Quotes About Responsibility

Mother's ironic vision of life as one prank after another, in the midst of which you did what was needed.

Ender estaba tendido en su cama con los ojos fijos en el techo. Desde que era comandante no dormía más de cinco horas diarias.

the clock said 0340, and Ender felt groggy as he padded along the corridor behind Mazer. "Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't commanders, they don't rule over forty other kids

binding yourself to another person and to the children you make together, that's life.

Everyone thinks they do, until they take a child into their heart. Only then do you know what it is to be a hostage to love. To have someone else's life matter more than your own.

Sima nodded. "To lose a soldier is a type of death. A lesser death than the one that will take us all, but a death nonetheless. If we did not feel so, I suppose we would be unfit for command." He turned and faced them. "I have lost upwards of ten thousand since this war began. All of them sons and daughters to me. If we do not stop this gas, this weapon of the enemy, I will lose them all. See to it that I don't.

when everybody believes that everybody's actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization.

God gives us the freedom to do great evil, if we choose. Then he uses his own freedom to create goodness out of that evil, for that is what he chooses.

we must do all we can do without destroying our ability to keep doing it.

From a friend you need to take crap. But I'm not your friend. I'm your father. And nobody needs to take crap from their father.

And why shouldn't a grown man live with his mother? Mothers were a rare and precious commodity and if you had one, why in the world would leave her?

Good, that's settled then,' said Danny. 'Since I'm the idiot who set this all in motion by playing around with the rope-climb in a high school gym, I apologize right now for everything that goes wrong with this. With any luck, I'm the only one who gets zapped in the outself, and everything else goes on like normal for the rest of you. But if terrible things happen, please remember that I meant well, and that I did my best. That is what I promise you

that's the way of torturers of every age, to put the blame on the victim, especially when he strikes back.

And I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions.

Don't you ever feel like lashing out at somebody? I mean, don't you ever lose your temper?' 'Ela, after you've inadvertently killed a couple of people with your bare hands, either you learn to control your temper or you lose your humanity.' 'You've done that?' 'Yes,' he said.

Saber qué hacer con un batallón es fácil —dijo Ender—. Conseguir que lo hagan es lo difícil. ¿Por

Excuse me, but if God wanted to do everything himself, what did he make us for in the first place?

Are great men ever really good? I know they can be, but we judge them by a different standard. Greatness changes them, whatever they were to start with. It's like war—does any war ever settle anything? But we can't judge that way. The test of a war isn't whether it solved things. You have to ask, Was fighting the war better than not fighting it? And I guess the same kind of test ought to be used on great men.

Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society.

I'll tell you something. If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.

Wasn't that the definition of adulthood? That you wanted one thing, but did another because you knew what was right and good, and wanted to do the right and the good more than you wanted to do what you wanted.

You really are playing God." "I most certainly am not playing.

was good enough when good men held the office, but always when you create an office that a man can lay hands on, an evil man will someday lay hands on it.