Quotes About Responsibility

And am I answerable that thoughtless and unprincipled men exist whose shades of contenance may resemble mine?

You don't ask of Justice; it asks of you." -Danny Rollings

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.

I've snapped and plotted all my life. There's no other way to be a king, alive and fifty all at the same time.

Dear me, whatever shall we do with mother?

I said that this would be a Budget based on prudence for a purpose and that guides us also in our approach to public spending.

Every boy should have a dog and every dog should have a boy.

If not me, who?" "Who? You're Condor, not an owl.

This national energy policy of the last four decades is, in my view, the greatest dereliction of civic responsibility in the history of the Republic. And it is worse today than ever.

While adverse consequences of 100 years from now are obviously less pressing than those of next year, if they are also of large magnitude and irreversible, we cannot in good conscience discount them.

There are some cherished values that resist being quantified or squeezed into monetary terms, but are no less real for that. Agents of democratic societies are responsible to the people, but we should remember that "the people" refers not only to

the working majority that actually makes current decisions, and not even to the whole of the living population, but to those who came before us, who provided our traditions and our physical patrimony as nations, and to those who will come after us, and who will inherit what we leave behind. Decisions in the environmental arena often touch on this broader sense of public responsibility, and we cannot afford to lose it among the numbers.

When in doubt, mumble when in trouble, delegate when in charge, ponder.

Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth. That is the equivalent of what we face now [with climate change], yet we dither.

I wish people would realize that animals are totally dependent on us, helpless, like children, a trust that is put upon us.

I hope to make people realize how totally helpless animals are, how dependent on us, trusting as a child must that we will be kind and take care of their needs.

I like playing music because it's a good living and I get satisfaction from it. But I can't feed my family with satisfaction.

If you have to hang a man you could have put on a better trail, you aren't entitled to own a rope.

You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. It's the same thing with psychotherapy.

We approach people the same way we approach our cars. We take the poor kid to a doctor and ask, What's wrong with him, how much will it cost, and when can I pick him up?

Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong. If a kid is having trouble or is discouraged, the problem is not just inside the kid it's also in the system, the society.

The capacity for growth depends on one's ability to internalize and to take personal responsibility. If we forever see our life as a problem caused by others, a problem to be "solved," then no change will occur.

One of the most powerful shocks of the Middle Passage is the collapse of our tacit contract with the universe–the assumption that if we act correctly, if we are of good heart and good intentions, things will work out. We assume a reciprocity with the universe. If we do our part, the universe will comply. Many ancient stories, including the Book of Job, painfully reveal the fact that there is no such contract, and everyone who goes through the Middle Passage is made aware of it.

That of which we are not aware, owns us.