Quotes about intentionality

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

Quotes about intentionality

“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?

“The class instinct of the bourgeoisie is far better developed than that of the proletariat. The governing class naturally knows its interests better than the governed, who have so much less opportunity to become informed and are also sometimes intentionally, and sometimes not, systematically deceived and misled from a recognition of their interests. Do not say that it is the rough form in which socialism is often set forth that frightens and embitters the bourgeoisie. That is absolutely false. It is not the form; it is the content which they detest; and the more harmless the form so much the more dangerous do the contents appear to the gentlemen of the bourgeoisie. The fineness of the form makes no difference to them. That is clear from the manner in which they fight out their quarrels among themselves.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Nature, Appearance, Fight, Falseness

“My friend Peter Schmidt used to talk about ‘not doing the things that nobody had ever thought of not doing’, which is an inverse process – where you leave out an assumption that everybody has always made and see what happens (e. g. music has to be made of intentionally produced sounds was the assumption that Cage left out). In that version of this process, you discover a value in the absence of something – in fact you discover that the absence of something is the revelation of something else (Buñuel, the film-maker, said, "Every object conceals another"”

Brian Eno (1948) English musician, composer, record producer and visual artist

a message that I often relay in the studio when overdubbing starts).
December 15, 1995, p. 178
A Year With Swollen Appendices (1996)

Music

“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

Fashion, Failure, Understanding, Nature

“It is always improper to intentionally offend anyone; and if someone is offended by your actions or words, they are not necessarily right.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1981

“Growth occurs outside the comfort zone.
You can not expect to evolve as a well rounded individual if you are afraid to get dirty.
I am never regretful of having tragedy and loss any longer…for I see how strong these horrendous experiences have caused me to become a pillar of strength amongst others.
From every negative circumstance any of us experience…there is another part of us that becomes engorged with strength
which not only allows us to get through that terrible circumstance, but maintain ourselves once the trauma has diminished enough for us to see things more clearly in retrospect…and experience this wonderful inner strength.
The struggle you're in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow.
Strength comes from struggle. When you learn to see your struggles as opportunities to become stronger, better, wiser, then your thinking shifts from 'I can't do this' to 'I MUST do this!'
Also, The struggles in your life creates empathy. One can relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love you nor care that they are intentionally trying to decimate you. It is when you are faced with pure evil…when the people who were your life change and turn on you…enjoying to make you suffer. They know what they are doing. They are responsible for your pain.
Don't give up.
Look within.
Don't wear white.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Love, Life, Pain, People

“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.

Pain, World, Way, Appearance

“Have you ever known me to be rude to a lady?" "I have seen you be intentionally rude to a woman. I have never seen you be rude to a lady.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

“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...

Hurtful, Life, People, Thinking

“How would you expect to find community while you intentionally withdraw from it at some point? The disobedient cannot believe; only the obedient believe.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship

Communication

“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?”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Women, People, World, Behavior

“Like Fichte, Brentano had one simple and powerful insight. He declared: there is a basic difference between a mental and physical act. if I slip on the snow and fall flat on my back, that is an unintentional physical act. But there is no such thing as an unintentional mental act. When I think, I have to think about something; I have to focus my mind on it. You could compare all mental acts (thinking, willing, loving, trying to remember something) to a searchlight beam stabbing into the darkness. There is an element of will, of 'intentionality,' in all mental activity. So it is quite inaccurate to compare mental activity to chemistry, or to a kind of drifting, like leaves on a stream. It flows purposefully or not at all.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision (1985), p. 35

Love, Thinking

“Traditionally, the cost of change curve said that if we detect the need for a change early, it costs less to make the change than if we detect the need late. I tackled that curve by saying, let's almost intentionally make mistakes so we can practice correcting them. That practice will help reduce the cost of making changes late.
Our feeling was that the limiting factor on any change was not when it was done, but how much thinking was required.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Working the Program

