugation. They become exponentially more cruel as a result. Many of the children are illiterate, but no one makes an effort to do anything about that. On the contrary, they do everything to quash the last remnants of any motivation to grow. The children shut down and stop trusting words. I
”
”
Masha Gessen (Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot)
“
Well, I can't say anything about other people. I can only speak for myself. The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can't get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I do anything I feel that I have choice, and that influences what I do; but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe that it was inevitable from all eternity." "What
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)
“
The power and omnipresence of the sexual drive: Next to the love of life it shows itself here as the strongest and most active of all motives, and incessantly lays claim to half the powers and thoughts of the younger portion of mankind. It is the ultimate goal of almost all human effort. It has an unfavourable influence on the most important affairs, interrupts every hour the most serious occupations, and sometimes perplexes for a while the greatest human minds…Sex is really the invisible point of all action and conduct, and peeps up everywhere in spite of all the veils thrown over it. It is the cause of war and the aim and object of peace,…the inexhaustible source of wit, the key to all allusions, and the meaning of all mysterious hints, of all unspoken offers and all stolen glances; it is the meditation of the young and often the old as well, the hourly thought of the unchaste and, even against their will, the constantly recurring imagination of the chaste.
”
”
Irvin D. Yalom (The Schopenhauer Cure)
“
The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can't get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. "But it is an illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I do anything I feel that I have choice, and that influences what I do; but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe that it was inevitable from all eternity."
"What do you deduce from that?" asked Hayward.
"Why, merely the futility of regret. It's no good crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)
“
The duties, which a man performs as a friend or parent, do not seem merely owing to his benefactor or children; nor can he be wanting to these duties, without breaking through all the ties of nature and morality. A strong inclination may prompt him to the performance: A sentiment of order and moral obligation joins its force to these natural ties: And the whole man, if truly virtuous, is drawn to his duty, without any effort or endeavour. Even with regard to the virtues, which are more austere, and more founded on reflection, such as public spirit, filial duty, temperance, or integrity; the moral obligation, in our apprehension, removes all pretension to religious merit; and the virtuous conduct is deemed no more than what we owe to society and to ourselves. In all this, a superstitious man finds nothing, which he has properly performed for the sake of his deity, or which can peculiarly recommend him to the divine favor and protection. He considers not, that the most genuine method of serving the divinity is by promoting the happiness of his creatures. He still looks out for some immediate service of the supreme Being, in order to allay those terrors, with which he is haunted. And any practice, recommended to him, which either serves to no purpose in life, or offers the strongest violence to his natural inclinations; that practice he will the more readily embrace, on account of those very circumstances, which should make him absolutely reject it. It seems the more purely religious, because it proceeds from no mixture of any other motive or consideration. And if, for its sake, he sacrifices much of his ease and quiet, his claim of merit appears still to rise upon him, in proportion to the zeal and devotion, which he discovers. In restoring a loan, or paying a debt, his divinity is nowise beholden to him; because these acts of justice are what he was bound to perform, and what many would have performed, were there no god in the universe. But if he fast a day, or give himself a sound whipping; this has a direct reference, in his opinion, to the service of God. No other motive could engage him to such austerities. By these distinguished marks of devotion, he has now acquired the divine favor; and may expect, in recompense, protection, and safety in this world, and eternal happiness in the next.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
“
As Einstein once said, “One of the strongest motives that lead persons to art or science is a flight from the everyday life. . . . With this negative motive goes a positive one. Man seeks to form for himself, in whatever manner is suitable for him, a simplified and lucid image of the world, and so to overcome the world of experience by striving to replace it to some extent by this image. This is what the painter does, and the poet, the speculative philosopher, the natural scientist, each in his own way. Into this image and its formation, he places the center of gravity of his emotional life, in order to attain the peace and serenity that he cannot find within the narrow confines of swirling personal experience.
”
”
John M. Barry (The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History)
“
[Some people] think that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of
one's mind, choice, or code of values. They think that your body creates a
desire and makes a choice for you–just about in some such way as if iron
ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind,
they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers.
