Responsibility Quotes

The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.

~ Harry Browne

There is no liberty, save wisdom and self-control. Liberty is within--not without. It is each man's own affair.

~ H.g. Wells

Living off others is a form of bondage—for if you take from a person his responsibility to care for himself, you also take from him the opportunity to be free.

~ Cameron C. Taylor

Liberty is freedom constrained only by our responsibility to respect the equal rights of others.

~ Dave Champion

We need to consciously remember that we have an unprecedented responsibility to protect the planet, because without it we have nowhere else to live.

~ Gugu Mona

We need to consciously remember that we have an unprecedented responsibility to protect our planet, because without it we have nowhere else to live.

~ Gugu Mona

We need to consciously remember that we have more responsibility to protect our planet, because without it we have nowhere else to live.

~ Gugu Mona

Living the life you want is your ultimate responsibility

~ Andrea T. Goeglein

Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.

~ Crazy Horse

Our society needs criminals like Wolfgang Priklopil in order to give a face to the evil that lives within and to split it off from ... It needs the images of cellar dungeons so as not to have to see the many homes in which violence rears its conformist, bourgeois head. Society uses the victims of sensational cases such as mine in order to divest itself of the responsibility for the many nameless victims of daily crimes, victims nobody helps – even when they ask for help.

~ Natascha Kampusch

Slowly, I'm beginning to realise that what happened to me wasn't my fault, that I was taken advantage of by a group of vile, twisted men.

~ Girl A

As a leader it is your job to protect the missional integrity of the Jesus gathering to which you have been called. It is your responsibility to see to it that the church under your care continues as a gathering of people in process; a place where the curious,the unconvinced, the sceptical, the used-to-believe and the broken, as well as the committed, informed and sold-out come together around Peter's declaration that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

~ Andy Stanley

The speed of modern life is an oppressive thing, and the corporate world is quick to punish those with an honest heart. Qualities such as ‘nice, honest, kind, happy, relaxed, sincere, innocent’ are frowned upon as weaknesses. Yet these values are the essence of a good person. Unfortunately, if you don’t keep the balance, they can be lost like sand through your fingers.

~ Fennel Hudson

We owe our children – the most vulnerable citizens in any society – a life free from violence and fear.

~ Nelson Mandela

...the phone rang.When the phone rang so early in the morning, it oftentimes meant somebody was dead. An elderly person had passed in the night. A Friday night traffic fatality. The families of deceased would set about the task of notifying family and friends, and somewhere among the sad litany of phone calls, they dialed our number.

~ Ravi Howard

The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find out how these laws operate. It is the scientist’s job to find the ways in which these laws can serve the human will. However, it is not the scientist’s job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, whether it should be used, or how it should be used. This responsibility rests with the American people and with their chosen representatives.

~ Edward Teller

Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God- the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people?

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

These things sensibly affected Theseus, who, thinking it but just not to disregard, but rather partake of, the sufferings of his fellow citizens, offered himself for one without any lot. All else were struck with admiration for the nobleness and with love for the goodness of the act.

~ Plutarch

When children are taught to be good and keep everyone happy, it teaches them that they have the impossible burden of being responsible for other people's happiness.

~ Bryant Mcgill

No one can make you feel anything, you are completely responsible for how you feel.

~ Bryant Mcgill

The most important point to remember in developing self-confidence is to take responsibility for who we are. This empowers us. We can change anything, do anything, and be anything when we assume full responsibility for ourselves.

~ Rachael Bermingham

Every social ethic is doomed to failure if it is blind to personal responsibility (The Ten Commandments, 10).

~ J. Douma

By exiling human judgment in the last few decades, modern law changed role from useful tool to brainless tyrant. This legal regime will never be up to the job, any more than the Soviet system of central planning was, because ti can't think. The comedy of law's sterile logic--large POISON signs warning against common sand, spending twenty-two years on pesticide review and deciding next to nothing, allowing fifty-year-old white men to sue for discrimination--is all too reminiscent of the old jokes we used to hear about life in the Eastern bloc. Judgement is to law as water is to crops. It should not be surprising that law has become brittle, and society along with it.

~ Philip K. Howard

As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State What does it matter to me? the State may be given up for lost.

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary citizen's ignorance and lack of judgement in matters of domestic and foreign policy which are if anything more shocking in the case of educated people and of people who are successfully active in non-political walks of life than it is with uneducated people in humble stations.

~ Joseph Alois Schumpeter

...our children must learn...to face full responsibility for their actions, to make their own choices and cope with the results...the whole democratic system...depends upon it. For our system is founded on self-government, which is untenable if the individuals who make up the system are unable to govern themselves.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

~ Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.

~ Noam Chomsky

You’ve got a lot of responsibility now,” Jace said to Julian. “You’ll have to make sure Emma winds up with a guy who deserves her.” Julian was strangely white-faced. Maybe he was feeling the effects of the ceremony, Emma thought. It had been strong magic; she still felt it sizzling through her blood like champagne bubbles. But Jules looked as if he’d been slapped.“What about me?” Emma said, quickly. “Don’t I have to make sure Jules winds up with someone who deserves him?”“Absolutely. I did it for Alec, Alec did it for me — well, actually, he hated Clary at first, but he came around.” “I BET you didn’t like Magnus much, either,” said Julian, still with the same odd, stiff look on his face.“Maybe not,” said Jace, “but I never would have said so.”“Because it would have hurt Alec’s feelings?” Emma asked.“No,” said Jace, “because Magnus would have turned me into a hat rack.

~ Cassandra Clare

There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

~ Elizabeth Warren

It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one's acts.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

There are no innocent bystanders ... what are they doing there in the first place?

~ William S. Burroughs

Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.

~ Terry Pratchett

Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

I don't have a 'side'—I'm responsible for what I say and nothing else.

~ Glenn Greenwald

I don’t think Will Herondale and a sense of responsibility are even on speaking terms

~ Cassandra Clare

The very good people did not convince me, I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew, you understood, you felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands - and you hated the things it asked of one, you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never known before - and it's better than anything I've known.

~ Edith Wharton

Once she was certain, she didn't waiver. I had to make her stop for water or a bite to eat. She obeyed, but she was restless. As clear as if she spoke to me, she was saying, Very well, I know you want to keep my strength up, but scent fades, you know!And I'd say, I know, girl, but you're what I have and I'm going to take care of you.

~ Tamora Pierce

No one is innocent in the tide of history. Everyone has kings and slaves in his past. Everyone has saints and sinners. We are not to blame for the actions of our ancestors. We can only try to be the best we can, no matter what our heritage, to strive for a better future for all.

~ Diana Peterfreund

I guess what I'm sayin' is, if you want to give Jules a job, be very careful.” “Why be careful?” Marnes asked.Marck gazed up at the confusion of pipes and wires overhead.“'Cause she'll damn well do it. Even if you don't really expect her to.

~ Hugh Howey