“The difference between ethics and morality is quite essential. What is beneficial for one people is the ethics. Morality is the matter of intention, when I say I believe something is good and I will do it because my motivation is right. The fact that in the end it will be a disaster, is not my fault, I did it for good reasons. I despise that. I think that it is the excuse of the weaker. I am not interested in intentions. I am interested in consequences. Any one can have good intentions, which I believe is the matter of decency. I do not discuss others’ intentions. I assume that anyone has good intentions. But it is so trivial, that I am not interested in it. I am interested in what comes next. If I will not benefit from the outcome, I am not interested in good intentions.”
From Zoran Djindjic's speech held to students of Banja Luka University, 20.02.2003.
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Zoran Đinđić 13
Serbian politician 1952–2003Related quotes
As quoted in The Civil Sphere (2006) by Jeffrey C. Alexander, p. 388
1960s
This I Believe (1951)
Context: I enjoy life because I am endlessly interested in people and their growth. My interest leads me to widen my knowledge of people, and this in turn compels me to believe in the common goodness of mankind. I believe that the normal human heart is born good. That is, it’s born sensitive and feeling, eager to be approved and to approve, hungry for simple happiness and the chance to live. It neither wishes to be killed, nor to kill. If through circumstances, it is overcome by evil, it never becomes entirely evil. There remain in it elements of good, however recessive, which continue to hold the possibility of restoration.
“I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”
Source: Magical Thinking
Paris 1923
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311
Quotes, 1920's
“I did have an inkling that I was going to be a writer. That was my intention.”
Interview in Toronto Canada (6 September 2000), by Jim Kunstler, Metropolis Magazine (March 2001)
“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.