Feeling, Thinking, Change, Help

“Unable to grasp the importance of Black women’s intersectional experiences, not only courts, but feminist and civil rights thinkers as well have treated Black women in ways that deny both the unique compoundedness of their situation and the centrality of their experiences to the larger classes of women and Blacks. Black women are regarded either as too much like women or Blacks and the compounded nature of their experience is absorbed into the collective experiences of either group or as too different, in which case Black women’s Blackness or femaleness sometimes has placed their needs and perspectives at the margin of the feminist and Black liberationist agendas. While it could be argued that this failure represents an absence of political will to include Black women, I believe that it reflects an uncritical and disturbing acceptance of dominant ways of thinking about discrimination. Consider first the definition of discrimination that seems to be operative in antidiscrimination law: Discrimination which is wrongful proceeds from the identification of a specific class or category; either a discriminator intentionally identifies this category, or a process is adopted which somehow disadvantages all members of this category.”

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw book Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex (1989)

Women, Law, Way, Failure

“The problem creationists have with evolution is not that it challenges belief in God, because it doesn’t. Their problem is that evolution, -like every other field of science- challenges the accuracy and authority of the storybooks which creationists equate to God. Consequently, they tend to reject science almost entirely, and will often take all the sciences they perceive as threatening, and lump them all together under one heading, which they then refer to as “evolution-ism”. It’s an attempt to minimize the sheer volume of sciences allied against them. This is also part of their intentionally-erected illusion of equality; a false dichotomy that if their legendary folklore isn’t the absolute authority -being both literally and completely true, then God couldn’t create or even exist any other way.”

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

"6th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3k0dDFxkhM, Youtube (February 2, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

God, Way, Problem, Science

“I was brought up under a system in which discretion when given was practically absolute. It was the unbroken tradition of Westminster Hall. I believe that system worked justice and saved expense. I hope I may be forgiven if, with what energy remains to me, I strive after many years' experience and drawing near the close of my judicial career, to preserve this unfettered discretion which in my opinion, was given me by Parliament, and which I have never, at least intentionally abused.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

Huxley v. West London Extension Railway Co. (1886), L. R. 17 Q. B. D. 383.

Justice, Hope, Drawing

“I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened. I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong. It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent. I just think, as abhorrent as some of those examples are, I think the reality is also that I get things wrong when I speak publicly. I’m sure you do. I’m sure a lot of leaders and public figures we respect do too, and I just don’t think that it is the right thing to say, “We’re going to take someone off the platform if they get things wrong, even multiple times.” What we will do is we’ll say, “Okay, you have your page, and if you’re not trying to organize harm against someone, or attacking someone, then you can put up that content on your page, even if people might disagree with it or find it offensive.””

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

But that doesn’t mean that we have a responsibility to make it widely distributed in News Feed. In an interview with Kara Swisher as quoted in Zuckerberg: The Recode interview https://www.recode.net/2018/7/18/17575156/mark-zuckerberg-interview-facebook-recode-kara-swisher (July 18, 2018), Recode.

People, Understanding, Thinking, Reality

“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

Beauty

“If the penalty for even an accidental case [of abortion] is so severe, it is obvious that a deliberately induced abortion is very strongly forbidden. It is not necessary to ban deliberate abortion, since it is already eliminated by this law. Second, if a man who, in the course of a fight, unintentionally bumps a pregnant woman and causes her to abort, must suffer the death penalty, how much more so any person who intentionally induces an abortion?”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), pp. 263-264

Death, Law, Penalty, Suffering

“I was reading an article about this case in California, where two lesbians were fighting over the custody of children that genetically were traceable to one, but which the other had raised. You know what? Nobody even thought about or mentioned, nobody asked a simple question about whether the father of those children should have any claim, because, very often in these relationships, they are conducted in such a way and conception occurs in such a way as to intentionally mask who the father might be, so that children must grow up without knowing who their father is. And that means that an incestuous situation could easily arise in our society, it's more than likely to arise--not to mention every other kind of incestuous complication.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Rally in defense of marriage, Boston, Massachusetts, May 14, 2004. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_05_14boston.htm. 2009

Children, Way, Question, Reading

“Almost alone among cognitive-aesthetic movements and strategies of interpretation, deconstruction neither champions any body of past literature or art, nor does it act as vanguard or advocate for any contemporary or incipient school. The New Criticism and T. S. Eliot strove for the revaluation of Metaphysical poetry so as to underwrite, in turn, certain tactics of modenity. Aristotle was advocate for Sophocles. Deconstruction is, intentionally, marginal (a key trope) to all histories of taste and manifestos for innovation.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), II: The Broken Contract, Ch. 7 (p. 117).

