Quotes & Sayings About Evil Intentions

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

It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth. — David Cecil

o have good intentions is irrelevant and misleading. All evil that has ever been done in the universe was done with good intentions. You must measure effect, impact, and consequence, not intentions. - Holy Scrolls of Soeck, Thirteenth Binding Fifteenth Stanza — Aaron Lee Yeager

We overcome the evil in the world by the charity and compassion of God, and in so doing we drive all evil out of our own hearts. The evil that is in us is more than moral. There is a psychological evil, the distortion caused by selfishness and sin. Good moral intentions are enough to correct what is formally bad in our moral acts. But in order that our charity may heal the wounds of sin in our whole soul it must reach down into the furthest depths of our humanity, cleaning out all the infection of anxiety and false guilt that spring from pride and fear, releasing the good that has been held back by suspicion and prejudice and self-conceit. Everything in our nature must find its right place in the life of charity, so that the whole man may be lifted up to God, that the entire person may be sanctified and not only the intentions of his will. — Thomas Merton

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

The evil one will always bring pain from the best of gifts, even as Yahweh can bring good from the worst. That is the way of things until Abraham's seed comes. You must always remember this, Dahveed. Despite our will and intentions, the accuser can bring evil from what we do. When that happens, do all you can to help those harmed, and leave the rest to Yahweh, for He will repay. — Terri Fivash

The hell of human suffering, evil and oppression is paved with good intentions. The men who have most injured and oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against it, were according to their standards and their conscience good men; what was bad in them, what wrought moral evil and cruelty, treason to truth and progress, was not at all in their intentions, in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their opinions. — Robert Briffault

In this world, evil can arise from the best intentions. And there is good that can come from evil intentions. How then should Lelouch's actions be taken? Every man has his day of judgement, does he not? Geass: He who uses this inhuman power will find his heart isolated; whether he wants it that way or not. Thus he plummets into the abyss that lies good and evil. But if a man can climb out of that abyss and into the light, then that man has the soul of a king. — Ichiro Okouchi

Money is not good or evil. It has no morals or intentions on its own. Money reflects the character of the user. — Dave Ramsey

While God is not the author of evil and He never prompts or condones sin, nothing occurs without His sovereign oversight. Others may choose to do evil deeds and God's people may suffer in the short term, but He will transform the evil intentions of evil people into opportunities for the enrichment of those in His care. — Charles R. Swindoll

Live in peace with all mankind. — Lailah Gifty Akita

They say money is the rude of all evil, however I know poor people that can quite fit the bill. — Anthony Liccione

At the moment, most of our ways of defining the unit of morality are similar in their intentions, but they differ in their details. So the priests of one nation bless their soldiers as they march to war, and the imams of another country bless their soldiers as they march out to meet them. And everybody who is involved in the killing, says that he has God on his side. There is no objective and universally acceptable definition of good and evil. And until we have one, we will go on justifying our own actions, while condemning the actions of the others.' 'And you're putting the physics of the universe up as a kind of platinum-iridium bar? — Gregory David Roberts

You can have the best intentions in the world, but if you do nothing, you are nothing. It is a harsh glare to shed that kind of light, but in my heart that is pure reality for me. How does the quote go? "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing." This is the downside to the longevity of sloth. It is an exit on a highway that leads to the worst parts of town. — Corey Taylor

He clung to the story as to a vow whose abandonment might bring down on his head all kinds of grief and misfortune. He felt very alone, on an interminable day full of evil omens, and the story, though resistant to some of his intentions, was at least a testimony to reality and coherence — Jose Maria Merino

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On 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. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clearsightedness. Hence — Albert Camus

Hell is paved with good intentions. — Samuel Johnson

Then maybe you can help me out with something. I need an armaments shop. I want to buy a sword. A really good one." Jace looked surprised, then amused. "What for?" "Oh, you know. Killing." Clary made a hand gesture she hoped conveyed her murderous intentions toward all things evil. — Cassandra Clare

The Art of Peace is the principle of nonresistance. Because it is nonresistant it is victorious from the beginning. Those with evil intentions or contentious thoughts are instantly vanquished. The Art of Peace is invincible because it contends with nothing. — Morihei Ueshiba

Orwell's 1984 [ ... ] is political thought disguised as a novel; the thinking is certainly lucid and correct, but it is distorted by its guise as a novel, which renders it imprecise and vague. [ ... ] the situations and the characters are as flat as a poster.
The pernicious influence of Orwell's novel resides in its implacable reduction of a reality to its political dimension alone, and in its reduction of that dimension to what is exemplarily negative about it. I refuse to forgive this reduction on the grounds that it was useful as propaganda in the struggle against totalitarian evil. For that evil is, precisely, the reduction of life to politics and of politics to propaganda. So despite its intentions, Orwell's novel itself joins in the totalitarian spirit, the spirit of propaganda. It reduces (and teaches others to reduce) the life of a hated society to the simple listing of its crimes. — Milan Kundera

