Quotes About Responsibility

Should the Governor disappear from public view and not speak for fear of misinterpretation, or should he take the risk in order to discharge his responsibilities?

the single most important task in management is to pick good deputies,

Politicians today vow, "Never again!" But they will naturally focus only on dealing with a few scapegoats, not just because the system is harder to change, but also because if politicians traced the fault lines, they would find a few running through themselves.

The personal checks and balances that most of us bring to bear when we are employed in other activities - we ask ourselves if we are producing a socially useful product - operate less well in finance because, with few exceptions, making money is the Raison d'être (reason for existence) for the financier

This is a convenient focus, because the villains are easily identified and measures can be taken against malfeasance and neglect. What's more, it absolves the rest of us of our responsibility for precipitating this crisis. But this is too facile a response.

real difficulty comes when we are doing something that we don't want to be doing. For example, if we must work when we want to be home, or if we are staying home when it is driving us crazy, then our parenting will tend to be influenced by guilt, resentment, and a whole range of other negative emotions. We need to make our best choices at each moment. We can't always have what we feel would be ideal, but we can actively do the best with the options as we see them.

Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?

At the end of all these years, it doesn't matter to me who thinks of me as what. What matters is whether I have done what I could and whether I had done something I shouldn't have.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is.

the sword was of value only when a person of courage and restraint protected life with it.

As the Punjabis were thrown into a collision course, the departing British more or less abdicated responsibility. Returning home at the earliest became the dominant desire of most British soldiers, policemen and civilians.

Cutting losses was the watchword, as was throwing responsibility onto the shoulders of Indians. 'You asked us to quit. We will oblige. Now it's up to you.' The argument was irrefutable, but it was not as if earlier Indian demands had always been met.

You are the writer of your own life.

I remember that I'm invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.

I don't feel particularly comfortable about actors using whatever power they may have to push their beliefs, unless they're extremely well informed.

writing about something was not the moral equivalent of doing it

Speak to souls about this great mercy while it is still the time for granting mercy. If you keep silent now you will be answerable for a great number of souls on that terrible day.

What a mystery the human person is. Sometimes horrible effects of our choices come that we in no way intend. Sometimes the difference between what we think we are doing and what we are actually doing is total. But it is the inner intention that then characterizes what we do or do not do.

If we attempt to block the development of new technology, we effectively have ensured that the most responsible parties will not develop them.

There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men. ...Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same God that made you and me made this earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest.

Son, there are times a man has to do things he doesn't like to, in order to protect his family.

He said it would be good for me, as I grew older, to know that a man always made his troubles less by going to meet them instead of waiting for them to catch up with him, or trying to run away from them.