Quotes About Responsibility

Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

The people are the only censors of their governors, and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.

A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society

Responsibility is a tremendous engine in a free government

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.

The second office of the government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.

If God is just, I tremble for my country.

[On slavery:] We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy the first is but a splendid misery.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that ever were written.

Offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself.

No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it...To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.

No more good must be attempted than the people can bear.

No nation was ever drunk when wine was cheap.