How to Use profit motive in a Sentence

profit motive

noun
  • And profit motive and patient care mix about as well as oil and water.
    — Suzanne Blake, MSNBC Newsweek, 11 Aug. 2025
  • Banning the profit motive in medicine is a recipe for less investment in medicine.
    — Sally Pipes, Forbes, 16 Mar. 2023
  • Sometimes, these data sets are for pure research, with no profit motive.
    — Josh Hendrickson, PCMAG, 22 Jan. 2024
  • These days, the effort to fix the climate is being driven by the profit motive—and that’s a good thing.
    — Alan Murray, Fortune, 1 Dec. 2023
  • Mason is optimistic about what will replace the profit motive.
    — Mark Blyth, Foreign Affairs, 13 June 2016
  • What is the balance between the public good and the commercial/profit motive?
    — Tracy Harmon, USA TODAY, 20 Feb. 2025
  • The construction falls to private developers, most of whom have at least some profit motive.
    — New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 31 Jan. 2024
  • Suggest a hidden profit motive.
    — Katrine Wallace, STAT, 8 May 2026
  • That mattered less a decade ago, when college sports was big business but with virtually free labor and no profit motive.
    — Eben Novy-Williams, Sportico.com, 5 Mar. 2025
  • Getting an assessment from someone who has no profit motive is important.
    — Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board, The Orlando Sentinel, 25 Apr. 2026
  • Does profit motive and potential market share force private markets to behave?
    — Edward Lotterman, Twin Cities, 7 Dec. 2025
  • In a multibillion-dollar market, perhaps the profit motive would be the most effective way to spur action.
    — Heidi Blake, The New Yorker, 16 Oct. 2023
  • Nonetheless, with no profit motive, the losses from the taxpayer for paying the ransom would not be deductible.
    — Kelly Phillips Erb, Forbes.com, 25 Apr. 2025
  • This will be news to the inventors of the internet, who were civil servants and academic geeks with zero profit motive.
    — WIRED, 20 Oct. 2023
  • Proponents for resale caps argue the only way to stop ticket scalping is to remove the profit motive involved.
    — Ethan Millman, HollywoodReporter, 2 June 2026
  • Other publications are trying to take the profit motive out of journalism.
    — David Streitfeld, New York Times, 28 Feb. 2024
  • That profit motive incentivizes companies to invest in new research.
    — David J. Kappos, Fortune, 8 Jan. 2026
  • Spectropolis is never glib about the transparent profit motive sustaining such rites.
    — Dan Piepenbring, Harpers Magazine, 30 Dec. 2025
  • Spectropolis is never glib about the transparent profit motive sustaining such rites.
    — Dan Piepenbring, Harpers Magazine, 23 Nov. 2025
  • These degrees, unlike schools of business, put a great deal more emphasis on the people and learning side of leadership rather than simply the profit motive.
    — Foreign Affairs, 1 June 2020
  • The profit motive is reflected in the nature of the vandalism, which is often more organized than opportunist.
    — Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 25 Sep. 2024
  • However, courts have determined that to meet the criteria, a primary profit motive is required.
    — Kelly Phillips Erb, Forbes.com, 15 Aug. 2025
  • The real advances in such fields are happening in the private sector, where the profit motive fuels constant innovation.
    — Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Fortune Europe, 25 June 2024
  • The trust’s purpose is to use its votes to ensure that the company balances the profit motive with its mission to ensure that its cutting edge technology is used for good and not evil.
    — Ted Ladd, Forbes, 19 Apr. 2023
  • Unlike research by national-champion firms, research funded by public investment would not be tied to the profit motive.
    — Ganesh Sitaraman, Foreign Affairs, 10 Feb. 2020
  • One kind of viciously efficient profit motive was seeking the destruction of a somewhat different business mode.
    — Scott Eden, Rolling Stone, 1 Feb. 2026
  • Differences in philosophy and training explain some of the gap in what dentists recommend, but the profit motive is a factor, too, Mertz said.
    — Meg Wingerter, Denver Post, 12 Nov. 2025
  • The memorandum concludes that Taxpayer 4 had no profit motive in transferring the funds.
    — Matthew Roberts, Forbes, 19 Mar. 2025
  • Kim said the proposal would need additional study, but argued removing the profit motive would lead to lower premiums for many homeowners.
    — Ethan Varian, Mercury News, 5 Apr. 2026
  • Financiers trusted the accuracy of credit ratings and risk models, even though these had been created by people with a profit motive and had never been tested in a crisis.
    — Gillian Tett, Foreign Affairs, 11 June 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'profit motive.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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