Quotes about intentionality

A collection of quotes on the topic of intentionality, doing, other, use.

Quotes about intentionality

Rick Warren photo

“God intentionally allows you to go through painful experiences to equip you for ministry to others.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Wilhelm Liebknecht photo
Brian Eno photo
Douglass C. North photo

“Regarding social order, Fukuyama writes, "The systematic study of how order, and thus social capital, can emerge in spontaneous and decentralized fashion is one of the most important intellectual developments of the late twentieth century." He correctly attributes the modern origins of this argument to F. A. Hayek, whose pioneering contributions to cognitive science, the study of cultural evolution, and the dynamics of social change put him in the forefront of the most creative scholars of the 20th century. But Hayek's views about the "spontaneity" of social order remain controversial. In their extreme form, they imply that all deliberate efforts to manipulate social order — social engineering — are doomed to failure because the complex nature of our cultural heritage makes a complete understanding of the human condition impossible.
Hayek was certainly correct that we have, at best, a very imperfect understanding of the human landscape, but "spontaneous" it is not. What distinguishes human evolution from the Darwinian model is the intentionality of the players. The mechanism of variation in evolutionary theory (mutation) is not informed by beliefs about eventual consequences. In contrast, human evolution is guided by the perceptions of the players; their choices (decisions) are made in the light of the theories the actors have, which provide expectations about outcomes.”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Douglass North in "Orders of the Day" in Reason (November 1999) http://reason.com/archives/1999/11/01/orders-of-the-day, a review of The Great Disruption : Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order (1999) by Francis Fukuyama

Stanisław Lem photo

“For moral reasons… the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created… intentionally.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

From Peter Engel, "An Interview With Stanislaw Lem": The Missouri Review, Volume VII, Number 2 (1984) http://www.missourireview.org/index.php?genre=Interviews&title=An+Interview+with+Stanislaw+Lem
Context: For moral reasons I am an atheist — for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally.

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Angelina Jolie photo

“I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Variant: I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Murasaki Shikibu photo

“To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do: whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness. I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind?”

trans. Richard Bowring
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Colin Wilson photo
Ward Cunningham photo
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw photo
Aron Ra photo
John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge photo
Mark Zuckerberg photo
Ellsworth Kelly photo

“I felt that everything is beautiful, but [not? ] that which man tries intentionally to make beautiful; that the work of an ordinary bricklayer is more valid than the artwork of all but a very few artists.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Quotes from 'Notes from 1969', Ellsworth Kelly; as quoted in the exhibition catalogue, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 13 December
1969 - 1980

Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Alan Keyes photo
George Steiner photo
Annie Dillard photo

“Whenever a work's structure is intentionally one of its own themes, another of its themes is art.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Quoted by Ted Nelson in Literary Machines (1982)

Muhammad photo

“Do not abandon your prayers intentionally for surely the obligations of Allah and His Messenger cease to cover one who forsakes his prayers intentionally.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Kanzul `Ummal, Volume 7, Tradition 19096
Shi'ite Hadith

Richard Leakey photo
Muhammad photo

“The name of one who forsakes his prayer intentionally is written upon The door of Hell from which he shall (eventually) enter.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Kanzul `Ummal, Volume 7, Tradition 19090
Shi'ite Hadith

Benjamin R. Barber photo
Ernst Mach photo

“In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted.”

Ernst Mach (1838–1916) Austrian physicist and university educator

"The Economical Nature of Physical Inquiry," in Popular Scientific Lectures (1898), p. 192
19th century

Muhammad photo
Jesse Helms photo
Akeel Bilgrami photo
Aron Ra photo

“The supposedly sacred fables in the Bible describe God as creating evil intentionally, of consorting with evil, being compelled by evil, and of gambling with the devil -with human suffering as the desired outcome. In fact, God is depicted as being almost entirely evil himself, throughout the entire cluster of repugnant horror stories.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, A Letter to a Certain Christian http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/10/12/a-letter-to-a-certain-christian/ (October 12, 2013)

“Personal causality, refers to instances in which p causes x intentionally. That is to say, the action is purposive.”

