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

We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions

When a person looks at himself, he is likely to misjudge what he finds. He sees only his intentions. Most people have good intentions and hence conclude that whatever they are doing is good. It is difficult for an individual to objectively judge his actions, which may be, and often are, contradictory to his good intentions.

"How do you always manage to decide?"
"How can you let others decide for you?"

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with cloudy or multifaceted intentions. We just need to remember that the less pure they are, the less likely they are to make us happy, even if they make us successful. When people gain what they want but aren’t happy at all, it’s because they did it with the wrong intention.

"If you are influenced by the opinions of others, you will have no desire of your own. Close friends and relatives, while not meaning to do so, often handicap one through "opinions" and sometimes through ridicule, which is meant to be humorous. Thousands of men and women carry inferiority complexes with them all through life, because some well-meaning, but ignorant person destroyed their confidence through "opinions" or ridicule. You have a brain and mind of your own. Use it, and reach your own decisions. If you need facts or information from other people, to enable you to reach decisions, as you probably will in many instances; acquire these facts or secure the information you need quietly, without disclosing your purpose."

You have not built your mind. And in moments in which you seem to build it — when you make an effort to change yourself, to acquire knowledge, or to perfect a skill — the only tools at your disposal are those that you have inherited from moments past.

Choices, efforts, intentions, and reasoning influence our behavior — but they are themselves part of a chain of causes that precede conscious awareness and over which we exert no ultimate control. My choices matter — and there are paths toward making wiser ones — but I cannot choose what I choose. And if it ever appears that I do — for instance, after going back and forth between two options — I do not choose to choose what I choose. There is a regress here that always ends in darkness. I must take a first step, or a last one, for reasons that are bound to remain inscrutable.

Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort.

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.

We do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises. To understand this is to realize that we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose.

But if you don’t decide what you want in life, you can’t change your course to get it. No goals, no growth. No clarity, no change. I’m sorry.

Great minds have purposes; others have wishes. Little minds are subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.

Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.

MASTER: and if you want to gain time, why go as slowly as you are going?

JACQUES: Because, without knowing what is written up above, none of us knows what we want or what we are doing, and we follow our whims which we call reason, or our reason which is often nothing but a dangerous whim which sometimes turns out well, sometimes badly.