“Men are more accountable for their motives, than for anything else; and primarily, morality consists in the motives, that is in the affections.”
“There's always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a motivation above and beyond winning.”
“If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.”
“Nobody motivates today's workers. If it doesn't come from within, it doesn't come. Fun helps remove the barriers that allow people to motivate themselves.”
“All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us... they can't get away this time. [When Surrounded By 8 Enemy Divisions During WW2]”
“We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely, change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.”
“The only way to get people to like working hard is to motivate them. Today, people must understand why they're working hard. Every individual in an organization is motivated by something different.”
“I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.”
“Though a good motive cannot sanction a bad action, a bad motive will always vitiate a good action. In common and trivial matters we may act without motives, but in momentous ones the most careful deliberation is wisdom.”
“One of the reasons it has seemed so difficult for a person to change his habits, his personality, or his way of life, has been that heretofore nearly all efforts at change have been directed to the circumference of the self, so to speak, rather than to the center.”
“The most important thing about a man is what he believes in the depth of his being. This is the thing that makes him what he is, The thing that organizes him and feeds him; the thing that keeps him going in the face of untoward circumstances; the thing that gives him resistance.”
“When the administrator feels himself to be the sole driving agency, and finds himself chiefly engaged in arousing those who apathetic and coercing those who are antagonistic, there is something vitally wrong with the administration. An executive should find himself engaged chiefly in directing the energies which create themselves naturally in all parts of the business, and in finding the proper outlet for the eager upward striving of the ranks below.”