Quotes About Responsibility

You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.

Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.

Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation; the displacements amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring.

It's always the mother's fault, ain't it?" she said softly, collecting her coat. "That boy turn out bad cause his mama a drunk, or she a junkie. She let him run wild, she don't teach him right from wrong. She never home when he back from school. Nobody ever say his daddy a drunk, or his daddy not home after school. And nobody ever say they some kids just damned mean. ...

Teachers were both blamed for everything that went wrong with kids and turned to for their every salvation. This dual role of scapegoat and savior was downright messianic but even Jesus was probably paid better.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.

The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.

It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.

Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease.

Never imagine that what you do for others or what you do in private doesn't matter. It counts more than we know. God watches how we steward what is not our own before He entrusts us with more.

Mothers' bodies are not their own. The happiest ones seem to have forgotten what it is like to want themselves back at all.

People make choices, choices have consequences.

Party parents figure that if their daughter is going to do risky things when with her friends, she'll be safer if she and her friends do those risky things right under their noses. But party parents rob their daughter of one of the best protections she has: the ability to blame her good behavior on them.

under the sway of social influence, teenagers don't disregard the issue of rules completely. In my experience they still think about it, but in the wrong way. Instead of reflecting on why we have rules, teens focus on trying not to get caught while breaking them.

Having used you as their emotional dumping ground, they are prepared to return to school and play the part of the good citizen. Indeed, they may be able to act as a good citizen at school precisely because they are spending some of their time imagining the colorful complaints they will share once their school day has ended.

People don't do nice things for people who are mean to them. Better for your daughter to learn this lesson before she leaves your home than after she is out on her own.

A person stops maturing at the age that they start abusing substances,

There are things that once done can't be undone, things that once said can't be unsaid.

Most people don't need the help of strangers to screw up their lives; most of them are quite capable of doing it themselves!

They [Cops] were living in the media age, and in the media age, cops didn't get to fire their weapons. Cops were honored if they got themselves killed in the line of duty, but they were never suppose to draw their guns, not even in self-defense.

Mothers hold close, fathers let go. Maybe that's the way of the world.

Wer ein Menschenleben rettet, handelt, als würde er die ganze Welt retten.

To limit the ways our daughters can legitimately function as stewards/rulers further devalues the image of God in them and continues the imbalance and distortion of God's plan.