Quotes About Responsibility

Why was it worth so much of your life?" "Because I could not fail him again." "Fail who?" "My father.

You'd do it so much better," Buttercup replied. "I'll get the sashes, but I really think you should do the actual tying." "Woman," Westley roared, "you are the property of the Dread Pirate Roberts and you . . . do . . . what . . . you're . . . told!

Such is the Forgotten Man. He works, he votes, generally he prays—but he always pays—yes, above all, he pays.

The Forgotten Man is delving away in patient industry, supporting his family, paying his taxes, casting his vote, supporting the church and the school, reading his newspaper, and cheering for the politician of his admiration, but he is the only one for whom there is no provision in the great scramble and the big divide.

are those who have neglected their duties, and consequently have failed to get their rights. The

distribution of rewards and punishments between those who have done their duty and those who have not.

if pastors know whose they are, where they come from, and why they are here, they will better know what to do, here, now.

A Princeton student being interviewed by a reporter was questioned about the prospect of American troops going to Afghanistan when the Soviet Union invaded there. "There's nothing worth dying for," was her response. Which means of course that one day she shall have the unpleasant task of dying for nothing.

Parents often say, "Don't let me catch you doing that again!" and that is all right, but a good, honest life is more than that. Moral development is not a game of "Catch me if you can." It is better to focus clearly on what really matters: the kind of person one is.

Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace is to be the first consideration in your eyes—to be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Illinois have done your share, and more than your share, in making America great, because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine. You work yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work.

James Madison takes up the question of whether a relatively small number of legislators can be trusted to safeguard the public liberty. Such a system can work, Madison argues, as long as the political and moral responsibilities of the people remain intact. Democracy presupposes the virtue of its individual citizens.

That is perhaps the greatest insight that the ancient Roman Stoics championed for humanity. There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes. And our attitudes are up to us.

IN A WORLD STILL RULED BY KINGS, President George Washington's decision to not seek a third term clearly signaled that the United States would be governed by the people, not any ruler-for-life.

There was once a common understanding in our society among men that there are standards of action and behavior to which men should hold themselves. Men, the code dictates, among other things, keep their word, whether in writing or not, men do not take advantage of women, men support their children, and men watch their language, especially around women and children. The code of men is fading.

Democracy was wrong, Kahn declared, when "it countenances government commissions giving to endless innuendo and irresponsible gossip the place and the scope that belong to trustworthy testimony.

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.

There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain forms of death, death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and wrong, death of everything that paganism, naturalism and legalism pin their trust on.

I will act as if what i do makes a difference.

A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned.

Act as if what you do makes a difference, it does.

If you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape the remuneration. Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles forevermore the ponderous equator to its line, and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil.[11]

In this period the Prime Minister had great confidence in the Fuehrer's word, remarking privately a day or two later, "In spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word."46

He was asked by his interrogator what his feelings were at the time, and he gave a memorable answer that gives insight into a phenomenon in the Third Reich that has seemed so elusive of human understanding. I had no feelings in carrying out these things because I had received an order to kill the eighty inmates in the way I already told you.