Quotes About Responsibility

The future of America is bound up in the present crisis. If America is to remain a first-class nation, it cannot have a second-class citizenship.

Leadership never ascends from the pew to the pulpit, but invariably descends from the pulpit to the pew.

I have made the tough decisions, always with an eye toward the bottom line. Perhaps it's time America was run like a business.

The Arab League tells us to go in and take out Qaddafi. We've spent billions of dollars already with respect to the Arab League. Billions of dollars, because they told us to do it. Why aren't they paying for it? They don't like Qaddafi, Qaddafi's been a terrible thorn in their side.

When you design it, think how you would feel if you had to fly it! Safety first!

Unfortunately, it would seem that economic power, despite temporary hardships, is the only responsible course open to the free world.

We'll go down in history as the first society that wouldn't save itself because it wasn't cost-effective.

stop looking for who's to blame; instead you'll start asking, "What's the system?" The concept of feedback opens up the idea that a system can cause its own behavior.

Designing a system for intrinsic responsibility could mean, for example, requiring all towns or companies that emit wastewater into a stream to place their intake pipes downstream from their outflow pipe.

To be a highly functional system, hierarchy must balance the welfare, freedoms, and responsibilities of the subsystems and total system—there must be enough central control to achieve coordination toward the large-system goal, and enough autonomy to keep all subsystems flourishing, functioning, and self-organizing.

Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes.

The structure of a commons system makes selfish behavior much more convenient and profitable than behavior that is responsible to the whole community and to the future.

There is a systematic tendency on the part of human beings to avoid accountability for their own decisions.

What Clinton did with Lewinsky was despicable but was no threat to the nation. That he lied about it repeatedly and to the public is a reason for us to cease to trust him and for him to resign.

There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.

Most uncomfortable! Did we lose anyone? Head count! Lee Ark, Leetu, and Brunstetter. Three. Should we count the meech egg? No, I think not. Don't drop it, Brunstetter. I'm to take it home and raise it. Ridiculous. Being a parent at my age. Where were we? Oh, yes, three. One o'rant, two kimens, two minor dragons. Eight. A librarian and a diplomat. Ten.

Motherhood is a choice you make everyday, to put someone else's happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you're not sure what the right thing is...and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.

You are the best of us. We are the best of you. What becomes of us will, inevitably, become of you. That is why you should care. That is why I write. I end this chapter, then, with broken silence, broken vows, broken trust. Our secrets are yours now; I pray you use them well.

Civic education and civic responsibility should be taught in elementary school.

you have to come of age when it's your time. If you try to rush it or put it off, it only gets you into trouble.

I knew you would follow," she said, "and I feared the longer we lingered, the more my da would suffer.

I've got a meeting," she went on, not giving him a chance to respond. He nodded to the basket in her arms. "Yes, I can see that. Demanding lot, laundry.

Would your family support you if you decided you didn't want to be a cattle baron and run the family dynasty?" "Cattle baron, am I now?

Most people — however much they might deny it — had an idea of what they were getting into when they got into it.