Quotes About Responsibility

You are not responsible for your parents' mistakes. The words emerged from her mouth without forethought, inspired by the young man's miserable face. But were they true? Hadn't she taught her own children to accept their father's heroism as part of their inheritance? So wouldn't this also be true in the reverse?

Yet here they were, carrying groceries, holding children's hands, turning their collars up against the wind. As if their moments of truth—the decisions by which they would be judged and would judge themselves—hadn't already come and passed.

It didn't make me cry, it made me mad. But he was breaking down in front of the world, and, again, I felt responsible. How many times are women made to feel responsible for the actions of men? I know now that

The world would be a much nicer place if people only used guns on themselves.

I owed the greater apology, but at the same time I knew that was done was done, that no matter what I said now I would never be able to make it right.

You will have a wife, and children of your own, and they will want to be driven to different places at the same time. No matter how kind they are, one day they will complain about visiting your mother, and you will get tired of it too...You will miss one day, and another, and then she will have to drag herself onto a bus just to get herself a bag of lozenges.

In the end the boy had died one evening in his mother's arms, his limbs burning with fever, but then there was the funeral to pay for, and the other children who were born soon enough, and the newer, bigger house, and the good schools and tutors, and the fine shoes and the television, and the countless other ways he tried to console his wife and to keep her from crying in her sleep, and so when the doctor offered to pay him twice as much as he earned at the grammar school, he accepted.

Again, as it was after Udayan's death, there was an acute awareness of time, of the future looming, accelerating. The baby's lifetime, so scant, already outdistancing and outpacing her own. This was the logic of parenthood.

He was increasingly aware these days of how much he owned, of the ongoing effort his life required. The thousands of trips to the grocery store he had made, all the heaping bags of food, first paper, then plastic, now canvas sacks brought from home, unloaded from the trunk of the car and unpacked and stored in cupboards, all to sustain a single body.

He had wanted to say to her then, You could unpack some boxes. You could sweep the attic. You could retouch the paint on the bathroom windowsill, and after you do it you could warn me so that I don't put my watch on it.

É como se um prédio por cujo projeto ele fosse o responsável tivesse desabado na frente de todo mundo. E, no entanto, ele não pode culpá-la de fato. Ambos tinham agido pelo mesmo impulso, esse foi o erro dos dois. Ambos tinham buscado conforto um no outro e em seu mundo compartilhado, talvez porque fosse uma novidade, ou por medo de que esse mundo estivesse morrendo lentamente

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

A man's got to work for more than himself and his kids to feel right

A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to makea malefactordiesweetly was only belonging toher husband.

We have the knowledge, resources, and capabilities to make global capitalism work in a more inclusive and socially responsible manner while retaining - indeed enhancing - its economic benefits.

There is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful.

A committee is twelve men doing the work of one.

We still have a lot of work to do to protect our own democracy.

I'm not really interested in being king. I prefer to work for a living

One of the best ways of avoiding necessary and even urgent tasks is to seem to be busily employed on things that are already done.

Journalism, like democracy, is not something that is achieved. It is a work in progress, and not every day is as good as the last.

There's no better way to mess up a good cowdog than to let him discover that goofing off beats the heck out of hard work.

There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it.

To do your own work well, whether it be for life or death.