Tammy, werewulves act in ways that are pleasing only to themselves. They behave without a conscious... They are sick monsters who have permanently lost their self-control. Their intentions and motivations are never clear; they slaughter flocks and herds yet eat nothing. They are the quintessence of evil, hence the title "demon". And who really wants demons around? — Melanie Fair

Your intentions will be good. Without consideration and forethought, however, your actions could still be evil. That is the problem, of course, evil is always easy and resisting it is never so. Evil is relentless; and anyone, if they tire, if they are not vigilant, can fall prey to it. — Michael A. Stackpole

Wile E. Coyote is a coyote with nothing but good intentions. But Road Runner comes along and is unattainable, he wants it and can't get it, and thus he becomes a villain that is impossible to be around. Bill O'Reilly is a villain that is so in love with himself and the sound of his voice that he's literally become the personification of evil. — Shawn Hatosy

The things I've seen," he continues easily, "have shown me that the only constant is change. Too much power in one place is a fool's errand. Eventually, and inevitably, no matter how good the intentions, or how long the life, power always wins out, and everyone suffers for it. The only true path of rational existence is balance; a constant re-assessment of the burdens of power, if you will. — Bill Blais

The effects which follow too constant and intense a concentration upon evil are always disastrous. Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes even perceptibly worse than it was, before the crusade began. By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself. — Aldous Huxley

Your only chance of survival, if you are severely smitten, lies in hiding this fact from the woman you love, of feigning a casual detachment under all circumstances. What sadness there is in this simple observation! What an accusation against man! Love makes you weak, and the weaker of the two is oppressed, tortured, and finally killed by the other, who in his or her turn oppresses, tortures, and kills without having evil intentions, without even getting pleasure from it, with complete indifference; that's what men, normally, call love. — Michel Houellebecq

countries under the unyielding rule of Berlin and the discipline of the SS and the Gestapo. It was Churchill in particular who opposed all compromise, who talked to his fellow cabinet members for days on end and finally won over Chamberlain, who, after 1938, was also convinced of Hitler's evil intentions. 'Hitler's terms, if accepted, would put us completely at his mercy,' Churchill believed. And: 'Nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished.' In May 1940 it would have been blindly optimistic to think that Great Britain could defeat the Germans without massive support from the Soviet Union and the United States. But the British were persuaded that Germany would once again encounter difficulties due to — Geert Mak

Wolves which batten upon lambs, lambs consumed by wolves, the strong who immolate the weak, the weak victims of the strong: there you have Nature, there you have her intentions, there you have her scheme: a perpetual action and reaction, a host of vices, a host of virtues, in one word, a perfect equilibrium resulting from the equality of good and evil on earth. — Marquis De Sade

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. — Albert Camus

The problem is that no matter how good your intentions, eventually you want to kill someone yourself. — Kenneth Cain

Half of the results of a good intentions are evil; half the results of an evil intention are good. — Mark Twain

Maybe they want us to feel uneasy. Maybe they think we'll make a mistake if they're constantly breathing down our necks.' I shivered violently, as if I really could feel the hot, hungry breath of evil intentions panting just behind me. — Rosie Pugh

It seems it doesn't pay to be good anymore, when people are short-changing you for evil. — Anthony Liccione

Hate will destroy you. Let love be the basis of which you live your life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Therein resides the fundamental systemic violence of capitalism, much more uncanny than direct pre-capitalist socio-ideological violence: its violence is no longer attributable to concrete individuals with their 'evil' intentions, but is purely 'objective,' systemic, anonymous
quite literally a conceptual violence, the violence of a Concept whose self-deployment rules and regulates social realty. — Slavoj Zizek

The powerlessness of people with pure intentions, in the long run, can sometimes be more powerful than power in the hands of those blinded or depraved by evil tempers. — Widad Akreyi

You don't just have people who wake up in the morning and say, "What evil things can I do today, because I'm Mr. Evil?" People do things for what they think are justified reasons. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and you have to keep that in mind. If you read a lot of history, as I do, even the worst and most monstrous people thought they were the good guys. We're all very tangled knots. — George R R Martin

Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right. — Norman Angell

The evil that is in this world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On 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; — Albert Camus

Finally coming to terms with Fathers Day. I blow as a Dad. I get it. No, I'm not an evil, abusive Father, it's just that while all my intentions and thoughts have been out of love for my kids, my actions and behaviour never measured up. — Geoffrey Hill

The main thing is this: we should never blame anyone or anything for our defeats. No matter how evil their intentions may be, they are altogether unable to harm us until we begin to blame them and use them as excuses for our own unbelief. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

The only clue to what is in people's minds is in their behavior. If a man behaves strangely, oddly, is not himself--

Then you suspect him?

