The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions

( meaning to do the right thing is no good excuse if you did the wrong thing anyway ... )

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" (proverb) says that sometimes we do the wrong thing even though we had intended to do the right thing; our actions have bad results instead of the good results that we had hoped for. Example: "Really, I never meant to hurt anybody..." Reply: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

If a person's actions have bad results, yet they complain that their intentions were good, you might say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".