Quotes About Duty

No chance to step out was given to those who did not feel up to shooting; no one systematically excused those who were visibly too shaken to continue. Everyone assigned to the firing squads took his turn as ordered. Therefore, those who shoot did not have to live with the clear awareness that what they had done had been avoidable.

There are some things you just do because it's the right thing to do. And the outcome is out of my hands or in somebody else's hands. I want to believe there's value in that. You're doing everything you can for the patient, but you're not deluding yourself into thinking that what you do isn't worth doing because the person is going to die anyway.

The worst excuse a soldier can make for declining service is that he once ranked the commander he is ordered to report to.

I really felt that, belonging to a foot regiment, it was my duty to march with the men.

His mouth was almost incapable of managing a smile, and altogether he gave the impression of dealing with the pain of existence out of some sort of distasteful duty.

An unhappy land, then, is one whose citizens no longer know where duty lies, and seek a charismatic leader who tells them what to do. Which, if I remember correctly, is what Hitler promulgated in Mein Kampf.

Dreadful, unspeakably wicked men the Nazi chieftains were, and Lanny was haunted by the idea that it was his duty to give up all pleasures and all other duties and try to awaken the people of Western Europe to a realization of the peril in which they stood.

But both of them had been business men all their lives and would take it for granted that their duty to the stockholders of Budd-Erling outweighed any duty they might owe to truth, justice, humanity, or any other glittering generality.

The General Graf, a high-ranking officer of the Reichswehr, accepted the new government as it was his duty to do, and if he had any reservations in his mind no foreigner would be permitted a glimpse of them. He had no apologies to make, but took the dignified position that what Germans did became right as soon as they had done it.

What are we, really; and how do we come to be, and for what purpose are we placed here, and what becomes of us when we depart? Above all, what is the origin of that strange faculty in us which we call conscience? Why do we have a sense of duty, and what is the basis of its validity, and of our assurance concerning it? If we are as the beasts of the field that perish, why do we owe any obligation to the world, or to our fellow men, or to ourselves?

But they were civilized cats, which had learned manners, and applied psychology, pretending to be gentle and harmless, even amiable. The deadliest killers wore the most cordial smiles; the most cunning were the most dignified, the most exalted. They had a great cause, an historic destiny, a patriotic duty, an inspired leader. They said: "We are building a new Germany," and at the same time they thought: "How can I cut out this fellow's guts?

I don't have any fears whatsoever. I am fulfilling my duty to my country.

The saints are persecuted, eyes are closed to the truth, darkness is the daily wear. The most savage beasts are those that are blind. No one thinks seriously of Hell. Oh the wickedness of people! In the name of the King' means, in these days, In the name of the Revolution! No man knows where his duty lies, to be living or to be dead. To die in sanctity is forbidden, burial is a civic matter.

But his desire to do the right thing

Chi scrive ha il dovere di raccontare una verità tremenda, e chi legge ha il dovere civile di conoscerla, questa verità. Chiunque giri le spalle, chiuda gli occhi o passi oltre offende la memoria dei caduti.

Zoebarev, tweede luitenant – bevelhebber over de infanteristen

Citizenship, after all, is not an entitlement; it requires work. Yet too many citizens of republics, ancient and modern, come to believe that they deserve rights without assuming responsibilities—and they don't worry how or why or from whom they inherited their privileges.1

Nicholas Monsarrat's epic postwar novel of the Battle of the Atlantic, The Cruel Sea, is a quite different, nightmarish elemental story of men at sea amid

the point is never what we may expect from life but rather what life expects from us

It is a terrible thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!

If we wish to be happy, monsieur, we must never comprehend duty; for, as soon as we comprehend it, it is implacable. One would say that it punishes you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you for it; for it puts you into a hell where you feel God at your side.

As time rolls on, however, we discover that duty is a series of compromises; we contemplate life, regard its end, and submit; but it is a submission which makes the heart bleed.

The life of the cenobite is a human problem. When we speak of convents, those seats of error but innocence, of mistaken views but good intentions, of ignorance but devotion, of torment but martyrdom, we must nearly always say yes or no...The monastery is a renunciation. Self-sacrifice, even when misdirected, is still self-sacrifice. To assume as duty a strict error has its peculiar grandeur.

This is one of those rare moments when, while doing that which it is one's duty to do, one feels something which disconcerts one, and which would dissuade one from proceeding further; one persists, it is necessary, but conscience, though satisfied, is sad, and the accomplishment of duty is complicated with a pain at the heart.