But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental
convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you
his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell
you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about the
virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act
which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment -- just try to think
of performing it as an act of selfless charity! – an act which is not possible
in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired
and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit,
as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He will
always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself,
the woman whose surrender permits him to experience–or to fake–
a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value
will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires,
the strongest, the hardest to conquer, because only the possession of a heroine
will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut.
He does not seek to gain his value, but to express it. There is no conflict
between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body . . .
”
”
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
“
The road north out of central Lusaka quickly transitions from a world of impressively broad avenues and fancy new commercial districts to a stop-and-start tour of desolate, overcrowded slums. There, half-dressed young men sit around glumly, seemingly lacking the motivation in the face of persistently high unemployment to even bother looking for work. When at last one reaches the highway that leads north to the Copper Belt it is the oncoming traffic that makes the strongest impression. It consists mostly of van after jam-packed van full of poor Zambians. They are overwhelmingly young and desperate to get off the land and they arrive in the capital with dreams of remaking their lives in the big city. When most people think about China’s relationship with Africa they reduce it to a single proposition: securing access to natural resources, of which Africa is the world’s greatest storehouse. As one of the top copper-producing nations, Zambia, a landlocked country in southern Africa, is doubtlessly a very big part of that story.
”
”
Howard W. French (China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa)
“
I did it the hard way
Many of the big dreams I dreamt,
I dreamt, when I met a failed attempt.
Life taught me to believe that
Great ideas can start from a wretched hut.
Many of the strongest steps I took,
I took, when I was given the fiercest look.
My passion pokes me to understand
That people’s mockeries, I can withstand.
Many of the fastest speeds I gained,
I gained when I was bitterly stained.
I first thought the only way was to quit
As I tried again, I no longer have guilt.
Many of the bravest decisions I made,
I made, when my life was about to fade.
I was frustrated and ripe to sink.
But then I strive to release the ink.
Many of the longest journeys I started,
I started, having no resource; money parted
I relied on God my creator all dawn long
And at dusk He gave me a new song.
Many of the hardest questions I tackled,
I tackled, when I was heckled.
They were very troublesome to settle
But I make it happen little by little
Yet, it was not I, but the Lord Jesus
The saviour who gives me success.
In Him, through Him and by Him
I have the liberty to do everything with vim.
I don’t want to enjoy this liberty alone.
You too must step out of your comfort zone.
It’s not easy, but you can do it anyway.
Jesus is the life, the truth and the way.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (Become a Better You)
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My request to gain access to Mme de Guermantes’s collection of Elstir paintings had been met by Saint-Loup with, “I’ll answer for her.” And, unfortunately, it was he and he alone who did the answering. We find it easy enough to answer for other people when we set little images of them in our mind and manipulate them to suit our needs. No doubt even then we are mindful of the difficulties that arise from other people’s natures being different from our own, and are ready enough to resort to whatever means are powerful enough to influence them—self-interest, persuasion, emotion—and will cancel out any inclination to oppose our wishes. But these differences in other people’s natures are still conceived by our own nature; the difficulties are raised by us; the compelling motives are measured by our own standards. So, when we want to see the other person actually perform the actions we have made him rehearse in our mind’s eye, things are quite different, we encounter unforeseen resistances that may be insuperable. Perhaps one of the strongest of these is the resistance that can grow, in a woman who is not in love, from the unconquerable and fetid repulsion she feels for the man who loves her: during the long weeks when Saint-Loup still did not come to Paris, his aunt, to whom I was certain he had written begging her to do so, did not once invite me to call and see her Elstirs. I
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Marcel Proust (The Guermantes Way (In Search of Lost Time, #3))
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It is not possible to discuss the problem of symbol-formation without reference to the instinctual processes, because it is from them that the symbol derives its motive power. It has no meaning whatever unless it strives against the resistance of instinct, just as undisciplined instincts would bring nothing but ruin to man if the symbol did not give them form. Hence a discussion of one of the strongest instincts, sexuality, is unavoidable, since perhaps the majority of symbols are more or less close analogies of this instinct. To interpret symbol-formation in terms of instinctual processes is a legitimate scientific attitude, which does not, however, claim to be the only possible one. I readily admit that the creation of symbols could also be explained from the spiritual side, but in order to do so, one would need the hypothesis that the “spirit” is an autonomous reality which commands a specific energy powerful enough to bend the instincts round and constrain them into spiritual forms. This hypothesis has its disadvantages for the scientific mind, even though, in the end, we still know so little about the nature of the psyche that we can think of no decisive reason against such an assumption. In accordance with my empirical attitude I nevertheless prefer to describe and explain symbol-formation as a natural process, though I am fully conscious of the probable one-sidedness of this point of view.
