Quotes About Responsibility

On the Rebbe's willingness to offer opinions and advice on a large range of issues, including theology, business, family affairs, and even medical questions: "[First] I am not afraid to answer that I don't know. If I know, then I have no right not to answer. When someone comes to you for help and you can help him to the best of your knowledge, and you refuse him this help, you become a cause of his suffering.

If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.

When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal, when he wantonly destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman.

If we do not allow the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food either.

parents are heroes already—all they have to do is start acting like it.

We need to ask ourselves some tough questions: Have I failed to live as Jesus taught me to? How responsible am I for the negative perceptions many have of the church?

Book: [to Mal] If you take sexual advantage of her, you're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

To summarize, just because you can overload methods doesn't mean you should.

A child, thought Carl, is not the only result of childbirth. A mother, too, is born. You see them every day--nondescript women with a bulge just above the groin, slightly double-chinned. Perpetually forty. Someone's mother, you think. There is a child somewhere who has made this woman into a mother, and for the sake of the child she has altered her appearance to better play the part.

It is forgivable to say nothing out of ignorance; it's inexcusable to remain silent once awareness dawns.

Because it's no longer enough to be a decent person. It's no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself.

Love is for children. I owe him a debt.

If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.

You can't just throw people at all your problems, dear.

A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend

Malcolm: So me and mine gotta lay down and die... So you can live in your better world? Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there... any more than there is for you. I'm a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it. But it must be done.

I believe that if you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned.

We cannot own anyone else, people, the lands, or resources. We are here to care for each other.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you. Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

You were born of a generation that promised to help remember.

Taking the law into your own hands, fuck what's wrong with that?

her Quaker instincts led her to apologize for wrongs not her own to minimize conflict.

It's a taboo subject. How the dead are betrayed by the living. We who are living--we who have survived--understand that our guilt is what links us to the dead. At all times we can hear them calling to us, a growing incredulity in their voices, You will not forget me -- will you? How can you forget me? I have no one but you.

Maybe he'd been mistaken, trying so hard to make his wife and young children happy. Maybe it's always a mistake, trying to assure the happiness of others.