Quotes About Responsibility

the way they put it, we as a society have decided not to modify the society but to modify the children.

Not all evils can be rectified, but ongoing evils surely should stop.

It's not the generals, it's the civilians who authorise and organise the worst war crimes.

So we march on, following our leaders, toward an "Armageddon of our own making.

If you abandon the political arena, somebody is going to be there. Corporations aren't going to go home and join the PTA. They are going to run things.

Victors do not investigate their own crimes, so that little is known about them...

To speak truth to power is not a particularly honorable vocation.

There's a very simple point about arithmetic—if you happen to be in a swing state, a state where the outcome is indefinite, and you don't vote for, say, Clinton, that's equivalent to voting for Trump. That's arithmetic.

The powerful are self-immunized from even inquiry, let alone punishment for their crimes.

The intelligent minority are a "specialized class" who are responsible for setting policy and for "the formation of a sound public opinion

The choice is ours, the choice is yours.

At Harvard they teach people how to rule the world and at MIT they teach them how to make the world work. This is for the elite schools. For the rest, turn them into servants.

La libertad, cuando no hay oportunidades, es un regalo envenenado; y negarse a proporcionar estas oportunidades es un acto criminal.

it is more gratifying to bask in praise for courageously protesting the abuses of official enemies: a fine activity, but not the priority of a value-oriented intellectual who takes the responsibilities of that stance seriously.

Anybody who wants to be President, you should right away say, I don't want to hear that guy anymore. WOMAN: I'm sorry? You should say, I don't want to listen to that person anymore. Anybody who wants to become your leader, you should say, I don't want to follow. That's like a rule of thumb which almost never fails.

Small wonder that President Obama advises us to look forward, not backward—a convenient doctrine for those who hold the clubs. Those who are beaten by them tend to see the world differently, much to our annoyance.

but unless Western populations can rise to the level of Egyptians they're going to remain victims.

crime of war" is a criminal activity of which the defeated enemies, but not the victors, are guilty.

Well, we happen to have a huge rabid raccoon running around—it's called corporations. And there is nothing in the society right now that can protect people from that tyranny, except the federal government. Now, it doesn't protect them very well, because mostly it's run by the corporations, but still it does have some limited effect—it can enforce regulatory measures

NC: You're right, but I think it tells you something very interesting about Western culture. When they went to the concentration camps and were appalled, they did not say, "Let's save the survivors"; they said, "Let someone else pay for saving the survivors." IP: Exactly.

Los maestros tienen la obligación de investigar y difundir la verdad sobre los temas más significativos, sobre los temas que importan.

La obligación de cualquier maestro es ayudar a sus estudiantes a descubrir la verdad por sí mismos.

Global warming has an abstract feel. Who understands the difference between 1.5ºC and 2ºC (2.7ºF and 3.6ºF respectively)—in contrast to having food to put on the table for your children tomorrow?

We will also learn that our own actions, or passive acquiescence, contribute quite substantially to misery and oppression, and perhaps eventual global destruction.