Quotes About Responsibility

Plant the seed whose vine or tree may hang you.

You can't measure what a boy did in innocence against what a man has to do for the rest of his life.

in March 2000, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright offered an apology for the U.S. role in the August events. She offered carefully worded regrets for the fact that the United States had "played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister" in 1953.

We are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.

From her character in the HBO miniseries: The art of politics is the art of applying the seat of the britches to the seat of the chair.

Well, now I know I can control my tongue, my temper, and my appetites, but that's it. I have no effect on weather, traffic, or luck. I can't make good things happen. I can't keep anybody safe. I can't influence the future and I can't fix up the past. What a relief.

Lament the human addiction to apologies, and how easily they are botched.

In the Buddhist view, the king served the people; in the Hindu view, the people served the king. However

Even if you are what your parents made you, if you stay that way, it's your own darn fault. We're not going to undo the past. Let's focus on making the necessary changes to improve your functioning.

Who is a Jew? A person whose integrity decays when unmoved by the knowledge of wrong done to other people.

Just as we are commanded to keep the Sabbath, we are commanded to labor.

sanctification is dependent upon human behavior and attitude.

Within our awe we only know that all we own we owe.

Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.

no man is free who is not a master of himself, that the more liberties we enjoy, the more discipline we need.46 Laissez-faire

To be a Jew is to renounce allegiance to false gods; to be sensitive to God's infinite stake in every finite situation; to bear witness to His presence in the hours of His concealment; to remember that the world is unredeemed. We are born to be an answer to His question.

The great dream of Judaism is not to raise priests, but a people of priests; to consecrate all men, not only some men.

It is in deeds that man becomes aware of what his life really is

Just as man is not alone in what he is, he is not alone in what he does. A mitsvah is an act which God and man have in common.

He is in need of the work of man for the fulfillment of His ends in the world.

The prophets make us partners of an existence meant for us. What was revealed to them was not for their sake but intended to inspire us. The word must not freeze into habit; it must remain an event. To disregard the importance of continuous understanding is an evasion of the living challenge of the prophets, an escape from the urgency of responsible experience of every man, a denial of the deeper meaning of "the oral Torah.

In moments of great crisis they all fail—priests, philosophers, scientists—the prophets alone prevail.

The prophetic word creates, shapes, changes, builds, and destroys (see Jeremiah 1:10).

Rabbi Tarfon said: "You are not called upon to complete the task, yet you are not free to evade it." Whatever we do is only a partial fulfillment; the rest is completed by God.