School, Art, History, Literature

“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)

Art

“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

“Here are six popular theses in the philosophical and psychological literature on motivation:1. Motivation is present in the animal kingdom but does not extend throughout it.
2. Motivated beings have a capacity to represent goals and means to goals.
3. A motivation-encompassing attitude may have either a goal or a means as its object.
4. Motivation varies in strength.
5. The stronger an agent’s motivation to A is, in comparison to the agent’s motivation for alternative courses of action, the more likely the agent is to A, other things being equal.
6. Whenever agents act intentionally, there is something they are effectively motivated to do.Divergent conceptions of motivation may be at work in philosophical thought about motivational matters. My concern in this book is a notion of motivation consistent with (among other things) these six claims. Readers who accept all six claims are likely to be more interested in the result than those who do not, but I conjecture that most readers do accept all of these claims, on some reading or other. Also, readers who reject one or more of these theses or who believe that no acceptable conception of motivation is consistent with all of them will be offered good reason to change their minds!”

Alfred Mele (1951) American philosopher

Introduction
Motivation and Agency (2003)

Books, Literature, Motivation, Change

“In order to be able to deceive intentionally, an animal must have a sense of how its actions appear to another individual. Such an ability requires self-awareness.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

The Origin of Humankind (1994)

Sense, Appearance, Animals

“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

Hell

“[Unlike objects, people are] usually perceived as action centers and as such can do something to us. They can benefit or harm us intentionally, and we can benefit or harm them. Persons have abilities, wishes, and sentiments; they can act purposefully, and can perceive or watch us. They are systems having an awareness of their surroundings and their conduct refers to this environment, an environment that sometimes includes ourselves.”

Fritz Heider (1896–1988) German psychologist

Source: The psychology of interpersonal relations, 1958, p. 21 ; as cited in: Albert A. Harrison (1976), Individuals and Groups: Understanding Social Behavior, p. 88

People, Personality

“A form of influence such as advertising sets out intentionally to insulate reactors (mindless consumers) from the more conscious and critical selves (potential abstainers) not by multiplying alternatives (as laisser-faire advocates of the market economy would like to believe) but by provoking dormant and partial desires in a way that circumvents the normal, conscious, rational process.”

Benjamin R. Barber (1939–2017) US political scientist

Source: Forced to be Free (1971), p. 69-70

Way

“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

Law, Reality

“Prayer is the pillar of your religion and one who intentionally forsakes his prayer has destroyed his religion. And one who does not guard the times of the prayers, shall be made to enter ‘Wayl’, which is a valley in Hell, as Allah, the Exalted, has said: "So woe to the praying ones, who are unmindful of their prayers."”

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

Biharul Anwar,Volume 82, Page 202
Shi'ite Hadith

Religion, Hell, Time

“I reject that criticism because this is indeed another kind of holocaust, by another name. At last count, more than 40 million unborn children have been deliberately, intentionally destroyed. What word adequately defines the scope of such slaughter? [After 9/11] the American people responded with shock, sadness and a deep and righteous anger — and rightly so. Yet let us not forget that every passing day in our country, more than three thousand innocent Americans are killed [through abortion].”

Jesse Helms (1921–2008) American politician

As quoted in Here's Where I Stand (2005)
2000s

Children, People, Sadness, Anger

“The "meaning" in the title of the book acknowledges the close and familiar connection between intentionality and meaning. The connection holds between the meaning of the sentence Smith utters when he utters "Bigmouth has struck again" and his belief that Bigmouth has struck again. The idea of this close relation is not intended to convey the obvious falsehood that the meanings of the sentences which an agent utters always express the contents of his beliefs. Utterances which are lies or metaphors, for instance, spoil the generality of that relation. Rather, the relation is conveyed by the fact that a sincere, non-self-deceived, utterance of (or assent to) a sentence by an agent is an utterance of something whose literal meaning gives the content of the belief that is expressed by that utterance. The fact that sentences are often not uttered this way does not spoil the connection between belief and meaning, though it obviously makes it necessary to produce an appropriately nuanced formulation of the connection for those utterances. The underlying effect of acknowledging the connection, of course, is to make the study of an agent's mind integral to the study of his meanings, and vice versa.”