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C.G. Jung (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 5: Symbols of Transformation (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung))
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He began by expressing his gratitude to those “whom no partizan malice, or partizan hope, can make false to the nation’s life,” then passed at once, since peace seemed uppermost in men’s minds nowadays, to a discussion of “three conceivable ways” in which it could be brought about. First, by suppressing the rebellion; “This I am trying to do. Are you for it? If you are, so far we are agreed.” Second, by giving up the Union; “I am against this. Are you for it? If you are, you should say so plainly.” Third, by negotiating some sort of armistice based on compromise with the Confederates; but “I do not believe any compromise, embracing the maintenance of the Union, is now possible. All I learn leads to a directly opposite belief.” After disposing thus, to his apparent satisfaction, of the possibility of achieving peace except by force of arms, he moved on to another matter which his opponents had lately been harping on as a source of dissatisfaction: Emancipation. “You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but no matter. Fight you, then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the Proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time then for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes. I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do, as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept.
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Shelby Foote (The Civil War, Vol. 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian)
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You can attract him, retain him, motivate and inspire him daily with your sensuality so much that he has no desire for any other woman besides you and has the strongest will to succeed.
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Lebo Grand (Sensual Lifestyle)
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The highest officers in the government had the strongest motives to corruption, and therefore could by no possibility attempt to check the same corruption in those below them…
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Shashi Tharoor (An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India)
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Karim Lakhani and Boston Consulting Group consultant Bob Wolf surveyed 684 open-source developers, mostly in North America and Europe, about why they participated in these projects. Lakhani and Wolf uncovered a range of motives, but they found “that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver.”2 A large majority of programmers, the researchers discovered, reported that they frequently reached the state of optimal challenge called “flow.” Likewise, three German economists who studied open-source projects around the world found that what drives participants is “a set of predominantly intrinsic motives”—in particular, “the fun . . . of mastering the challenge of a given software problem” and the “desire to give a gift to the programmer community.”3 Motivation 2.0 has little room for these sorts of impulses.
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Daniel H. Pink (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
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what we need for the moment is not so much a body of belief as a body of people familiarized with certain ideas. If we could even effect in one per cent of our readers a change-over from the conception of Space to the conception of Heaven, we should have made a beginning.43 Lewis makes it clear that a desire for this recovery motivated his writing of the Ransom Trilogy—a recovery of an “old mode” of looking at the cosmos. He wrote to one reader that “the substitution of heaven for space…is my favourite idea in the book.”44 Lewis saw that the modern scientific cosmos had led to a loss of essential imaginative and emotional experiences that were the strongest features of the Medieval Model. No, we don’t need to accept the old science. Lewis isn’t arguing that we reject everything we have learned about what space actually is like. Rather, he wants us to recover the image of the cosmos as living, breathing, Word-spoken. In our reduction of the cosmos to the material, we no longer experience wonder, awe, praise, or the bottom-heavy security of those who look up into a vast well of starlight. And it is this sense that he seeks to reawaken.
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Christiana Hale (Deeper Heaven: A Reader's Guide to C. S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy)
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When facing the toughest battles, you need the strongest Faith
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Gift Gugu Mona (The Essence of Faith: Daily Inspirational Quotes)
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The first to apologize is the bravest.
The first to forgive is the strongest.
The first to forget is the happiest.
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Raajesh Pillai
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We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Adams understood that the secret to self-government is that the people must themselves be self-governing, which is to say they must be motivated by something beyond the law.
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Eric Metaxas (If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty)
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Paul had already resolved to account for Henry’s absence by overdubbing the lead guitar lines himself; Seiwell’s leaving complicated that plan only slightly, since Paul was also an able drummer. Mostly, though, the defections activated one of Paul’s strongest internal motivators—prevailing against the odds and the I told you so’s
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Allan Kozinn (The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1: 1969 – 73)
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Of all the factors that have been studied, the strongest known force in daily motivation is a sense of progress. You can’t always find motivation by staring harder at the thing that isn’t working. Sometimes you can build momentum by taking a detour to a new destination.
