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Quotes About Responsibility

For the paradoxes are becoming so great that leaders of people must be less and less intelligent to stand their own leadership.
~ John Steinbeck
His whispered word seemed to hang in the air: "Timshel!" His eyes closed and he slept.
~ John Steinbeck
It is easy out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, 'I couldn't help it; the way was set.' But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.
~ John Steinbeck
He ain't no cuckoo," said George. "He's dumb as hell, but he ain't crazy. An' I ain't so bright neither, or I wouldn't be buckin' barley for my fifty and found.
~ John Steinbeck
The great artists of finance like Morgan and Rockefeller weren't deflected. They wanted and got money, just simple money. What they did with it afterward is another matter. I've always felt they got scared of the ghost they raised and tried to buy it off.
~ John Steinbeck
The preacher rose high on his elbow. Law changes, he said, but 'got to's' go on. You got the right to do what you got to do.
~ John Steinbeck
No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us. What a great burden of guilt men have!' Samuel said to Adam, 'And you have tried to take it all.' Lee said, 'So do I, so does everyone. We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.
~ John Steinbeck
I know this … a man got to do what he got to do.
~ John Steinbeck
Well, suppose there's a slight doubt that the boy should be in the army and we send him and he gets killed." "I see. Is it responsibility or blame that bothers you?" "I don't want blame." "Sometimes responsibility is worse. It doesn't carry any pleasant egotism.
~ John Steinbeck
We in the United States have done so much to destroy our own resources, our timber, our land, our fishes, that we should be taken as a horrible example and our methods avoided by any government and people enlightened enough to envision a continuing economy. With our own resources we have been prodigal, and our country will not soon lose the scars of our grasping stupidity.
~ John Steinbeck
Here is individual responsibility and the invention of conscience. You can if you will but it is up to you. This little story(from the Bible)turns out to be one of the most profound in the world. I always felt it was,but now I know it is.
~ John Steinbeck
No matter how weak and negative a good man is, he has as many sins on him as he can bear.
~ John Steinbeck
What branch do you want to go in?" "I don' give a god-damn," said Pilon jauntily. "I guess we need men like you in the infantry." And Pilon was written so. He turned then to Big Joe, and the Portagee was getting sober. "Where do you want to go?" "I want to go home," Big Joe said miserably. The sergeant put him in the infantry too.
~ John Steinbeck
And when one of our successful men had what he needed or wanted, he reassumed his virtue as easily as changing his shirt, and for all one could see, he took no hurt from his derelictions, always assuming that he didn't get caught.
~ John Steinbeck
I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.
~ John Steinbeck
Your sons have no names." Adam replied, "Their mother left them motherless." "And you have left them fatherless. Can't you feel the cold at night of a lone child? What warm is there, what bird song, what possible morning can be good? Don't you remember, Adam, how it was, even a little?" "I didn't do it," Adam said. "Have you undone it? Your boys have no names.
~ John Steinbeck
Awright—take 'im." He did not look down at the dog at all. He lay back on his bunk and crossed his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling. From
~ John Steinbeck
I know,' said Winter, 'but they don't know.' And he went on with a thought he had been having. 'A time-minded people,' he said, 'and the time is nearly up. They think that just because they have only one leader and one head, we are all like that. They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.
~ John Steinbeck
It is easy out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, 'I couldn't help it; the way was set.' But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man.
~ John Steinbeck
Thy life is not thine own to govern, Danny, for it controls other lives. See how thy friends suffer! Spring to life, Danny, that thy friends may live again!
~ John Steinbeck
If something was untrue and you didn't know it, that was error. But if you knew a true thing and changed it to a false thing, both you and it were loathsome.
~ John Steinbeck
The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.
~ John Steinbeck
a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether he is doing right or wrong.
~ John Steinbeck
Can you hear me, Father? Can you understand me?" The eyes did not change or move. "I did it," Cal cried. "I'm responsible for Aron's death and for your sickness. I took him to Kate's. I showed him his mother. That's why he went away. I don't want to do bad things—but I do them.
~ John Steinbeck