Quotes About Motivation

First initiative, then life.

Why do we classify all the mental things together as the mental at all? I think action is mental because it's intentional, in the sense that it's directed on to something other than itself. So when you act, when you go to buy yourself a coffee, you're aiming at something beyond yourself, namely the result of getting a coffee.

Most ambitious people are not naturally team players. They're ruthlessly competitive individualists.

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.

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.

Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.

The surrender Jesus invites from us—choosing his will and his life over our own—can never be motivated by anything but love. But we can and frequently do offer a substitute for surrender—something that looks superficially enough like it that we easily confuse it with surrender. We can offer obedience.

Guilt is not enough to motivate surrender.

Far from being incompatible with obedience, surrender provides the motive for obedience. We should obey God because he has won our hearts in love. If he has not, our focus should not be so much on obedience as on knowing his love. For once we get that solidly in place, obedience begins to take care of itself.

Markets aren't real. They are mathematical models, created by imagining a self-contained world where everyone has exactly the same motivation and the same knowledge and is engaged in the same self-interested calculating exchange. Economists are aware that reality is always more complicated; but they are also aware that to come up with a mathematical model, one always has to make the world into a bit of a cartoon.

Always remember it's all ultimately about value (or: whenever you hear someone say that what their greatest value is rationality, they are just saying that because they don't want to admit to what their greatest value really is).

Over and over I have set forth the qualities that we Wendat believe ought to define humanity – wisdom, reason, equity, etc. – and demonstrated that the existence of separate material interests knocks all these on the head. A man motivated by interest cannot be a man of reason.

Through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves...working forty or even fifty hours on paper but effectively working fifteen hours...since the rest of their time is spent organizing or attending motivational seminars, updating their Facebook profiles, or downloading TV box sets.

we are all in the situation of the inmate who prefers working in the prison laundry to sitting in the cell watching TV all day.

Talvolta è più offensivo essere apprezzati per i motivi sbagliati che essere disprezzati per quelli giusti.

life is too short to work on the uninspiring. Being

His counterpart at Chevy, a man named Bill Holler, had once gathered all of his regional salesmen around a brand-new model, opened the door, looked at them all long and solemnly, and then slammed the door as hard as he could. "Boys," he announced, "I've just slammed the door on the best goddam car in the world"—and a huge cheer went up.

Nothing appalled Deming more than the idea of the interchangeable manager. "What is the motivation and purpose of men like this?" he would say with contempt. "Do they even know what they do anymore? What do they produce?" All they knew about was numbers, not product. All they thought about was maximum profit, not excellence of product.

On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'" ( One On 1 , interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1 , March 25, 2007.)

Gen. Matthew Ridgeway "intended not to impose his will on his men, but to allow the men under him to find something in themselves that would make them more confident, more purposeful fighting men. It was their confidence in themselves that would make them fight well, he believed, not so much their belief in him. His job was to keep them to find that quality in themselves.

encouraging applicants to reflect on why they wanted to join the police and why it mattered to their community – boosted the pass rate of minority group applicants by 50 per cent, while leaving white applicants unaffected.

People are more easily led than driven.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won't wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work.