Quotes & Sayings About Hidden Motives

Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others. — Charles R. Swindoll

To be logical you have to dig up and face your own hidden motives and emotions, and of course they're hidden principally because you don't want to face them.
So ... um ... it's easier to let your basement feelings run the upper storeys, so to speak, and the result is quarrels, love, opinions, anorexia, philanthropy ... almost anything you can think of. I just like to know what's going on down there, to pick out why I truly want to do things, that's all. Then I can do them, or not. Whichever. — Dick Francis

Be wary of someone who has never failed, or seem to have no faults... Too good to be true usually is. Perfection hides something. — Henry Cloud

Often people that tell others they are "extremely polite" when the situation calls for tact and bluntness are not actually polite people. Instead, they hide behind the word "polite" because they have low self esteem or hidden agendas. Sadly, they impolitely confuse the hell out of everyone, send mixed signals, which then makes people question their sanity and motives. — Shannon L. Alder

In time, most children stop being puzzled in this way. They settle in. The world around them, as it becomes familiar and daily, becomes ordinary. But for writers, like children who have never quite grown up, life retains a quality of strangeness; it remains a matter of questions for which there are no satisfactory answers, of hidden motives, displaced explanations, subtle concealments and mysteries. Eavesdropping of one kind or another, keeping an eye open and an ear cocked, even in public places, for the giveaway facial expression or gesture, the revealing word, becomes a settled habit for the writer, a necessary part of his professional equipment: the laying down of small scraps of information, of observation or experience, for future use. — David Malouf

It is remarkable how I am never quite clear about the motives for any of my decisions. Is that a sign of confusion or inner dishonesty or is it a sign that we are guided without our knowing or is it both ... The reasons one gives for an action to others and to one's self are certainly inadequate. One can give a reason for everything. In the last resort one acts from a level which remains hidden from us. So one can only ask God to judge us and to forgive us ... At the end of the day I can only ask God to give a merciful judgement on today and all its decisions. It is now in his hand. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Caretaking is different from care giving. Care giving has no second agendas or hidden motives. The care is given from love for the joy of giving without expectation, no strings attached. It cannot be manipulated or discouraged because love cannot be manipulated or discouraged. — Gary Zukav

Abba Father! Your love for me is transparent no hidden agenda, no ulterior motives because You are the Holy God. And the only thing abides us is the covenant of your love that will never be broken. In times of need I call unto You and You answer. When I feel alone you always beside me with Your loving and caring touch. — Euginia Herlihy

The habit of employing self-deception to maintain one's self esteem has often become so ingrained that the first step to developing accurate self-awareness is honest acknowledgment of the existence of hidden emotions, motives and tendencies in the mind without immediately suppressing them. — Bhikkhu Analayo

I wonder, with all the flowers in the garden, how many of them ever think of hanging themselves with the garden hose, if ever they can. — Anthony Liccione

If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkenness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says the Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings. — G.K. Chesterton

If it were true that conservatives were racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist, stupid, inflexible, angry, and self-righteous, shouldn't their arguments be easy to deconstruct? Someone who is making a point out of anger, ideology, inflexibility, or resentment would presumably construct a flimsy argument. So why can't the argument itself be dismembered rather than the speaker's personal style or hidden motives? Why the evasions? — Ann Coulter

It can also be useful to politics, enabling that science to discover how much of it is no more than verbal construction, myth, literary tops. Politics, like literature, must above all know itself and distrust itself. As a final observation, I should like to add that it is impossible today for anyone to feel innocent, if in whatever we do or say we can discover a hidden motive - that of a white man, or a male, or the possessor of a certain income, or a member of a given economic system, or a sufferer from a certain neurosis - this should not induce in us either a universal sense of guilt or an attitude of universal accusation. When we become aware of our disease or of our hidden motives, we have already begun to get the better of them. What matters is the way in which we accept our motives and live through the ensuing crisis. This is the only chance we have of becoming different from the way we are - that is, the only way of starting to invent a new way of being. — Italo Calvino

Listen to others as if they are telling you the truth, ask questions when you aren't clear, and allow others the room to have different feelings than you. No more assigning hidden motives, prejudging and cutting people off before separating fact from fiction. — Rhonda Britten

Caregiving has no second agendas or hidden motives. The care is given from love for the joy of giving without expectation, no strings attached. — Gary Zukav

The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our observation. — Gustave Le Bon

1 Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God. — Bible. New International Version

in so far as we cherish the tangibles, we must value the intangibles. The intangibles, though as latent as they may seem to be, they are solemnly tangible. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

His appearance in reality a hidden masquerade — Justin Bienvenue

Many pray for the power of God. More every year. Those prayers sound powerful, sincere, godly, and without ulterior motive. Hidden under such prayer and fervor, however, are ambition, a craving for fame, the desire to be considered a spiritual giant. The person who prays such a prayer may not even know it, but dark motives and desires are in his heartin your heart. — Gene Edwards

People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them. — Veronica Roth

Unable to penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his motives lay hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him onward, and that a supernatural power had obstructed his retreat. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Jalal shook his head and moved toward Khalid. "She is. Please give her a chance to explain."
"Leave," Khalid commanded quietly.
"Don't let your fear and your distrust ruin this."
His uncle took Jalal by the shoulder.
"She loves you!" Jalal continued, his tone heedless. "This is not what it seems. Maybe it began as something else, but I would bet my life on what it is now. She loves you. Please don't fall to hate. You're not your father. You are so much more. She is so much more. — Renee Ahdieh

Most known motives are so suspect these days that I doubt whether the hidden ones are any better. All the same, — J.G. Ballard

We reflect God's character the most when we give freely of ourselves with no strings attached, no secret motives, no hidden agenda. — Craig Groeschel

Many of us knock on the door but remain outside, because knocking and entering are entirely different actions. Knocking is necessary, consisting of reading books, attending meetings, asking questions. But entrance requires much bolder action. It requires one to enter into himself, to uncover hidden motives, to see contradictions, and to realize his actual power for self-change. — Vernon Howard

There is a twilight zone in our hearts that we ourselves cannot see. Even when we know quite a lot about ourselves-our gifts and weaknesses, our ambitions and aspirations, our motives and our drives-large parts of ourselves remain in the shadow of consciousness. This is a very good thing. We will always remain partially hidden to ourselves. Other people, especially those who love us, can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That's a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility, but to a deep trust in those who love us. It is the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. — Noam Chomsky