No. That is just what I mean. A man whose mind is evil and whose intentions are evil is conscious of that fact and he knows that he must conceal it all costs. He dare not, therefore, afford any unusual behavior. — Agatha Christie

The plea of good intentions is not one that can be allowed to have much weight in passing historical judgment upon a man whose wrong-headedness and distorted way of looking at things produced, or helped to produce, such incalculable evil; there is a wide political applicability in the remark attributed to a famous Texan, to the effect that he might, in the end, pardon a man who shot him on purpose, but that he would surely never forgive one who did so accidentally. — Theodore Roosevelt

Obviously, no one suspects men with flowers of evil intentions — Nicolas Barreau

She had thought once that there were good people and bad people, that there was a side of light and a side of darkness, but she no longer thought that. She had seen evil, in her brother and her father, the evil of good intentions gone wrong and the evil of sheer desire for power. But in goodness there was also no safety: Virtue could cut like a knife, and the fire of Heaven was blinding. — Cassandra Clare

The road to evil is paved with socialist intentions. — A.E. Samaan

America has shown its evil intentions, and the proud Iraqi people cannot accept it. They must defend their rights by any means they see fit. — Muqtada Al Sadr

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

Then they'd be wrong. It's only our deeds that make us evil, Tanner; they're what define us, nothing else, not our intentions or feelings. But what are a few bad deeds compared to a life, especially the kinds of lives we can live now? — Alastair Reynolds

Socialism always produces evil results, no matter one's intentions. — Dave Champion

Numbness and cynicism, I suspect, are more often the products of frustrated compassion than of evil intentions. — David Hilfiker

But people may do great good accidentally, though with evil intentions - conversely people may do great evil though having the best of intentions. — Michael Moorcock

Good intentions can be evil, both hands are full of grease. You know, sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace. — Bob Dylan

I might have speculated on my chances of going to Heaven; but candidly I did not care. I could not have wept if I had tried. I had no wish to review the evils of my past. But the past did seem to have been a bit wasted. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions: the road to Heaven is paved with lost opportunities. — Apsley Cherry-Garrard

I didn't have evil intentions, but I guess I did have power. — Harmon Killebrew

As is a rock in the hand of one with evil intentions. It is not the rock that is the problem, but the heart of man. — Donita K. Paul

Justice for some people is an evil for others. Good intentions, kindness, and hope will not necessarily make people happy. — Gen Urobuchi

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

I think what's exciting about playing a villain - particularly a villain who's totally unapologetic about their evil intentions - is that it's not anything remotely like what you get to do in real life. You're never allowed to be evil and not feel bad about it afterwards, let alone be evil, period. — Bryce Dallas Howard

Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person. — Eric Hoffer

Your name is feared by many in Underworld. Your father has created quite the reputation for himself, so they fear you as well," Marcus said.
I smirked "As they should."
He shook his head. "That wasn't a compliment. You will come to learn that the Circle is not pure good nor the Underworld all evil. There are those who belong to the Underworld, such as Rayna, who have no use for the needless killing you associate with demons. There are also those in the Circle whose intentions are not completely honorable. There is something of human frailty in all of us. — M.R. Merrick

Miguel," he said, when he felt my defenses weakening, "the conflict you speak of exists in the human mind, and it is not actually a conflict between good and evil; it is a conflict between truth and lies. When we believe in truth, we feel good and our life is good. When we believe in things that are not true, things that encourage fear and hatred in us, the result is fanaticism. The result is what people recognize as evil - evil words, evil intentions, evil actions. All the violence and suffering in the world is a direct result of the many lies we tell ourselves. — Miguel Ruiz

Nevertheless I would be a hypocrite not to anticipate that the good intentions I brought to The Prince will also be the root of some other man's evil, if only because the way to the house of the Devil is the same for the good man and the bad - and the journey just as necessary for them both. The times change, but the nature of men does not. — Michael Ennis

Intentions don't matter. It's the end result we're all judged by. Evil in the name of good is still evil. And when you dance with the devil, you seldom get to pick the tune. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Don't ascribe to evil what can be attributed to well-intentioned stupidity. — James A. Owen

Even I recognize that I'm not being a proper role model right now. But I need you to understand. As your mother, it's my duty to protect you from the evil intentions of whoever did this ... and I'll become a demon if I have to. That's all there is to it. — Ryukishi07

There is much to be said for the cynical liberal response. Much of it is true. Yet it has major flaws and is far from the whole story. First, it is a demonization of conservatives. It assumes that they are either rich, evil, self-serving power-mongers, or their paid agents, or dupes. The conservative ranks may well contain some of each. Yet most conservatives are not rich and see themselves as working for the benefit of the country rather than for their own benefit. There are too many idealistic conservatives of good intentions and moderate means for the demonization theory to be true. Second, — George Lakoff

It is not for human judgment to dive into the heart of man, to know whether his intentions are good or evil. — Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon

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

Power is essentially amoral and one of the most important skills to acquire is the ability to see circumstances rather than good or evil. Power is a game - this cannot be repeated too often - and in games you do not judge your opponents by their intentions but by the effect of their actions. — Robert Greene