Fritz Heider (1896–1988) German psychologist

Source: The psychology of interpersonal relations, 1958, p. 100

Arnold J. Toynbee photo
Ted Nugent photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Paul Tillich photo
Thaddeus Stevens photo
Glenn Beck photo
Max Scheler photo

“We do not use the word “ressentiment” because of a special predilection for the French language, but because we did not succeed in translating it into German. Moreover, Nietzsche has made it a terminus technicus. In the natural meaning of the French word I detect two elements. First of all, ressentiment is the repeated experiencing and reliving of a particular emotional response reaction against someone else. The continual reliving of the emotion sinks it more deeply into the center of the personality, but concomitantly removes it from the person's zone of action and expression. It is not a mere intellectual recollection of the emotion and of the events to which it “responded”—it is a re-experiencing of the emotion itself, a renewal of the original feeling. Secondly, the word implies that the quality of this emotion is negative, i. e., that it contains a movement of hostility. Perhaps the German word “Groll” (rancor) comes closest to the essential meaning of the term. “Rancor” is just such a suppressed wrath, independent of the ego's activity, which moves obscurely through the mind. It finally takes shape through the repeated reliving of intentionalities of hatred or other hostile emotions. In itself it does not contain a specific hostile intention, but it nourishes any number of such intentions.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Erik Naggum photo

“Ignoring for a moment the power of the American Medical Association, we still wouldn't see a huge amount of books on neurosurgery for dummies in 21 days or whatever. It's just plain inappropriate, and it's intentionally out of people's reach.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Is LISP dying? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.misc/msg/63257b85465935eb
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Henry Moore photo

“An opportunity for cybernetics to change the course of the philosophy of mind was missed when intentionality was misinterpreted as "the providing of coded knowledge."”

Igor Aleksander (1937) scientist

Aleksander (2001) in: New scientist. Vol. 169. p.56 cited in: Jacques Vallée (2003) The Heart of the Internet. p.8

“[When it comes to leadership] intentionality rules.”

Kent Thiry (1956) Business; CEO of DaVita

Vanderbilt Commencement Address (2011)

Benjamin R. Barber photo
Georges Bataille photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Wahbi Al-Hariri photo

“After working with oil, pastel, and watercolors, I have intentionally returned to working with graphite. It is the most challenging mode of expression to master”

Wahbi Al-Hariri (1914–1994) Artist, architect, author

Wahbi al-Hariri-Rifai (1992), The Spiritual Edifices of Islam: Drawings by Wahbi Al-Hariri-Rifai http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Spiritual_Edifices_of_Islam.html?id=J9sJtwAACAAJ - National Museum (Saudi Arabia) Exhibit Booklet - 2002, Washington, D.C.: GDG Exhibits Trust & National Museum (Saudi Arabia), OCLC:56990773, retrieved on 25 June 2013. Quoted from inside cover.

Ilana Mercer photo

“Whether they are armed with bombs or bacteria, stopping weaponized individuals from harming others ─ intentionally or unintentionally ─ falls perfectly within the purview of the “night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory”.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Swine Are Loose,” http://takimag.com/article/the_swine_are_loose#axzz3461cvrNm Taki’s Magazine, May 2, 2009.
2000s, 2009

John Scalzi photo
Edward O. Wilson photo
John Rogers Searle photo

“The Intentionality of the mind not only creates the possibility of meaning, but limits its forms.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

Source: Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (1983), P. 166.

Sam Harris photo

“To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

2010s, Lying (2011)

Daniel J. Boorstin photo
John Rogers Searle photo

“Intentionality Rules. Leadership is not about charisma, it's not about being articulate, it's about being yourself and caring about others.”

Kent Thiry (1956) Business; CEO of DaVita

University of Colorado Leeds School of Business Commencement Address (2013)

Haile Selassie photo
John Rogers Searle photo

“An utterance can have Intentionality, just as a belief has Intentionality, but whereas the Intentionality of the belief is intrinsic the Intentionality of the utterance is derived.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

Source: Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (1983), P. 27.

Michele Bachmann photo
Paul Tillich photo
Charles Darwin photo

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.”

volume I, chapter V: "On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilised Times" (second edition, 1874) pages 133-134 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=156&itemID=F944&viewtype=image
The last sentence of the first paragraph is often quoted in isolation to make Darwin seem heartless.
The Descent of Man (1871)

Waylon Jennings photo

“I've always been crazy and the trouble that it's put me through;
I've been busted for things that I did, and I didn't do.
I can't say I’m proud of all of the things that I’ve done,
But I can say I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone.”