Akeel Bilgrami (1950) Indian philosopher

Source: Belief and Meaning (1992), Ch. 1 : Belief, Meaning, and the External World

Books, Way, Idea, Study

“Part of the definition of guerrilla decontextualization is the attempt to intentionally misrepresent an individual’s character or intentions for purpose of decreasing any measure of influence or authority they might possess in either public or private circles. Hence: the popularity of such a technique among battling politicians.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(from 2012 article 47 Percenters and Guerrilla Decontextualization).
From Articles, Essays, and Poems, On Guerrilla Decontextualization

Parting

“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)

God, Suffering, Evil

“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

Personality

“Aurangzeb's purpose in building those three mosques was the same intentionally offensive political purpose that moved the Russians to build their Orthodox cathedral in the city-centre at Warsaw. Those mosques were intended to signify that an Islamic government was reigning supreme, even over Hinduism's holiest of holy places. I must say that Aurangzeb had a veritable genius for picking out provocative sites. Aurangzeb and Philip II of Spain are a pair. They are incarnations of the gloomily fanatical vein in the Christian - Muslim - Jewish family of religions. Aurangzeb - poor wretched misguided bad man - spent a lifetime of hard labour in raising massive monuments to his own discredit. Perhaps the Poles were really kinder in destroying the Russians' self-discrediting monument in Warsaw than you have been in sparing Aurangzeb's mosques.”

Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) British historian, author of A Study of History

Arnold J. Toynbee in 'One World and India' (New Delhi, 1960) pp. 59-60

Family, Religion

“American doesn’t need any more professional political punks in D. C., unless you believe sticking a red hot crowbar in your eye is an excellent treatment for cataracts. It’s professional political punks who have created the pus-filled infected wound of fundamental transformation, not Donald Trump. They are the ones calling for a bigger bureaucratic shovel for the hole they have already dug, not Donald Trump. They are the ones who have lied to Americans or intentionally hidden the truth from us, not Donald Trump. It’s professional politicians who are the enemy of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not Donald Trump.”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

Give Trump the Medal of Freedom (August 7, 2015)

Life, Truth, Happiness

“I am tired of playing in a shadow Everything I do they compare to Paul Waner. I am not Paul Waner's shadow. I try not to let it bother me, but I get tired of the things some people say. They call me a showboat because I make basket catches. They don't call Willie Mays a showboat, do they? They say I'm a hypochondriac, too. When I have trouble with my back, they say it's in my mind. In Houston last year, right before the end of the season, I was still in the race for the batting title and Murtaugh told me to do everything possible to win it. One time I was being intentionally walked and I swung at one of the pitches. Then I wasn't a team player any more. People said I was out for myself.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Roberto's Not Happy; Clemente in Waner's Shadow" https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/15674492/ by Sandy Padwe (NEA), in The Indiana Gazette (July 2, 1964), p. 16 Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

People, Time, Season

“One of the unfortunate consequences of the intellectualization of man's spiritual life was that the word "spirit" was lost and replaced by mind or intellect, and that the element of vitality which is present in “spirit” was separated and interpreted as an independent biological force. Man was divided into a bloodless intellect and a meaningless vitality. The middle ground between them, the spiritual soul, in which vitality and intentionality are united, was dropped.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 82

Life, Soul

“The EU cannot be a world player. It is trying to mould 28 distinctly different member countries together to form and enact policy, whilst also looking to bring in new countries whose views and politics will not necessarily be a natural fit to what we have today, to the detriment of sections of its citizenship. This makes the EU look and act weakly, a trait that has been seized upon by Putin for one, and which has now led to intentionally breaking international law. Far from guaranteeing peace as envisaged at the outset, the EU brings us, both politically and physically, closer to new conflicts, at home and abroad.”

