Good Intentions Quotes

A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer. ~ Seneca.

I think I'll be going to Heaven, because I had good intentions. But my actions are another thing. ~ Curtis Jackson

It's the age-old concept of like attracts like, or the law of attraction. You get back what you put out, so you might as well think positively, focus on visualizing what you want instead of getting distracted by what you don't want, and send the universe your good intentions so that it can send them right back. ~ Sophia Amoruso

I believe that we must align our actions with our highest principles. No matter the outcome, we will not have failed if we act from our best intentions."
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions, Captain," Chakotay said with equal certainty.
"So is the road to peace," Cambridge observed. ~ Kirsten Beyer

And good intentions? These scared him the most: people with good intentions tended not to question themselves. And people who didn't question themselves, in the scientific world and beyond, were the ones to watch out for. ~ Shanthi Sekaran

I try to support any and all animal causes or organizations out there if they are good and reputable. Sadly, there are a lot of people and organizations that raise money but don't do much or don't have good intentions. I've worked with organizations such as Marine Animal Rescue in Southern California. ~ Alison Eastwood

For the Christian one dislocating, self-impoverishing hour spent with a child living in a broken-down dump is worth more than all the burial mounds of rhetoric, all the enfeebled good intentions, all the mumbling and fumbling and tardiness of those Christians who are so busy cultivating their own holiness that they cannot hear the anguished cry of the child in the slum. ~ Brennan Manning

I'm supposed to be guilty of all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors, but when you get right down to it, I'm really only guilty of one: wondering. The road to Hell, you say, is paved with good intentions. Charming. But actually it's paved with intriguing questions. You want to know. Man do you want to know. ~ Glen Duncan

As for the danger of alienating people with good intentions - well, one of the things that I learned from RaceFail (and also from general experience) was that people with good intentions are the ones to fear most. The overt racists are easy to deal with. You can spot them coming a mile away. But the well-intentioned people are scarier. They might not intend harm, but in most cases they haven't thought about all the racist (and other "-ist") messages they've absorbed from society. They haven't done the basic groundwork necessary to purge themselves of that passively-absorbed "-ism". So they say the most incredibly hurtful, self-absorbed, and utterly useless things, then compound the problem by getting upset when they're called on it. I liken these people to sleeper agents - they seem OK at first, but then they suddenly "activate" and stab you in the back, and then they come out of their fugue and freak because there's blood on their hands and they don't know how it got there and they refuse to accept that they're the ones who put it there, OMG, OMG. Meanwhile, you're on the floor bleeding out, unnoticed because of their histrionics.

The rage of RaceFail made many of these well-intentioned sleeper agents wake up. So while yes, I think the anger risked alienating some of them, I'm fine with that. They were always dangerous; I haven't lost anything by their alienation. The ones who wake up are a gain (or they will be, once they shift from "not causing harm" anymore ~ N.K. Jemisin

But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not all of them lead to hell. ~ Neal Shusterman

In the contemporary world there are two classes of bad plans-the plans invented and put into practice by men who do not accept our ideal postulates, and the plans invented and put into practice by the men who accept them, but imagine that the ends proposed by the prophets can be achieved by wicked or unsuitable means. Hell is paved with good intentions, and it is probable that plans made by well-meaning people of the second class may have results no less disastrous than plans made by evil-intentioned people of the first class. Which only shows, yet once more, how right the Buddha was in classing unawareness and stupidity among the deadly sins. Let us consider a few examples of bad plans belonging to these two classes. In the first class we must place all Fascist and all specifically militaristic plans. Fascism, in the words of Mussolini, believes that "war alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it." Again, "a doctrine which is founded upon the harmful postulate of peace is hostile to Fascism." The Fascist, then, is one who believes that the bombardment of open towns with fire, poison and explosives (in other words, modern war) is intrinsically good. He is one who rejects the teaching of the prophets and believes that the best society is a national society living in a state of chronic hostility towards other national societies and preoccupied with ideas of rapine and slaughter. He is ~ Aldous Huxley

All broken hearts are circumstantial. Every lovelorn jerk is the victim of bad timing, good intentions, and someone else's poor decision making. ~ Joshua Ferris

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it's not that simple ... Real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with ... My people who are trying to rule don't have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn't make you a wise king. ~ George R R Martin

