Quotes About Responsibility

She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world.

And if you aren't a dues paying member of a dozen NGOs, each fighting for a future you believe in, then take another look at the hypocrite in the mirror. That method is a lazy person's cheap route to bragging rights: "I'm at least doing something." Here's how.

nous pouvons nous doter de garanties constitutionnelles, établir une stricte répartition des pouvoirs, mais de telles mesures ne prennent un sens que lorsque les citoyens assurent que ces garde-fous soient respectés. Or, ceux qui ont soif de puissance et d'argent sont sans cesse à l'affût d'un moyen de violer les lois ou de les tourner à leur avantage.

Responsibility was our cruel mooring....

what was the very first injunction laid by the Lord upon our first ancestor? . . . name all the beasts .

there were few worse criminals on any world than the engineer who blithely and knowingly hands over to a tyrant the tools of oppression.

Political freedom is great. But personal, social, and emotional freedom—when it becomes an ultimate end—absolutely sucks. It leads to a random, busy life with no discernible direction, no firm foundation, and in which, as Marx put it, all that's solid melts to air. It turns out that freedom isn't an ocean you want to spend your life in. Freedom is a river you want to get across so you can plant yourself on the other side—and fully commit to something.

You can't really know God if you ignore his laws, especially the ones that regulate the most intimate spheres of life. You may be responsible and healthy, but you will also be shallow and inconsequential.

There's something heroic about wealthy crusaders who aim to spend down their fortunes to improve society—that is, assuming you like what they're doing. If you don't, that sense of urgency can be unnerving. How many liberals, for example, would be thrilled if the Koch brothers announced that they intended to give away their vast fortune as quickly as possible to make "America a better place"?

Some of the burdens we carry include false weight, perhaps to make up for all the horrible stuff we actually did and forgot.

The onset of adulthood is an organic, creeping process. No one wakes up one day and decides, Lo, on this day I shall forever put away childish things and begin clipping coupons to go to Wal-Mart.

that explains everything and excuses nothing.

But I've seen enough to know that we all carry a measure of guilt and innocence among us.

My Dad used to say that if every man just took care of his own family, the world would be a much better place.

Companies that step up to repair the harm they've caused and prevent new harm from occurring have a much easier time attracting top talent to their doors. It's probably going to be cheaper for your organization to resolve your legacy issues now than it will be a decade from now, when the harm will have mounted even more.

more leaders equals more bureaucracy. Leaders don't just lead—they create work for other people, in the form of meetings, sign-offs, projects, procedures, priorities, and so on, especially if they're good leaders. Others in the organization then spend more of their time responding to these leaders and less time leading or managing their own team members. Each leader has their own staff—adding yet more cost and complexity to the organization.

When you ask leaders to do more, and they deliver over both the short and long term, leading to wins for shareholders and customers, then those leaders deserve higher than average compensation.

In truth, mobilizing people is only about 5 percent of the leader's job. The best leaders dedicate almost all their time to the latter two elements: making great decisions and executing consistently with those decisions.

Delegation and trust are of course vital—you can't do everything yourself, and you shouldn't try. That said, you don't want delegation to verge into a total abdication of authority on your part. You must verify that employees and the organization are actually executing as they are supposed to.

Her definition of love was obligation and guilt. It was the only love the Crow family had to offer.

Her definition of love was obligation and guilt.

Should statements based on the premise you are all-powerful assume that, like God, you are omnipotent and have the ability to control yourself and other people so as to achieve each and every goal. You

No one has a moral or legal obligation to credit me for my cleverness or praise my good efforts on their behalf.

Self-Blame and Other-Blame. You find fault in others or yourself instead of solving the problem or identifying the true causes of the problem.