Hill Harper Quotes

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

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.

Experts are human, and humans respond to incentives. How any given expert treats you, therefore, will depend on how that expert's incentives are set up.

Thus self-love as one part of human nature, and the several particular principles as the other part, are, themselves, their objects and ends, stated and shown.

Understanding motivation is one of the most important things we can do in our lives, because it has such a bearing on why we do the things we do and whether we enjoy them or not.

The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We've done that for so long that we've forgotten there's any other way.

Self-love then does not constitute THIS or THAT to be our interest or good; but, our interest or good being constituted by nature and supposed, self-love only puts us upon obtaining and securing it.

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

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

We aren't, as human beings, very good at acting in our best interest.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

Typically, if you reward something, you get more of it. You punish something, you get less of it. And our businesses have been built for the last 150 years very much on that kind of motivational scheme.

Our true passions are selfish.

Every man hath a general desire of his own happiness; and likewise a variety of particular affections, passions, and appetites to particular external objects.

We tend to live up to our expectations.

I'm insatiably curious about human nature.

It is my belief that we all have the need to feel special. It is this need that can bring out the best in us, yet the worst in us.

People react to fear, not love; they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

Human beings are very complex creatures. This desire, this greed, this love is very complex.

I don't think people do anything out of fear very well. So I think the only choice is to have them intrinsically motivated.

People aren't universally heroic.

Scarlett O'Hara didn't think she was manipulating. That's just the way she got what she wanted.

Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

I think the human mind is fascinating. I love figuring out why people are doing what they do.