James Carver (1969) British MEP for UKIP

Why The EU Can't Be A World Player http://www.jamescarver.org/Why_The_EU_Cant_Be_A_World_Player--post--69.html (2013)

World, Peace, Law, Home

“It has been suggested that the President intentionally left those forts in a defenseless condition, that South Carolina might seize them before his successor had time to take means for their safety. I cannot believe it; I will not believe it, for it would make Mr. Buchanan a more odious traitor than Benedict Arnold. Every drop of blood that shall be shed in the conflict would sit heavy on his soul forever.”

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) American politician

In Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens

Soul, Time

“That is not the dream. That is a perversion of the dream. We are the people of the civil rights movement. We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights. Equal rights. Justice. Equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice, but equal justice. We are the inheritors and the protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it. They're perverting it, and they're doing it intentionally. And they're selling us a line of global nonsense.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2010s, 2010

People, Justice, Dreams

“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)

Hostility, Feeling, Nature, Personality

“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

People, Books

“The disturbing quality of life goes hand in hand with the disturbing quality of our time. The temporal emphasizes the perpetual... I willingly accept what I try to bring together. In the heads of my 'King and Queen' (Moore created in 1952/53] or in the head and the body of my 'Warrior' [1953/54], some mixture of degrees of realism is implicit. But we got used to this mixture in Chartres [the famous Gothic cathedral], and we shall get used to it again. I do not suggest that I have intentionally done it... It is just that in the head part I could focus, in essence, the intention of the entire figure... By contrasting the head to the natural structure of the rest, the whole idea of the figure is pointed out – it is these contrasts which do it.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote of Moore in 'Conversations with Henri Moore', J.P. Hodin, in 'The Observer', 24 Nov. 1958
1955 - 1970

Life, Idea, Nature, Time

“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

Knowledge, Change

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

Kent Thiry (1956) Business; CEO of DaVita

Vanderbilt Commencement Address (2011)

“Science has often presented itself, intentionally or unintentionally as a "truer" or even the true way of talking about the world. In science classrooms, except for rare occasions, this is the way science is taught and presented. Not as a way of talking about the world, but as the way the world is.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. 126

World, Way, Science

“The real struggle is in fact not for but against the minds of men. Persuasion as a form of coercion represents an assault on consciousness and intentionality.”

Benjamin R. Barber (1939–2017) US political scientist

Source: Forced to be Free (1971), p. 71

Men

“Concern for this or that limited good can sometimes lead to the summit… But this occurs in a roundabout way. Moral ends … are distinct from any excesses they occasion. States of glory and moments of sacredness surpass results intentionally sought.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xx

Way

“Even if it were clear what was meant, this sort of treatment would seem closer to describing what is taking place than to explaining it. I do not want to deny the value of describing a phenomenon; rich descriptions facilitate theorizing, and there is no more astute observer than Piaget. But in my view explanations of cognitive phenomena should specify the ways in which functional capacities operate. Piaget and Inhelder’s account is more on the level of intentionality, and hence is open to multiple interpretations at the level of the function of the brain. The do not specify how interiorized imitation operates, nor have they specified the format or content of the image. This level of discourse will never produce process adequacy, and hence seems of limited value.”

Stephen Kosslyn (1948) American psychologist

Source: Image and Mind. 1980, p. 411

Way

“It is not fit that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VIII, 42
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

Pain

“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.

“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

Night

“She was temptable—which, if you believe in an all-powerful God, means God intentionally put temptation into Eve. Which seems like a dirty trick, if you ask me.”

John Scalzi book The Ghost Brigades

Source: The Ghost Brigades (2006), Chapter 13 (p. 288)

God

“The cardinal mystery of neurobiology is not self-love or dreams of immortality but intentionality. What is the prime mover, the weaver who guides the flashing shuttles?”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

Love, Dreams

“Jihad is a religious means to a religious goal - to elevate the word of Allah. This is what Jihad for the sake of Allah, in the sense of fighting, means, although we accept that there is another meaning to Jihad…. we have two kinds of terrorism - commendable terrorism and reprehensible terrorism. Reprehensible terrorism is an attack on women, children, the peaceful, and the innocent….[Quran says, ] "Do not kill the soul which Allah has forbidden, except when required by justice." In other words, a Muslim carry out certain religious duties, so when he attacks the enemy attacked on its own land, some innocent people might consequently die, but they are not killed intentionally.”

