Quotes About Responsibility

If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you.

All in all, regular policemen murdered more Jews than the Einsatzgruppen. Many of them had no special preparation for this task. They found themselves in an unknown land, they had their orders, and they did not want to look weak. In the rare cases when they refused these orders to murder Jews, policemen were not punished.

Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.

The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds.

If the main pillar of the system is living a lie," wrote Havel, "then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth." Since in the age of the internet we are all publishers, each of us bears some private responsibility for the public's sense of truth.

Timothy Snyder

Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional.

After the Reichstag fire, Hannah Arendt wrote that "I was no longer of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander.

It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf.

If young people do not begin to make history, politicians of eternity and inevitability will destroy it. And to make history, young Americans will have to know some. This is not the end, but a beginning.

Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as "just following orders".

Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

If we believe that the Holocaust was a result of the inherent characteristics of Jews, Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, or anyone else, then we are moving in Hitler's world. —

If members of the professions confuse their specific ethics with the emotions of the moment, however, they can find themselves saying and doing things that they might previously have thought unimaginable.

Milgram grasped that people are remarkably receptive to new rules in a new setting. They are surprisingly willing to harm and kill others in the service of some new purpose if they are so instructed by a new authority.

The politics of inevitability is a self-induced intellectual coma.

The nation faces forward. It is made and remade every day. If we believe that the nation resides in the orderly recitations of history given to us by our leaders, then our story is over

History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something.

If we can avoid doing violence to the minds of unseen others on the internet, others will learn to do the same. And then perhaps our internet traffic will cease to look like one great, bloody accident.

Since in the age of the internet we are all publishers, each of us bears some responsibility for the public's sense of truth. If we are serious about seeking the facts, we can each make a small revolution in the way the internet works. If you are verifying information for yourself, you will not send on fake news to others.

Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad). Take responsibility for what you communicate with oth

You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case. This renunciation of reality can feel natural and pleasant, but the result is your demise as an individual- and thus the collapse of any political system that depends upon individualism.

Why then should we form our political judgment on the basis of zero investment? We get what we pay for.

Since in the age of the internet we are all publishers, each of us bears some private responsibility for the public's sense of truth.