
“… intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over…”
Source: The Winter of Our Discontent
undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)
“… intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over…”
Source: The Winter of Our Discontent
“Nothing is really good or bad in itself — it’s all what a person thinks about it.”
“States are doomed when they are unable to distinguish good men from bad.”
§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius
“In fact we say that an intention is good, that is, right in itself, but that an action does not bear any good in itself but proceeds from a good intention.”
Bonam quippe intentionem, hoc est, rectam in se dicimus, operationem vero non quod boni aliquid in se suscipiat, sed quod ex bona intentione procedat. Unde et ab eodem homine cum in diversis temporibus idem fiat, pro diversitate tamen intentione eius operatio modo bono modo mala dicitur.
Ethica, seu Scito Teipsum, Bk. 1; translation by D E Luscombe from Peter Abelard's Ethics (1971) p. 53
Context: In fact we say that an intention is good, that is, right in itself, but that an action does not bear any good in itself but proceeds from a good intention. Whence when the same thing is done by the same man at different times, by the diversity of his intention, however, his action is now said to be good, now bad.
Paul Auster, Man In The Dark, New York: Henry Holt and Company, p. 63.
Man In The Dark (2008)
“To be good and lead a good life means to give to others more than one takes from them.”
Source: The First Step (1892), Ch. VII
“We make our own luck. And it’s my responsibility to see it’s good and not bad.”
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 11 (p. 194)