Waylon Jennings (1937–2002) American country music singer, songwriter, and musician

I've Always Been Crazy, title track from I've Always Been Crazy (1978).
Song lyrics

Ilana Mercer photo

“If not by design at least by default; reflexively if not intentionally, government operatives work to retain their positions and increase their sphere of influence.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Dying for Obama's Deadly Dogma,” http://www.targetliberty.com/2014/10/dying-for-obamas-deadly-dogma.html Target Liberty, October 17, 2014.
2010s, 2014

Kent Hovind photo

“Now, everything Marx did was intentionally anti-Christian. If the Bible is for it, he's against it. See, the Bible makes private property a real serious issue. Ownership of private property is critical. You can't have freedom without property rights. What good does it do to say that you have all kinds of freedom if there's no place to exercise your freedom? […] You could not possibly lose your property permanently in the Biblical system. Since every man has his own vine and his own fig tree, drink waters out of your own cistern, waters out of your own well. Private property is essential. […] Karl Marx developed the idea of a graduated income tax. The more you make, the more they take. That's Karl Marx's idea. He's said, "You need to abolish rights of inheritance." The Bible says a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children. Karl Marx was against that. Confiscate property rights. Evolution is a foundation of Communist philosophy behind the money powers. Karl Marx said, "We need a central bank." This was a Communist idea. The banking system we're using today in America, the Federal Reserve, is a direct result of Karl Marx's thinking. There is nothing Federal about it. It's private bankers that run our currency. The Bible says, "The love of money is the root of all evil". All evil.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

Ann Coulter photo
William Crookes photo

“In these last sentences I have intentionally used words of wide signification — have spoken of guidance along ordered paths. It is wisdom to be vague here, for we absolutely can not say whether or when any diversion may be introduced into the existing system of earthly forces by an external power.”

William Crookes (1832–1919) British chemist and physicist

Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Context: Molecular movements strictly obey the law of conservation of energy, but what we call "law" is simply an expression of the direction along which a form of energy acts, not the form of energy itself. We may explain molecular and molar motions, and discover all the physical laws of motion, but we shall be far as ever from a solution of the vastly more important question as to what form of will and intellect is behind the motions of molecules, guiding and constraining them in definite directions along predetermined paths. What is the determining cause in the background? What combination of will and intellect outside our physical laws guides the fortuitous concourse of atoms along ordered paths culminating in the material world in which we live?
In these last sentences I have intentionally used words of wide signification — have spoken of guidance along ordered paths. It is wisdom to be vague here, for we absolutely can not say whether or when any diversion may be introduced into the existing system of earthly forces by an external power.

Ali Raymi photo

“My style is intentionally natural, I will fight till the last moment of my biological existence.”

Ali Raymi (1973–2015) Boxing Knockout Artist

As quoted in "Mysterious junior flyweight Ali Raymi killed in Yemen" by Ryan Songalia, in The Ring (28 May 2015) http://ringtv.craveonline.com/news/390403-mysterious-junior-flyweight-ali-raymi-killed-in-yemen
Context: My style is intentionally natural, I will fight till the last moment of my biological existence. … I don’t like discussing my pre-boxing past as I feel it will be considered inappropriately semi-legendary.

Terence McKenna photo

“What you see, I think is the morphogenetic field. The invisible world that holds everything together. Not the net of matter and light, but the net of casuistry — of intentionality, of caring, of hope of dream — of thought.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Audio lecture, "History Ends In Green" ( Pt. 11 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB9zIygfxLc Pt. 12 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epymX5t41kw)
Context: What you see, I think is the morphogenetic field. The invisible world that holds everything together. Not the net of matter and light, but the net of casuistry — of intentionality, of caring, of hope of dream — of thought. That all is there, but it has been hidden from us for centuries because of the exorcism of the spirit that took place in order to allow science to do business. And that monotonous and ill-considered choice has made us the inheritors of a tradition of existential emptiness — but that has impalded to us to go back to the jungles and recover this thing. … The question is, can we dream a dream that is sufficiently noble that we give meaning to the sacrifices that have been made to allow the 20th century to exist … I am convinced that if there were no shamanic pipeline, there would be no higher life, as we know it, on this planet. … We are all cells of a much larger body, and like the cells of our own body it is hard for us to glimpse the whole pattern of the whole of what is happening, and yet we can sense that there is a purpose, and there is a pattern...

