Not necessarily; someone who's as deeply misanthropic as Quirrell might wish most people dead (having killed before, he can, as per Moody's explanation, wish people dead rather more casually than non-murderers.) If you're already capable of bringing intent-to-kill to bear on pretty much anyone who crosses you, you can probably use it strategically the way Quirrell suggests.
On the other hand, even if Quirrell's explanation holds true, it does suggest Harry should revise upwards his estimates of just how cavalier Quirrell is with other people's lives.
It should already be pretty high though - Harry even points it out at the time (Rule 1 of Unforgivable Curse Safety) and Quirrell equivocates it away by mixing up etiquette rules with safety rules. That might just as easily have ended with "I just shot Bahry in the face" considering how fast the spell must be going - probably <100 ms to recognize he can't dodge in time, and push him away.
Edit: New thread posted here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 86. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: