Quotes About Responsibility

If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations...

before I was married I didn't care what bills I put my name to, and so long as Moses would wait or Levy would renew for three months, I kept on never minding. But since I'm married, except renewing, of course, I give you my honour I've not touched a bit of stamped paper.

And for my part I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses – the very easiest to be deadened when wakened: and in some never wakened at all.

Para un hombre que ha cometido una falta no conozco censor más implacable que sus propios parientes.

And do not let squeamish Tories cry out about disloyalty; if the crown does wrong, the crown must be corrected by the nation, out of respect, of course, for the crown.

If a person is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he must sweep his own rooms:

if these hours be dark, as indeed in many ways they are, at least do not let us sit deedless, like fools and fine gentlemen, thinking the common toil not good enough for us, and beaten by the muddle; but rather let us work like good fellows trying by some dim candle-light to set our workshop ready against to-morrow's daylight...

Il rimedio è nelle mani degli artigiani, che su queste materie non sono ignoranti come la gente comune, e che non tendono a essere avari e a starsene isolati come i proletari delle manifatture o i mediatori; è a loro che competono l'onore e l'onere di educare il pubblico, ed essi recano in sé i semi dell'ordine e dell'organizzazione che renderanno più facile il loro compito.

Cuando sostenemos el cuerpo de un amigo que cuelga sobre el abismo y que amenaza con arrastrarnos con su caída, ¿es accidente o es traición el momento en que flaquea nuestra fuerza?

Pasamos por el mundo profanándolo todo hora tras hora y siempre soñando con un mundo mejor, más lleno de tributos y de esclavos. No entendemos la casa que nos dieron, creemos que vinimos a mandar, ejecutores de una ley tan ciega como nosotros mismos

The accounts that history presents have to be paid.

If God does exist then it seems to me that rather than solve our problems for us, he or she instead provides us with the potential for great intelligence, understanding, wisdom, and compassion. It is then left up to us to use these to solve our own problems.

may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes

I have reached the conclusion he lacks that moral authority, and sadly, by extension, I must include in that now those who appointed him to his post. They are not lawful orders, and most certainly they are not moral orders.

Machiavelli said a prince had to transcend traditional morality for the greater good of those he led.

So any order from on high, regardless of its moral worth, must be obeyed. Is that what America has really become? Did we let it slip away an inch at a time before we were attacked, and now we are finally driving straight off the cliff once and for all?

You are no longer in the halls of the White House or wherever you served, whomever you were assigned to. This is not some public relations job where you bullshit a stupid press corps and when the questioning gets too tough, you say time is up.

We did have a lot to do with it. We had all grown so fat, so complacent, and we always let someone else worry about such things, even though we knew that those we allowed to be in charge were far too often incompetent—or worse, self-serving and blind in their arrogance.

Whatever neutrality is, it is not very useful to anybody, and time is running out. If we do not do useful things whenever it is possible or necessary to do them, we shall soon be totally departed from the human scene, and forgotten, or remembered only for having disappeared. Armenians are too vital to be permitted to throw themselves away in neutrality, comfort, well-being, satisfaction, and so on and so forth.

Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.