The tendency of the UN and its major supporters is to think good intentions and mild to rampant corruption are as good as actual results. ~ John Hamill

We call an intention good which is right in itself, but the action is good, not because it contains within it some good, but because it issues from a good intention. ~ Peter Abelard

A millenarian fire burned in Oppenheimer's spirit, fueled by his pride as a world-historical individual, by his fear that the natural force he loosed upon the world would escape all human control, and by a pure-hearted longing to ensure that his discovery of the devastation latent in the elemental substance of the world would serve concord rather than the ultimate discord, perpetual peace rather than permanent self-destruction. ~ Algis Valiunas

The problem is that many entrepreneurs start with good intentions to create a new mindset system but then slack off. The solution is to make that system part of your daily routine. ~ Lisa A. Mininni

Live in peace with all mankind. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Life is short and if you're looking for extension, you had best do well. 'Cause there's good deeds and then there's good intentions. They are as far apart as Heaven and Hell. ~ Ben Harper

In particular, objectives like SMART goals often unlock a potential that people don't even realize they possess. The reason, in part, is because goal-setting processes like the SMART system force people to translate vague aspirations into concrete plans. The process of making a goal specific and proving it is achievable involves figuring out the steps it requires - or shifting that goal slightly, if your initial aims turn out to be unrealistic. Coming up with a timeline and a way to measure success forces a discipline onto the process that good intentions can't match. ~ Charles Duhigg

Institutions mistake good intentions for objectives. They say "health care"; that's an intention, not an objective. ~ Peter Drucker

Good intentions are not sufficient to creat a positive outcome; you must act. As you take part and become actively engaged, answers to your questions will appear. Lastly, like a great rock is not disturbed by the buffetings of the wind, the mind of a judicious man is steady. He exists as a stanchion, a stalwart support. Others can cling to him, for he will not falter. ~ Colleen Houck

Good intentions often get muddled with very complex execution. The last time the government tried to make taxes easier, it created a 1040 EZ form with a 52-page help booklet. ~ Brad D. Smith

Well done" is always better than "Well said". ~ Bruce M. Morgan

The pathway to hell was paved with good intentions, but what about the wrongs committed for the right reasons? Were they included as well? Life had taught him that anything that starts wrong, ends wrong. In this case, he supposed that only time and its unpredictable mercies would tell. - Percy ~ Leila Meacham

The Gelaming regarded themselves as a force for good, and in many ways they were, but they were also inexorable and their compassion could often feel like oppression. ~ Storm Constantine

Never grow weary of doing good. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

For liberals, supposedly good intentions always trump results. ~ David Limbaugh

You know how they say the path to hell is paved with good intentions? Well, maybe the path to heaven is paved with bad ones. ~ Jake Coburn

Bad decisions, good intentions. ~ Drake

Kindness is in a prison till it finds
Release in words or deeds. ~ William Kean Seymour

Forget public service. We all come here with good intentions, but as time passes, it becomes all about self-service and selfish survival. ~ Congressman X

You don't make art out of good intentions. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Honesty, good intentions and industry, you will have of course. Without these your career would soon end with the loss of your good name. But you must be ambitious to be a good deal more. Webb Hayes, his son, went on to found what had become the Union Carbide Corporation. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

(P)eople's good intentions can wind up putting us in boxes as confining as coffins. ~ Gayle Forman

Everyone with all those good intentions came to help Indonesia rebuild from the tsunami; but the co-ordination problem was very big, because they came with their own way of doing business; they came with the inflexibility of their own governance. ~ Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Among some of the organized methods used to control the world is the thing known and called PROPAGANDA. Propaganda has done more to defeat the good intentions of races and nations than even open warfare. Propaganda is a method or medium used by organized peoples to convert others against their will. We of the Negro race are suffering more than any other race in the world from propaganda ... propaganda to destroy our hopes, our ambitions and our confidence in self. ~ Marcus Garvey

I think we're entering a very dangerous time. The West has set itself up, decided it's in charge, not for good intentions, not for the benefit of mankind. ~ Thom Yorke

Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginning of self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. ~ Joan Didion

No one is born with good character; it's not a hereditary trait. And it isn't determined by a single noble act. Character is established by conscientious adherence to moral values, not by lofty rhetoric or good intentions. ~ Michael Josephson