Omar Bakri Muhammad (1958) Islamist militant leader

Islamic Scholars Debate the Meaning of Jihad http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1414.htm March 2007.

Women, Children, People, Peace

“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.

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

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

2010s, Lying (2011)

Lie, Communication

“Let us distinguish between acting intentionally and acting deliberately or on purpose, as far as this can be done by attending to what language can teach us.”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

Source: Philosophical Papers (1979), p. 273.

“These pseudo‑events which flood our consciousness must be distinguished from propaganda. The two do have some characteristics in common. But our peculiar problems come from the fact that pseudo‑events are in some respects the opposite of the propaganda which rules totalitarian countries. Propaganda — as prescribed, say, by Hitler in Mein Kampf — is information intentionally biased. Its effect depends primarily on its emotional appeal. While a pseudo‑event is an ambiguous truth, propaganda is an appealing falsehood. Pseudo‑events thrive on our honest desire to be informed, to have “all the facts,” and even to have more facts than there really are.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), p. 34.

Truth, Problem, Dependency, Country

“Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to them; but I take it no philosophical ice is cut by such examples.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

Minds, Brains and Programs (1980)

Nature

“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)

“I have heard it asserted that the inadequate sanctions already applied have not achieved their object. At no time, and under no circumstances could sanctions that were intentionally inadequate, intentionally badly applied, stop an aggressor. This is not a case of the impossibility of stopping an aggressor but of the refusal to stop an aggressor.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Address to the League of Nations (1936)

Time

“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.

“This happened and as of today the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists, now what this says to me, I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the end times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God's end times history.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

2010s

God, History, Understanding, Tree

“The Great Commandment demands of everyone the total love of God and the love one's neighbour according to the measure of man's natural self-affirmation. If love is emotion, how can it be demanded? Emotions cannot be demanded. We cannot demand them of ourselves. If we try, something artificial is produced which shows the traits of what had to be suppressed in its production. Repentance, intentionally produced, hides self-complacency in perversion. Love, intentionally produced, shows indifference or hostility in perversion. The means: love as an emotion cannot be commanded. Either love is something other than emotion or the Great Commandment is meaningless.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Source: Love, Power and Justice (1954), p. 4

Love, God, Hostility, Nature

“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.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

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)

Life, Men, Marriage, Health

“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

Hurt

“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

“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

Love, Money, Children, Exercises

“Maalik! You must create in your mind kindness, compassion and love for your subjects. Do not behave towards them as if you are a voracious and ravenous beast and as if your success lies in devouring them.
Remember, Maalik, that amongst your subjects there are two kinds of people: those who have the same religion as you have; they are brothers to you, and those who have religions other than that of yours, they are human beings like you. Men of either category suffer from the same weaknesses and disabilities that human beings are inclined to, they commit sins, indulge in vices either intentionally or foolishly and unintentionally without realizing the enormity of their deeds. Let your mercy and compassion come to their rescue and help in the same way and to the same extent that you expect Allah to show mercy and forgiveness to you.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Variant translation:
Awaken your heart to kindness and mercy for the people and love and tenderness for them. Never, never act with them like a predatory beast which seeks to be satiated by devouring them, for the people fall into two categories: they are either your brethren in faith or your kindred in creation.
Nahj al-Balagha, Letter 53: An order to Malik Al-Ashtar

Love, Men, People, Religion

“In 1960, whites were 90 percent of the country. The Census Bureau recently estimated that whites already account for less than two-thirds of the population and will be a minority by 2050. Other estimates put that day much sooner. One may assume the new majority will not be such compassionate overlords as the white majority has been. If this sort of drastic change were legally imposed on any group other than white Americans, it would be called genocide. Yet whites are called racists merely for mentioning the fact that current immigration law is intentionally designed to reduce their percentage in the population.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Bush's America : Roach Motel" (6 June 2007) http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21029. 2007

Law, Change, Country

“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.

