Quotes About Responsibility

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.

You and me are real people, operating in a real world. We are not figments of each other's imagination. I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more. We are all free, completely free. We can each do any damn thing we want. Which is more than most of us dare to imagine.

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.

Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.

An individual chooses and makes himself.

man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, in other respect is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.

Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.

I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.

Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose.

We will freedom for freedom's sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.

All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.' I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your view.

If I didn't try to assume responsibility for my own existence, it would seem utterly absurd to go on existing.

Remember you're not alone; you've no right to inflict the sight of your fear on me.

Freedom is what we do with what is done to us

I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing? Hugo: No. Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death. Hugo: It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.

I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without anything or any person being able to lighten it.

The plight of modern man is that he is condemmed to be free.

Oppressed with countless little daily cares, he had waited... For an act. A free, considered act; that should pledge his whole life, and stand at the beginning of a new existence.

Men get the war they deserve.

a wise person can want nothing better from life than to pay back the wrong that has been done him.

If... if I didn't try to get my life moving on my own account, I should think it just absurd to go on living.' A look of smiling obstinacy had come into Marcelle's face. 'Yes, yes - it's your vice.' 'It's not a vice. It's how I'm made.' 'Why aren't other people made like that, if it isn't a vice?' 'They are, only they don't know it.