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Adam M. Grant (Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things)
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Einstein wrote that “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind,” but we have to remember that Einstein talks about the “cosmic religious feeling,” which is very different from the religious feeling exercised within the official religions. He explains, “[h]ow can a cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, art and science's most important function is to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.” … “I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.” … “A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours, the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.” … “You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific mind without a religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religiosity of the naïve man.
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Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
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The other side of that coin, of course, is that our strongest motive for altering our choices will also be that others like us are doing so.
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Robert H. Frank (Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work)
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The strongest marketing approach in a business-to-business context comes not from explaining that your product is good, but from sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt (now commonly abbreviated as FUD) around the available alternatives. The desire to make good decisions and the urge not to get fired or blamed may at first seem to be similar motivations, but they are, in fact, never quite the same thing, and may sometimes be diametrically different.
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Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense)
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most people never learn the art of transmuting their strongest emotions into dreams of a constructive nature.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich (Start Motivational Books))
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Don't be sad that one day or another you met someone who undermined your capabilities and sapped your energy, what that person did could be the strongest crucible that forged a great leader
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Ahmed Elkadi
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Unfortunately, because of a lack of hardware and sometimes teacher confidence and creativity, students are denied access to the very strongest engagement resource we have—technology.
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Gayle Gregory (The Motivated Brain: Improving Student Attention, Engagement, and Perseverance)
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The strongest anchor is hope.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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Thucydides tells us that prior to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War an Athenian citizen informed the Spartan assembly that Athens was animated by three of the strongest motives - fear, interest, and honor. Among other things this is a statement on the enduring motivations of humanity. Fear and interest are understandably compelling; the
idea of honor is less clear. Honor can be expressed in terms of reputation, respect, prestige, fame, pride, and esteem. When the ideas of fear, interest, and honor intersect people become exceptionally motivated. Fear of punishment produces only so much effort as to alleviate the threat of punishment. Monetary or other material interest engenders only enough effort to achieve the reward. When the ideas of honor become involved people are motivated to exceed expectations - they go "above and beyond the call of duty.
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Christopher D. Kolenda (Leadership: The Warrior's Art)
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A creed that tells us that we are no more than selfish genes, with nothing in principle to separate us from the animals, in a society whose strongest motivators are money and success, in a universe that came into existence for no reason whatsoever and for no reason will one day cease to be, will never speak as strongly to the human spirit as one that tells us we are in the image and likeness of God in a universe he created in love.
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Jonathan Sacks (Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence)
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In the 1980s he noted that “my representation of black defendants has been motivated by one of my strongest beliefs: that our society is always racist. Black people rarely get justice in our courts; so for me, cases in which defendants are black are political.” As early as 1970 he told the Playboy interviewer that he found it “hard to conceive of most routine criminal cases not also being political cases. I say that because so often the person accused of a crime is poor or black and poor. He has been subjected to an oppressive system, and the very crime of which he is accused is probably a reaction to that oppressive system.” In 1992 a reporter asked Kunstler the flat question
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David Langum (William M. Kunstler: The Most Hated Lawyer in America)
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Love is the strongest strength of the soul.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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Goal setting is the strongest force for human motivation. Set a goal and make it come true.
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Dan Clark
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Life's battle don't always go to the strongest or the fastest , but sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can .
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Anonymous
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My strongest awareness has been that I am the creator of my destiny, happiness and success.
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Vasso Chararalambous
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Writing is a choice, and love is the strongest motivator for creative activities. Just sit down and switch on your computer. If you really want to write, you will write.
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L.E. Henderson (A Trail of Crumbs to Creative Freedom: One Author's Journey Through Writer's Block and Beyond.)
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Capture my heart and my mind. Become my ultimate challenge, greatest vexation, strongest desire, and most precious blessing.
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Imania Margria
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Love is the strongest motivator of all, Reagan. Stronger than fear, stronger than hate, stronger than whatever else is out there. Love is more than enough to survive with; it's enough to live with.