Jean Piaget photo

“The intentionality peculiar to motor activity is not a search for truth but the pursuit of a result, whether objective or subjective; and to succeed is not to discover a truth.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism <!-- p. 93 -->
Context: Generally speaking, one can say that motor intelligence contains the germs of completed reason. But it gives promise of more than reason pure and simple. From the moral as from the intellectual point of view, the child is born neither good nor bad, but master of his destiny. Now, if there is intelligence in the schemas of motor adaptation, there is also the element of play. The intentionality peculiar to motor activity is not a search for truth but the pursuit of a result, whether objective or subjective; and to succeed is not to discover a truth.

Philip G. Zimbardo photo
Henry L. Benning photo

“In the first place, I say that the North hates slavery, and, in using that expression I speak wittingly. In saying that the Black Republican party of the North hates slavery, I speak intentionally.”

Henry L. Benning (1814–1875) Confederate Army general

Speech to the Virginia Convention (1861)
Context: In the first place, I say that the North hates slavery, and, in using that expression I speak wittingly. In saying that the Black Republican party of the North hates slavery, I speak intentionally. If there is a doubt upon that question in the mind of any one who listens to me, a few of the multitude of proofs which could fill this room, would, I think, be sufficient to satisfy him. I beg to refer to a few of the proofs that are so abundant; and the first that I shall adduce consists in two extracts from a speech of Lincoln's, made in October 1858. They are as follows: 'I have always hated slavery as much as any abolitionist; I have always been an old line Whig; I have always hated it and I always believed it in the course of ultimate extinction, and if I were in Congress and a vote should come up on the question, whether slavery should be excluded from the territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should.

Hanya Yanagihara photo

“In some ways. I do want to do something very different with each book…I think this book is linked to the first but approaches it in a completely different way. The first book was much chillier, more remote. And intentionally so. I don’t think it was a book that anyone loved and I didn’t love it either. It was not a book that was meant to inspire love in the way that I think this one is.”

Hanya Yanagihara (1974) American novelist and travel writer

On how she compares her works The People in the Trees and A Little Life in “Hanya Yanagihara: ‘I wanted everything turned up a little too high’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/26/hanya-yanagihara-i-wanted-everything-turned-up-a-little-too-high-interview-a-little-life in The Guardian (2015 Jul 26)

Gregory of Nazianzus photo
Charles Webster Leadbeater photo
Stanisław Lem photo

“For moral reasons I am an atheist — for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

From Peter Engel, "An Interview With Stanislaw Lem": The Missouri Review, Volume VII, Number 2 (1984) http://www.missourireview.org/index.php?genre=Interviews&title=An+Interview+with+Stanislaw+Lem

Joe Biden photo

“I'm sorry I didn’t understand more. I'm not sorry for any of my intentions. I'm not sorry for anything that I have ever done. I have never been disrespectful intentionally to a man or a woman. So that's not the reputation I've had since I was in high school, for God's sake.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Regarding allegations that he inappropriately violated women's space

Quoted in * 2019-04-05

Biden: 'I'm not sorry for anything that I have ever done'

Brett Samuels

The Hill

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/437582-biden-im-not-sorry-for-anything-that-i-have-ever-done
2010s, 2019

Immanuel Kant photo
William Lane Craig photo
Mikhail Gorbachev photo

“I absolutely reject the accusation that the Soviet leadership intentionally held back the truth about Chernobyl. We simply did not know the whole truth yet.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, Memoirs (1995)

Marianne Williamson photo

“The US will be a violent society until we decide to be nonviolent. Our task, if we do decide that, is to proactively and intentionally wage peace.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (25 Oct 2019)
Williamson's quotes in social media

Antonin Scalia photo

“It seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe, and has least support in the church-going United States. I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal: it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life, in exchange for the next? The Christian attitude is reflected in the words Robert Bolt’s play has Thomas More saying to the headsman: 'Friend, be not afraid of your office. You send me to God.'”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

For the nonbeliever, on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life is to end his existence.
God’s Justice and Ours https://web.archive.org/web/20120311230630/http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/gods-justice-and-ours-32, 123 First Things 17. (May 2002). Adapted from remarks given at Pew Forum Conference on Religion, politics and death penalty.
2000s

Song Kang-ho photo

“Of course, there might be some influence in my performances, but it’s not as if I intentionally sought out those experiences for my acting career. For actors, everyone goes through a difficult period early on and you do these sorts of jobs.”

Song Kang-ho (1967) South Korean actor

As quoted in "Interview: Song Kang-ho, Parasite" in Cinevue (5 February 2020) https://cine-vue.com/2020/02/interview-song-kang-ho-parasite.html