Quotes About Obligation

If we agree to your proposal, you'll expect us to abide by your contract, which may require us to compromise our ethics.

It's not always about one's personal happiness. Sometimes it has to be about the obligation we have to others. A duty to pay back for the gift you were given.

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

The greatest human quest is to know what one must do in order to become a human being.

Ethical laws cannot be thought of as emanating originally merely from the will of this superior being as statutes, which, had he not first commanded them, would perhaps not be binding, for then they would not be ethical laws and the duty proper to them would not be the free duty of virtue but the coercive duty of law.

All so-called moral interest consists simply in respect for the law.

Ich kann, weil ich will, was ich muss.

Obra como si la máxima de tu acción pudiera ser erigida, por tu voluntad, en ley universal de la naturaleza

For now we see that when we conceive ourselves as free we transfer ourselves into the world of understanding as members of it, and recognise the autonomy of the will with its consequence, morality; whereas, if we conceive ourselves as under obligation we consider ourselves as belonging to the world of sense, and at the same time to the world of understanding.

no one can be compelled by law to be beneficent (though he may be taxed and this money then distributed in welfare payments)

There can be only one reason why we must do what duty demands, and that is that we demand it of ourselves.

T]he sublimity and intrinsic dignity of the command in duty are so much the more evident, the less the subjective impulses favor it and the more they oppose it, without being able in the slightest degree to weaken the obligation of the law or to diminish its validity.

all duties depend as regards the kind of obligation (not the object of their action) upon the one principle.

There's no fear or regret but no elation or sense of triumph either. It's just a job that had to be done.

Pedro Tercero tuvo que renunciar a sus paseos al pueblo, porque su padre lo requería a su lado. Lo secundaba de mal humor, haciéndole notar que se partían el lomo por volver a poner en pie la riqueza del patrón, pero que ellos seguían siendo tan pobres como antes. —Siempre ha sido así, hijo. Usted no puede cambiar la ley de Dios —le replicaba su padre.

In Chile, the clerk on duty demands that the poor petitioner produce proof that he was born, that he isn't a criminal, that he paid his taxes, that he registered to vote, and that he's still alive, because even if he throws a tantrum to prove that he hasn't died, he is obliged to present a "certificate of survival.

Lo envolvió en la red invisible de la culpabilidad y de las deudas de gratitud impagas.

Quién más sabe, más obligación tiene hacia la humanidad.

If you don't like a film or do a film out of obligation in a comfortable zone, it would be very painful, but when you do something with passion, interest, and belief in it, it excites you.

When necessity speaks, it demands.

For so must it be, and help me do my part.

The fair request ought to be followed by the deed, in silence.

The Englishman is under no constitutional obligation to believe that all men are created equal. The American agony is therefore scarcely intelligible, like a saint's self-flagellation viewed by an atheist.