Quotes About Responsibility

Thomas Blanky wondered if he had been an instrument of evil — or perhaps just of folly — when he had used his more than three decades of ice-master skills to get 126 men the impossible 250 miles through ice to this place where all they could do was die

You've had your chance, Richard. Scott's a big boy now, and if he wants to spend a few years chanting mantras and giving away his lunch money to some bearded horse's ass with a Jehovah Complex, well, you've had your chance to help him, so what do you say you just get on with your screwed-up life, Richard E. Baedecker

life and work revolved around duty, self-respect, and the ultimate value of one's word.

I think we underestimate how much of our own lives we devote to trying to meet the expectations of the dead, continued Dave. We don't even think about it, we just do.

I've gotten to the point where I'm not even a little apologetic about this business of not eating stuff that's bad for me. No one else has to live with my fat, work through my energy and mood swings, pay my doctor bills, fight my cravings, for face my family history of diabetes and cancer. If people insist, I can get a little testy.

I tell my students, who are concerned with the question of betrayal, that when it comes to memoir, there is no such thing as absolute truth—only the truth that is singularly their own. I say this not to release them from responsibility but to illuminate the subjectivity of our inner lives. One person's experience is not another's.

Freedom is anxiety's petri dish. If routine blunts anxiety, freedom incubates it. Freedom says, Even if you don't want to make choices, you have to, and you can never be sure you have chosen correctly. Freedom says, Even not to choose is to choose. Freedom says, So long as you are aware of your freedom, you are going to experience the discomfort that freedom brings. Freedom says, You're on your own. Deal with it.

The world is full of suffering and exploitation, and that fact keeps one in touch with the realities that make one's behavior a moral challenge.

As Dave Cooper says, I screwed that up are the most important words any leader can say.

the number-one job is to take care of each other. I didn't always know that, but I know it now.

When kings the sword of justice first lay down, They are no kings, though they possess the crown. Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things, The good of subjects is the end of kings.

Bad as he is, the Devil may be abus'd, Be falsly charg'd, and causelesly accus'd, When Men, unwilling to be blam'd alone, Shift off these Crimes on Him which are their Own.

For now I had five children by him: the only work perhaps that fools are good for.

La proprietà di cui si abusa è spesso fonte di disgrazia.

I had more care upon my head now than I had in my state of life in the island where I wanted nothing but what I had, and had nothing but what I wanted; whereas I had now a great charge upon me, and my business was how to secure it.  I had not a cave now to hide my money in, or a place where it might lie without lock or key, till it grew mouldy and tarnished before anybody would meddle with it; on the contrary, I knew not where to put it, or whom to trust with it. 

But as a fool is the worst of husbands to do a woman good, so a fool is the worst husband a woman can do good to.

Emotionally Intelligent Parenting: How to Raise a Self-disciplined, Responsible, Socially Skilled Child. New

An artful critique focuses on what a person has done and can do rather than reading a mark of character into a job poorly done. As Larson observes, "A character attack—calling someone stupid or incompetent—misses the point. You immediately put him on the defensive, so that he's no longer receptive to what you have to tell him about how to do things better.

And one of the paradoxes is that leaders, the higher they go, the less vertical feedback they get on how they're actually doing, because people are afraid to tell them. So leaders can go off in a direction thinking they're doing fine, not realizing they're not

A leader tuned out of his internal world will be rudderless; one blind to the world of others will be clueless; those indifferent to the larger systems within which they operate will be blindsided.

Don't underestimate the value of practicing the guitar or keeping that promise to feed the guinea pig and clean its cage.

But these most visible leadership abilities build not just on empathy, but also on managing ourselves and sensing how what we do affects others.

Por ello decimos que el líder desconectado de su mundo interno carece de timón, el indiferente a los sistemas mayores en los que se mueve está perdido, y el inconsciente ante el mundo interpersonal está ciego.

Más que cualquier otro individuo, el jefe crea las condiciones que determinan directamente la capacidad de sus subordinados para trabajar bien.