the road to hell is paved with good intentions
the ROHD too HEL iz PAYVD with GOOD in-TEN-shunz
ðə roʊd tuː hɛl ɪz peɪvd wɪð ɡʊd ɪnˈtɛnʃənzListen
Hear it in a clear American voice. Slow it down to catch each syllable.
Syllable breakdown
Dictionary meaning
a proverb warning that benevolent intentions do not guarantee good outcomes and that acting on good intentions without adequate thought about consequences, side effects, and practical realities can produce harm as severe as deliberate malice; the saying captures the consequentialist intuition that motivation matters less than results, and counsels humility about the reliability of one's own good intentions as a moral guide; it is applied to well-meaning interventions that backfire — development aid that creates dependency, medical treatments with devastating side effects, social reforms that generate unintended pathologies — and to the gap between the world as idealists imagine it and the world as it operates under conditions of complexity, self-interest, and incomplete information
People also look up
Brayk the ice
Hit the nayl on the hed
UN-der the WETH-er
Peess of kayk
Learn one new pronunciation a day
Get a word, name or idiom like “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” in your inbox — daily or weekly, free. Unsubscribe any time.