23 Quotes Tagged: intention

One can try to evade the problem by adopting a ‘morality of intentions’. What’s important is what I intend, not what I actually do or the outcome of what I do. However, in a world in which everything is interconnected, the supreme moral imperative becomes the imperative to know. The greatest crimes in modern history resulted not just from hatred and greed, but even more so from ignorance and indifference. Charming English ladies financed the Atlantic slave trade by buying shares and bonds in the London stock exchange, without ever setting foot in either Africa or the Caribbean. They then sweetened their four o’clock tea with snow-white sugar cubes produced in hellish plantations – about which they knew nothing.

You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish — not sit intending on a chair.

Security, alas, can give
A threatening impression;
Too much defense-initiative
Can prompt aggression.

Count the deed, not the thought.

Never judge someone's character based on the words of another. Instead, study the motives behind the words of the person casting the bad judgment.

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another.

Similarly, the total output of human creativity, in all its kaleidoscopic breadth, pieces together the fabric forming our culture. The underlying intention of our work is the aspect allowing it to fit neatly into this fabric. Rarely if ever do we know the grand intention, yet if we surrender to the creative impulse, our singular piece of the puzzle takes its proper shape.

Intention is all there is. The work is just a reminder.

Anyone can see that intending and not acting when we can is not really intending, and loving and not doing good when we can is not really loving.

Incessant smiling is one of the deadly tools used by someone whose intent is to make others cry.

What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.

Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.

…the schist pyramids can leave us contrite. Greatness is in the intention; and not in dimensions.

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you

I can think of no right more fundamental than the right to peacefully steward the contents of one's own consciousness.