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Rachel Higginson (Love and Decay, Episode Two (Love and Decay, #2))
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Amusement if one of humankind's strongest motivational forces.
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Ivars Peterson (Islands of Truth: A Mathematical Mystery Cruise)
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In my experience, the strongest motivation for forgiveness is always the sense of having received forgiveness ourselves, or – if we do not have that – an awareness that, like everyone else in the human race, we are imperfect and have done things we need to be forgiven for.Jared, an African-American student from Boston, says that was definitely the case with him
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Anonymous
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In our natural world, it is the strongest of the species that claim their space, seek out new territories, explore their surroundings, and learn how to survive and thrive. It is those same qualities that enable us to apply confidence and command to transcend the mediocre and achieve outstanding results.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Being: 8 Ways to Optimize Your Presence & Essence for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #1))
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By the first day of January, 19.., I will have in my possession $50, 000, which will come to me in various amounts from time to time during the interim. “In return for this money I will give the most efficient service of which I am capable, rendering the fullest possible quantity, and the best possible quality of service in the capacity of salesman of . . . . . . . . . . . (describe the service or merchandise you intend to sell). “I believe that I will have this money in my possession. My faith is so strong that I can now see this money before my eyes. I can touch it with my hands. It is now awaiting transfer to me at the time, and in the proportion that I deliver the service I intend to render in return for it. I am awaiting a plan by which to accumulate this money, and I will follow that plan, when it is received.” Second. Repeat this program night and morning until you can see, (in your imagination) the money you intend to accumulate. Third. Place a written copy of your statement where you can see it night and morning, and read it just before retiring, and upon arising until it has been memorized. Remember, as you carry out these instructions, that you are applying the principle of auto-suggestion, for the purpose of giving orders to your subconscious mind. Remember, also, that your subconscious mind will act ONLY upon instructions which are emotionalized, and handed over to it with “feeling.” FAITH is the strongest, and most productive of the emotions. Follow the instructions given in the chapter on FAITH.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich: Granddaddy of All Motivational Literature)
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You may not be the richest, but you can be grateful for what you have. You may not be the fastest, but you can work on your goals with so much diligence. You may not be the strongest, but you can use your talents to make a difference.
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Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
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Are you ready to transform yourself? Are you ready to be one of the Special Ones, the Illuminated Ones? Are you ready to play the God Game? Only the strongest, the smartest, the boldest, can play. This is not a drill. This is your life. Stop being what you have been. Become what you were meant to be. See the Light. Join the Hyperboreans. Become a HyperHuman. Only the highest, only the noblest, only the most courageous are called. A new dawn is coming... the birth of Hyperreason. It’s time to enter Hyperreality.
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Thomas Stark (The Sheldrake Shift: A Critical Evaluation of Morphic Resonance (The Truth Series Book 13))
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Our minds are more mightier than our verbal expressions. Never doubt those who have the emasculated minds, they could potentially have the strongest, predominate knowledge, superior intelligence, and vivid clarity.
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Daniel Linn Lewis
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The weight of general opinion is one of the strongest forces in the world. It is the current of human society. It is the motive force of change, the thrust of what gets done. It seems unstoppable, inevitable, immutable.
"It is not.
"It is shaped by the individual will saying 'yes' or 'no' and holding firm. The world changes one person and one decision at a time. None of us know what decision, precisely, is the telling one.
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Victoria Goddard (The Hands of the Emperor (Lays of the Hearth-Fire, #1))
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Several requirements typify positivist methodological approaches. First, research methods generally require a distancing of the researcher from her of his “object” of study by defining the researcher as a “subject” with full human subjectivity and by objectifying the “object” of study. A second requirement is the absence of emotions from the research process. Third, ethics and values are deemed inappropriate in the research process, either as the reason for scientific inquiry or as part of the research process itself. Finally, adversarial debates, whether written or oral, become the preferred method of ascertaining truth: The arguments that can withstand the greatest assault and survive intact become the strongest truths.
Such criteria ask African-American women to objectify ourselves, devalue our emotional life, displace our motivations for furthering knowledge about Black women, and confront in an adversarial relationship those with more social, economic, and professional power.
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Patricia Hall Collins