Good Intentions Quotes

“God save us from people who mean well.”
― Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.”
― T.S. Eliot

“I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care criticize where necessary. Those who envy criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Manipulation, fueled with good intent, can be a blessing. But when used wickedly, it is the beginning of a magician's karmic calamity.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"

“Hell is paved with good intentions.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 2

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not all of them lead to hell.”
― Neal Shusterman, Scythe

“Along the way, in their attempt to make their dream come true, many ultimately prefer to stay on the sideline. In the meantime, their packages of good intentions start leaking, or their letters of hope remain silenced by unawareness. ("Poste Restante")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Burning bridges behind you is understandable. It's the bridges before us that we burn, not realizing we may need to cross, that brings regret.”
― Anthony Liccione

“The problem is that no matter how good your intentions, eventually you want to kill someone yourself.”
― Kenneth Cain, Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone

“A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at the same time. Christ, on the other hand, transforms, instead of controls, by instilling his certain inner peace. This is the place where one realizes that only his holiness is and feels like true freedom, rather than like imprisonment, and, too, why Hell, I imagine, a magnified version of man's never-ending conflict between freedom and peace, would be the flesh's ultimate utopia - yet its ultimate regret.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. One the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“...it's true that some if the most terrible things in the works are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Your intention is always good.”
― Meir Ezra

“How many mistakes does it take before you’re bad? Does it start with a little white lie, and slowly progress to fraud . . . and worse? Does it matter if you do the wrong thing for the right reason?”
― Christina Lauren, My Favorite Half-Night Stand

“The road to powerful magical items is paved with good intentions and hideous deathtraps.”
― Jeff Mach, There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN: A Dark Lord's Diary:

“People are always meaning well,' said Edward. 'That's often the trouble.”
― Penelope Lively, Passing On

“Wisdom: People attain wisdom in large part by remembering what happened in the past. No generation can attain wisdom without studying and remembering the past. None of those who believed in the 1960's aphorism, ‘Never trust anyone over thirty,’ became a wise person. Without wisdom, all the good intentions in the world amount to nothing. Intending to do good without having wisdom is like intending to fly an airplane with no knowledge of airplanes or the laws of aerodynamics. Good intentions without wisdom lead to either nothing or to actual evil.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Be proud of yourself. Be proud that your heart and intentions are good. Be proud of the fact that you are trying.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year

“Don’t offend the gays and don’t inflame the homophobes. These were the twin horns on which the handling of this epidemic would be torn from the first day of the epidemic. Inspired by the best intentions, such arguments paved the road toward the destination good intentions inevitably lead.”
― Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

“No good would come of all these fine intentions.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

“... there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: “He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Absent Treatment

“It is an old custom. Men of good-intentions and goodwill who have the means stud the land around forlorn villages with fine groves and wells for the general comfort of travelers, and also so people from posterity while resting in the shade and refreshing themselves would think of them and would think kindly.”
― Mukta Singh-Zocchi, The Thugs & a Courtesan

“[Standard social science approaches to analyzing conflict] too often miss the unintended consequences of well-intentioned acts. Dietrich Dorner is a German psychologist who studies leadership and decision making in complex environments. He has suggested that there is more harm done in today's world by well-intentioned people trying to do good, who are unaware of the unintended consequences of their actions, than by people actually trying to cause harm. Remarkably, this may well be true.”
― Peter T. Coleman, The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts

“People. They're not all bad, but do you really want to risk it? Perhaps that was the unofficial motto of the Soviet Union...”
― Dmitry Dyatlov

“The old man continued, “You have been a real blessing to me. Today, I understand something I didn’t see before: every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don’t want anything else in life. But you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I’m going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don’t want to do so....

And, as he smothered the coals in the hookah, he told the boy that he could begin to sell tea in the crystal glasses. Sometimes, there's just no way to hold back the river.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Individual intent is not necessary for systemic evil.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“Well-meaning people are sometimes the most dangerous.”
― Angela N. Blount, Once Upon a Road Trip

“One of the most dangerous traps for the believer is a good thing that's not a God thing.”
― Andrena Sawyer