The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It is used to refer to a situation in which “a well-meaning action ultimately ends badly.

• but interpretations are divided into several
• To begin with, in the early days, there was no word “road” and “hell is paved with good intentions.”

[hatena keyword http://d.hatena.ne.jp/keyword/%C3%CF%B9%F6%A4%D8%A4%CE%C6%BB%A4%CF%C1%B1%B0%D5%A4%C7%CA%DE%C1%F5%A4%B5%A4%EC%A4%C6%A4%A4% A4%EB]

• Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153)

  • “Hell is full of good intentions or desires.”

• In 1670, John Ray quoted the proverb “Hell is paved with good intentions.

• Boswell quotes Johnson as saying “Hell is paved with good intentions.” without “the road to” at the beginning of the sentence in the April 16, 1775 entry in “Life of Johnson.

• Source:

• Personally, I found the expression “Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works” interesting.

  • But it is quite different from the nuance one gets from “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
    • I guess I should think of it as a similar but different proverb.
  • The “road” gives me a sense of the passage of time. In the short term, it’s paved with “good intentions” and easy to walk on. You go on it and what you eventually arrive at is hell.

• Translation: Hell is full of good intentions, but Heaven is full of good results

  • works = the result of effort
  • The literal translation of “meanings” as “meanings” is difficult to understand.
    • the meaning of life / the meaning to do something
    • It could be translated as “meaning of life,” but not “meaning” in the case of “meaning of this word.”
    • What is the purpose of using ”˜” and what is the purpose of doing ”˜“?
    • Intent, intention rather than meaning

• Another translation

  • Hell is full of goodness, but Heaven is full of good deeds.
  • In Japanese, it’s a neat pair of similar words.
  • The fact that WORKS is a “deed” rather than a “result” is subtle.
    • And the people who are bringing hell to the world by acting with good intentions, they probably think they are doing “good deeds.”
    • So often we act with good intentions and it doesn’t bring good results, and that’s why it’s hell.
    • Heaven is happy because it is full of “good results”!

The road to hell is paved with good intentions - Wikipedia

• “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” appeared in the proverbial dictionary in 1855.

  • Henry G. Bohn’s A Hand-book of Proverbs in 1855.

• “The way of sinners is made plain with stones, but at the end thereof is the pit of hell.” in Ecclesiasticus 21:10

  • This is just saying that the road to hell is an easy one to walk, without the nuance of irony that it’s “well intentioned”.

I haven’t found any evidence that Hayek himself said this, but there are several books that relate Hayek’s “path to servitude” to this proverb.

• The Road to Serfdom is a political science book written in 1944 by Friedrich Hayek, an economist and philosopher of the Austrian School. The Road to Serfdom] is a political treatise written in 1944 by Friedrich Hayek, an Austrian School economist and philosopher, which warns against the slavery of national life as a result of a centrally planned economy, and argues that the abandonment of individualism and classical liberalism will lead to slavery as well.

  • Road to servitude - Wikipedia
• 
  • https://www.google.co.jp/books/edition/Reclaiming_Liberty/3Doaq5nd8sMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+road+to+serfdom+hell+paved&pg=PA133&printsec=frontcover
  • (DeepL)Many of you may recall my mother’s words, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The road to servitude is the same, and it is paved with good intentions. Ideologically, true liberals/socialists really do have good intentions when they advocate, for example, the use of more public funds as a government right to improve the sad situation of inner city youth. Who can deny that these young people living in areas of crime, disease, broken families, and general poverty would be better off if these social pathologies were corrected?
• 
  • https://www.google.co.jp/books/edition/Committee_Organization_in_the_House/DQnr5Il3Nu0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+road+to+serfdom+hell+paved&pg=PA768&printsec=frontcover
  • (DeepL) In my judgment, the members of the U.S. Congress are generally even more competent, more honest, and more dedicated than their distinguished predecessors in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic before Chancellor Bruning assumed legislative power in 1930 and Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. In short, competence, integrity, and dedication are not, in themselves, insurmountable barriers to totalitarianism. The road to servitude leading to hell is usually paved with the good will of good people.
  • This is a book from 1973

---

This page is auto-translated from /nishio/地獄への道は善意で舗装されている using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.