Margaret Halsey Quotes

It's not what people do that matters, it's why they do it.

Motives are often more important than actions

Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.

There are more reasons for people's actions than the number of actions that are actually set in motion.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.

Why you do something is always kind of a mystery to me.

God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.

A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.

Too many people hold a very narrow view of what motivates us. They believe that the only way to get us moving is with the jab of a stick or the promise of a carrot. But if you look at over 50 years of research on motivation, or simply scrutinize your own behavior, it's pretty clear human beings are more complicated than that.

I'm interested in character and people and motivations and things like that.

Belief initiates and guides action - or it does nothing.

There is always a gap between intention and action.

Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.

Everyone is motivated a little or a lot to do something or nothing. Motivation is the internalized drive toward the dominant thought of the moment. By definition, motivation is "motive in action."

The nature of human beings is such that we tend not to drift into better behaviors. We usually have to be asked by someone to consider taking it up a level.

I learned then that practically no one in the world is entirely bad or entirely good, and that motives are often more important than actions.

Perhaps that is the secret. It is not what we do, so much as why we do it.

The things that motivate human beings, they don't change, emotionally.

I'm curious about what makes people do things that they do, unless it's absolutely terrifying to me.

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

In anything we do, any endeavor, it's not what you do; it's why you do it

I'm not interested in how people move; I'm interested in what makes them move.

You see, in this world there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons.

But what a man can do and what a man will do are two different things, he knew.