duty / responsibility quotes

Albert Einstein: 

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

Albert Schweitzer: 

Ethics cannot be based upon our obligations toward [people], but they are complete and natural only when we feel this Reverence for Life and the desire to have compassion for and to help all creatures insofar as it is in our power. I think that this ethic will become more and more recognized because of its great naturalness and because it is the foundation of a true humanism toward which we must strive if our culture is to become truly ethical.

Bertrand Russell: 

A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.

Booker T. Washington: 

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.

Denis Diderot: 

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

Eda LeShan: 

Becoming responsible adults is no longer a matter of whether children hang up there pajamas or put dirty towels in the hamper, but whether they care about themselves and others -- and whether they see everyday chores as related to how we treat this planet.

Elaine Maxwell: 

My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.

Eleanor Roosevelt: 

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

Eleanor Roosevelt: 

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Elie Wiesel: 

This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century -- solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.

Elie Wiesel: 

This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century -- solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.

Epictetus: 

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

Eugene V. Debs: 

Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ''Am I my brother's keeper?'' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.
1908 speech


George Bernard Shaw: 

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to this country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

H. H. the Dalai Lama: 

I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for oneself, one's own family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.

HH the Dalai Lama: 

Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.

This entry continued ...
Hasidic saying: 

Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength.

Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC: 

Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.

Immanuel Kant: 

Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.

James Baldwin: 

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

John D. Rockefeller Jr.: 

Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege.

Lillian Hellman: 

For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.

Lyndon B. Johnson: 

We preach the virtues of democracy abroad. We must practice its duties here at home. Voting is the first duty of democracy.

Marcia Muller: 

She was the archetypal selfless mother: living only for her children, sheltering them from the consequences of their actions -- and in the end doing them irreparable harm.

Mark Twain: 

Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

Mark Twain: 

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular one is Providence.

Nancy Friday: 

Blaming mother is just a negative way of clinging to her still.

Nancy Friday: 

Blaming mother is just a negative way of clinging to her still.

Paul Ricoeur: 

The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct.

Peter Drucker: 

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.

Peter Drucker: 

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

Princess Diana: 

Only do what your heart tells you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

Robert Louis Stevenson: 

There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.

Stanley Milgram: 

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.

Sydney J. Harris: 

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice -- that is, until we stop saying "It got lost," and say "I lost it."

Theodore Roosevelt: 

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910


Thomas Carlyle: 

Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.

Unknown: 

[C]reative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy.

Vaclav Havel: 

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.

Victor Frankl: 

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

Virginia Woolf: 

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

Voltaire: 

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

Winston Churchill: 

The price of greatness is responsibility.

Winter BelViso: 

As far as I know, to date, this Earth is the only thing we have at our disposal. The trick is to NOT dispose of it, yanno?