If our mind is in conflict, not balanced with our body and with the needs of the soul, then there is a fundamental disunity in our life. Only if we have unity within ourselves, we can create unity in the world around us. You can't give something you don't have, even if you have all good intentions ~ Radhanath Swami

Good intentions do not guarantee good results. Somehow Andrew Keates turns works of merit into evenings of entertainment. Don't call him a dramaturge, call him an alchemist. ~ Paul Gambaccini

Perhaps we still have a basically superstitious tendency to associate failure with dishonesty and guilt - failure being interpreted as "punishment." Even if a man starts out with good intentions, if he fails we tend to think he was somehow "at fault." If he was not guilty, he was at least "wrong." And "being wrong" is something we have not yet learned to face with equanimity and understanding. We either condemn it with god-like disdain or forgive it with god-like condescension. We do not manage to accept it with human compassion, humility and identification. Thus we never see the one truth that would help us begin to solve our ethical and political problems: that we are all more or less wrong, that we are all at fault, all limited and obstructed by our mixed motives, our self-deception, our greed, our self-righteousness and our tendency to aggressivity and hypocrisy. ~ Thomas Merton

Good intentions are useless until they are expressed in appropriate action! ~ Napoleon Hill

There was nothing more dangerous than people convinced of their own good intentions. ~ Laura Lippman

People who mean well always do badly. They are like the ladies who wear clothes that don't fit them in order to show their piety. Good intentions are invariably ungrammatical. Man ~ Oscar Wilde

With the best of intentions you toss me a lifeline.
Failing to see how a piece of rope will do me any good, I ignore it and drown. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

What if good institutions were in fact the product of good intentions? What if the cynicism that is supposed to be rigor and the acquisitiveness that is supposed to be realism are making us forget the origins of the greatness we lay claim to - power and wealth as secondary consequences of the progress of freedom, or, as Whitman would prefer, Democracy? ~ Marilynne Robinson

Flexner's good intentions had laid the groundwork for the specialty- and research-dominated system of medical education that still stands- the more prestigious the school, the greater the emphasis on biomedical research and the less the emphasis on pragmatic medical care. ~ John Abramson

Good intentions are not enough; commitment and sacrifice are necessary. ~ Laurence Boldt

The importance of cultivating assumption of the best intentions in others cannot be over-estimated. Fostering this principal of, "goodness of intent," and committing to seeing others and the world through this lens makes for a successful, happy field of vision. This enables us to put our focus and energy to positive, productive outcomes. It lends to a spirit of cooperation and encouragement which is highly effective and satisfying for most people most of the time. That being said, these "rose colored glasses," as vibrant and pleasing as they are, must not become an excuse to look the other way when something needs a different focus, or fixed. We must not let them become blinders which are obviously ineffective, often negative, and occasionally dangerous. ~ Connie Kerbs

That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect ~ Jean De La Bruyere

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

When things go wrong or don't turn out the way you pictured them in your head, you just have to go with the best intentions defense. I have a lot of good intentions. ~ Blake Shelton

When government takes away options, it is bound to make some people worse off, even with intrinsicallly good intentions behind that government intervention. ~ Thomas Sowell

Paganism, it turns out, was the original Icelandic religion before a mass conversion in the year 1000. That was largely seen as a business decision, and Icelanders have never been particularly good Christians. They attend church if someone is born or wed or dies, but otherwise they are, as one Icelander put it, "atheists with good intentions. ~ Eric Weiner

I'd way rather defend myself against a man with a stick than a social worker with good intentions. ~ Wendelin Van Draanen

In general, I think the world is a good place if you work hard, believe in yourself, have good intentions, and if you are kind to people, I believe that good things happen to you. ~ Rachel Platten

For many of the dying, intensive care, with its isolation among strangers, extinguishes their hope of not being abandoned in the last hours. If fact, they are abandoned, to the good intentions of highly skilled professional personnel who barely know them. ~ Sherwin B. Nuland

Spare me therefore, your good intentions, your inner sensitivities, your unarticulated and unexpressed love. And spare me also these tedious psycho-historians which, by exposing the goodness inside the bad man, and the evil in the good-invariably establish a vulgar and perverse egalitarianism, as if the arrangement of what is outside and what inside makes no moral difference. ~ Willard Gaylin

How could something that started out with such good intentions end so badly? ~ Chris Saunders

I had lots of good intentions but I wasted them on people who didn't deserve them ... ~ Bellamkonda Avinash Babu

I had the belief that many troubles you could observe on the European continent were due to politicians not understanding economic phenomena. Even if they had good intentions, they didn't have the skills to solve problems. ~ Leonid Hurwicz

I had good intentions once upon a time. Well, September. ~ Claire Hennessy

Do not imagine that the good you intend will balance the evil you perform ~ Norman Mac Donald

The thing about lying is it's like creating your own world, controlling your own little world. A tiny innocent, or as some people call them white lie, can lead eventually to the break-up of a relationship. If the other person in the relationship knows the person has lied, no matter if it was with good intentions, then it's the beginning of the breakdown of trust. A profile or a picture is being continually formed of the two people in a relationship, and the lies, big and small, add to that profile. ~ Garry Crystal

Love abounds against all odds. One thing about love is that it comes with many sacrifices. Its good intentions always reassure you that in order to love someone else, you must be willing to love yourself first. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

People started down the road with good intentions, but the moment the road became rough or difficult, they'd abandon it. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Hell is full of good intentions. ~ Thomas Gray

In order to tell you a story about who I am and why I am here, I must spend a little time asking myself...questions. This is usually done at a superficial level as quickly as possible."

The self-diagnostic process that finds meaningful stories scares the hell out of people who aren't sure they are living meaningful lives. Once they reflect, most people do find that their lives are plenty meaningful (if a little out of balance). However, the process of self-examination tests your faith that your organization and your group are basically good people with good intentions. Groups that avoid deep examination seem to be anxious that honest self-examination might expose hypocrisy or emptiness. I've found that anxiety to be overstated in most cases."

First attempts at group stories are often highly aspirational in that the story is more about who we wished we were, rather than who we are. Stories that aspire to more than we can back up risk sounding hypocritical."

When our stories are sought and found from the subjective statement that "I have a lot to learn from other people", they invite difference...Gathering stories teaches you how to get outside your own experiences and experience life as others might. ~ Annette Simmons

The Nile Project is the performing side of an effort that also includes education in music and environmental issues, raising awareness of the entire Nile basin as an ecosystem. With such vibrant music, the good intentions were a bonus; the Nile Project was a superb example of what I call small-world music, of what happens to traditions in the information age. ~ Jon Pareles

John 8:44 says Satan is a liar and the father of lies. He captures and conquers men's lives through his convincing lies, often nullifying good intentions with wrongful actions that seemed manly in the moment but in the end lacked the balancing power of clarity. ~ James MacDonald

Do any of us know how we're actually doing? Whether or not all the hard work and good intentions are paying off? ~ Cheryl Heller

Put some action on your good intentions! ~ Lorii Myers

Perhaps I had never had a grip on myself to start with, living life on cruise-control while I waited for a home that would never be mine. It would be warm. Loving. Wonderfully chaotic, occasionally tempestuous, but full of good intentions and laughter. It would be all of the great things embodied by your run-of-the-mill greeting card, and it was still the last thing that I thought of each night as I let myself believe for a moment or two that such things were possible. ~ Alice Yi-Li Yeh

Good intentions but bad results; bad results but lessons learned. There is a dark corner on every task beautiful and a beautiful corner on every task dark. ~ Criss Jami

If we rely on anything else besides faith to maintain the practice of the presence of God, we will certainly fail, whether this is our feelings, or experiences, or sincerity, or good intentions, or reasonings, or plans. The reason these things will fail while faith will not fail is that all these things depend on us, while faith depends on God. It is a gift of God. ~ Peter Kreeft

If we are living under the assumption that we are only one way or another, inside a limited spectrum of human qualities, then we would have to question why more of us aren't wholly satisfied with our lives right now. Why do we have access to so much wisdom yet fail to have the strength and courage to act upon our good intentions by making powerful choices? And most important, why do we continue to act out in ways that go against our value system and all that we stand for? We will assert that it is because of our unexamined life, our darker self, our shadow self where our unclaimed power lies ~ Deepak Chopra

The to-read pile is more than just a physical stack of books: it's a tower of ambitions failed, hopes unrealised, good intentions unfulfilled. Worse still, it's a cold hard reminder of mortality. Already, I have intentions to read more books than I can hope to manage in a normal lifetime. How will this pile of books taunt me when I'm 64? ~ Sam Jordison

