Quotes About Responsibility

Where is the man who will save us? We want a man! Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand. This man—it is you, it is I; it is each one of us!... How to constitute one's self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it. —Alexander Dumas.

Pavlik denounced his father's crimes, and when Trofim shouted out, 'It's me, your father,' the boy told the judge: 'Yes, he used to be my father, but I no longer consider him my father. I am not acting as a son, but as a Pioneer.

I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God. Then who are you? The personnel officer who hired God.

Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.

You made them hate me. Said Ender So? What will you do about it? Crawl in a corner? Start kissing their little backsides so they'll love you again? There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you. I told them you were the best. Now you damn well better be. -Graff

As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generaitons, giving brith to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire...I'll put it bluntly. Human beings are free excpet when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me - to find out what you're good for.

I didn't want to hurt him! Ender cried. Why didn't he just leave me alone!

The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it, either. Government office should be received like a child's Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares.

Sometimes good people have to do terrible things.

the thing with brothers is, you're supposed to take turns being the keeper. Sometimes you get to sit down and be the brother who is kept.

I stole their future from them; I can only being to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.

Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew. He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six. Right. And you're the oldest. Yes. That's too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

Sometimes, what's right is not peaceful or passive. What matters is that you do not hide from the consequences. You bear what must be borne.

A man without a wife and babies is a menace to civilization... One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.

Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

Just because they didn't know they were killing human beings doesn't mean they weren't killing human beings.

I didn't want to kill them all. I didn't want to kill anybody! I'm not a killer! You didn't want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!

He walked down the corridor, lined with his soldiers, who looked at him with love, with awe, with trust. Except Bean, who looked at him with anguish. Ender Wiggin was not larger than life, Bean knew. He was exactly life-sized, and so his larger-than-life burden was too much for him. And yet he was bearing it. So far.

I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was so damnably much work.

But shouldn't they still act like children? They aren't normal. They act like--history. Napoleon and Wellington. Caesar and Brutus.

It didn't matter he was brilliant and dedicated and good. He was a child. He was young. No he isn't, thought Ender. Small, yes. Bur Bean has been through a battle with a whole army depending on him and on the soldiers that he led. and he performed splendidly, and the won. There's no youth in that. No childhood.

A good commander, thought Ender, doesn't have to make stupid threats.

If the act is evil, the actor is evil.