Wisdom

“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.

Nature, Fight

“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...

World, Dreams, Hope, Thinking

“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 
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.

Truth, Search

“The “Lucifer Effect” describes the point in time when an ordinary, normal person first crosses the boundary between good and evil to engage in an evil action. It represents a transformation of human character that is significant in its consequences. Such transformations are more likely to occur in novel settings, in “total situations,” where social situational forces are sufficiently powerful to overwhelm, or set aside temporally, personal attributes of morality, compassion, or sense of justice and fair play.
Evil is the exercise of power to intentionally harm (psychologically), hurt (physically), or destroy (mortally or spiritually) others.”

Philip G. Zimbardo (1933) American social psychologist, author of Stanford Prison Experiment

In "Who was Lucifer and how did he become the Devil?" (2007) http://www.lucifereffect.com/lucifer.htm

Justice, Exercises, Sense, Evil

“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.

Hate

“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)

Thinking, Books, Way, Love

“I offer this gift to my God, I dedicate this gift to Him. Only this remains to me as my treasure. I gave up everything else at the command of the Spirit. I gave all that I had to obtain the pearl of great price. Only in words do I master it, as a servant of the Word. I would never intentionally wish to disdain this wealth. I esteem it, I set value by it, I am comforted by it more than others are comforted by all the treasures of the world. It is the companion of all my life, a good counselor and converser; a guide on the way to Heaven and a fervent co-ascetic.”

Gregory of Nazianzus (329–389) Christian saint, bishop, and theologian

Concerning his literary gift Source: "St. Gregory the Theologian the Archbishop of Constantinople" https://oca.org/saints/lives/2014/01/25/100298-st-gregory-the-theologian-the-archbishop-of-constantinople

God, Wealth, Way, World

“I have intentionally killed off a few people in my books, bullies who made life miserable for me in my schooldays and early teens when I couldn’t fight back. I have no plans to kill off any more – they are all dead now within my pages! However, I have a particular dislike of extremism. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, right or wrong. When anybody tries to shove their opinion down my throat as though their beliefs are gospel, it makes me angry.”

Guy N. Smith (1939–2020) British writer

Booksqawk Interview https://www.guynsmith.com/2014/10/booksqawk-interview/ (October 31, 2014)

Dead, People, Books, Fight

“Students, who should know better, perpetually speak as though the hidden side of things were intentionally concealed, as though knowledge with regard to it ought to be in the hands of all men, but was being deliberately withheld by the caprice or selfishness of a few; whereas the fact is that nothing is or can be hidden from us except by our own limitations, and that for every man as he evolves the world grows wider and wider, because he is able to see more and more of its grandeur and its loveliness.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: The Hidden Side of things (1913), Chapter I

World, Selfishness, Knowledge, Men

“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

Pain, Thinking, Way, Appearance

“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

School, God, Understanding

“[T]his species works intentionally on its own destruction (by war). This, however, does not keep the rational creatures of such a constantly advancing culture, even in the midst of war, from promising to mankind in coming centuries an unequivocal prospect of bliss which will never end.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 185
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

War

“First is the argument from intentionality:
# According to Dr. Rosenberg, if naturalism is true then I cannot think about anything. That is because there are no intentional states.
# But I am thinking about naturalism. From which it follows,
# Therefore, naturalism is not true.
So, if you think that you ever think about anything you should conclude that naturalism is false.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Falseness, Thinking, Nature

“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)

Truth

“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

Peace

“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

God, Soul, Country, Penalty

“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

“People who know etiquette will not speak in an arrogant and boastful manner. They will not intentionally attack or demean others. They have enough patience to restrain themselves.”

Titon Rahmawan

People, Patience

“In life, often choosing to intentionally walk the hardest road will require discipline, ethics and courage, but it will lead to lasting advantages that the easiest path rarely offers.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Nella vita, spesso scegliere di percorrere intenzionalmente la strada più difficile richiederà disciplina, etica e coraggio, ma porterà a vantaggi duraturi che il percorso più semplice raramente offre.
Source: prevale.net

Courage, Life