To keep on receiving, you must keep giving. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Good intentions do not always suffice. ~ Ufuoma Apoki

I nurture very good intentions about you. May you die in peace. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

Quite clearly, the one thing the dominant culture cannot tolerate or co-opt is compassion, the ability to stand in solidarity with the victims of the present order. It can manage charity and good intentions, but it has no way to resist solidarity with pain or grief. So ~ Walter Brueggemann

But our discussion has soured too much by this point; he will not be persuaded, so he has become insulted. I can see he will soon explode, but I hold his gaze and we both find a short instance of time in which to consider minimally, that we are both human beings with limitations, good intentions, and burdens to bear. ~ P. Carey Reid

Now I think that just to be in the same room as you is adventure enough, that your friendship would be more exciting than most people's love. All my good intentions left me the minute I set eyes on you today, and I know that even if I tell you to go now, sooner or later I'll come crawling back like a spaniel begging for any crumb you might throw me. I know that my love for you will make me lie my way into your friendship, that I'll deny the very fact of its existence just for the joy of seeing you.' She looked away, suddenly self-conscious. 'It's ironic, isn't it? I don't want you to change at all, but I'll become whatever I have to just to be near you - I'll even be your friend. ~ Nicola Upson

The road to powerful magical items is paved with good intentions and hideous deathtraps. ~ Jeff Mach

Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions. ~ Jane Smiley

Oh, my father sighs, if only we had a screwdriver that could unscrew wrongheaded ideas; if only we had a hammer to drive home good intentions; if only we had a pipe wrench to tighten hearts in everlasting love; a saw that we could use to make a clean cut with the past! ~ Stefano Benni

In JavaScript, there is a beautiful, elegant, highly expressive language that is buried under a steaming pile of good intentions and blunders. ~ Douglas Crockford

You know my biggest fear is this: That all my hard work. All my good intentions. All my studying. Have been nothing more than a building of a wall between me and life. ~ Hal Hartley

Good intentions never change anything. They only become a deeper and deeper rut. ~ Joyce Meyer

Black Lives Matter, the movement founded by the activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Callie's, and Opal Tometi, began with the premise that the incommensurable experience of systemic racism creates an unequal playing field. The American imagination has never been able to fully recover from its white-supremacist beginnings. Consequently, our laws and attitudes have been straining against the devaluation of the black body. Despite good intentions, the associations of blackness with inarticulate, bestial criminality persist beneath the appearance of white civility. This assumption both frames and determines our individual interactions and experiences as citizens. ~ Jesmyn Ward

We should leave behind discrimination, because it is narrow-minded and ignorant, denies contact and warmth, and corrodes mankind's belief that we can better ourselves. The only way to avoid misunderstanding, war, and bloodshed is to defend freedom of expression and to communicate with sincerity, concern, and good intentions. ~ Ai Weiwei

It's possible, and I stress possible, that such a moment may never come: you may not fall in love, you may not be able to or you may not wish to give your whole life to anyone, and, like me, you may turn forty-five one day and realize that you're no longer young and you have never found a choir of cupids with lyres or a bed of white roses leading to the altar. The only revenge left for you then will be to steal from life the pleasure of firm and passionate flesh - a pleasure that evaporates faster than good intentions and is the nearest thing to heaven you will find in this stinking world where everything decays, beginning with beauty and ending with memory. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It is important to direct our intelligence with good intentions. Without intelligence, we cannot accomplish very much. Without good intentions, the way we exercise of our intelligence may have destructive results. ~ Dalai Lama

A horrid alcoholic explosion scatters all my good intentions like bits of limbs and clothes over the doorsteps and into the saloon bars of the tawdriest pubs. ~ Dylan Thomas

Good intentions are the best business. ~ Debasish Mridha

Since good intentions and sympathy for others often led people into trouble, the Chinese people had invented a new proverb that said, 'The more you do, the more trouble you have; the less you do, the less trouble you have. If you do nothing whatever, you will become a model citizen. ~ Nien Cheng

If your environment is stacked against you, you will use up your strong drive for self-control, and despite good intentions, your efforts may fail. ~ Paul Rosman

I'm just trying to do my part to save the world. ~ J. Cornell Michel