Responsibility Quotes

[A ruler is merely] the trustee of the rights of other men and he must always stand in dread of having in some way violated these rights.

He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

Do not blame the food because you have no appetite.

Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

I guess my whole life, as much as I might have wanted a child for the reason that everybody wants one, I always recognized that at no point until I was 50 was I old enough or up to the job. I thought, you know what, I not only really want a child, but at this point, finally in my life, I think I'm up to the job and I'm the type of person who could do the job well and I'm financially prepared to look after a child.

Slowly, and in spite of anything we Americans do or do not do, it looks a little as if you and some other good people are going to have to answer the old question of whether you want to keep your country unshackled by taking even more definite steps to do so

Every pot must sit on its own bottom.

Yajna is duty to be performed, or service to be rendered, all twenty-four hours of the day.

If you allow your mind to carp at all and sundry, it will turn against itself: the majority of our sorrows are self-inflicted.

We have to do the best we are capable of. This is our sacred human responsibility.

It is not what happens that determines the major part of your future. What happens, happens to us all. It is what you do about what happens that counts.

Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.

Every one of us can blame somebody for something that has happened in our lives. But don't waste your time. What we need most is a steady stream of love flowing among us. Love that quickly forgives, willingly overlooks, and refuses to take offense.

... the next war will be a war in which people not armies will suffer, and our boasted, hard-earned civilization will do us no good. Cannot the women rise to this great opportunity and work now, and not have the double horror, if another war comes, of losing their loved ones, and knowing that they lifted no finger when they might have worked hard?

Advisers advise, and ministers decide.

We could say the government spend like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors, because the sailors are spending their own money.

People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them. What other kind of candidates would such people elect?

Out of the performance of duties flow rights, and those that knew and performed their duties came naturally by their rights.

Make the decision that you'll no longer use excuses to keep you from what you know is in your best interest. Today, act on something you've always avoided and explained away with a convenient excuse. Make a phone call you've been putting off, write a letter to a friend, put on a pair of walking shoes and go for a stroll, clean out your closet—do something you've been justifying not doing with excuses.

Without freedom, creativity cannot flourish. The right to freedom is crucial to progress in any society; and the context is having a sense of global responsibility.

Leaders must learn to discipline their disappointments. It's not what happens to us, it is what we choose to do about what happens that makes the difference in how our lives turn out.

Our children are our only hope for the future, but we are their only hope for their present and their future.

All for each, and each for all, is a good motto; but only on condition that each works with might and main to so maintain himself as not to be a burden to others.

What changes your world is not wishing for change; what changes your world is changing!

We must remember our duty to Nature before it is too late. That duty is constant. It is never completed. It lives on as we breathe. It endures as we eat and sleep, work and rest, as we are born and as we pass away. The duty to Nature will remain long after our own endeavors have brought peace to the Middle East. It will weigh on our shoulders for as long as we wish to dwell on a living and thriving planet, and hand it on to our children and theirs.

What e'er thou art, act well thy part.

10% of life is made up of what happens to you. 90% of life is decided by how you react.

I make all my own decisions and I take full responsibility.

I made the decision to quit show business. Give up the skintight dresses and manicured smiles. The false concern over sentimental lyrics. I would never again work to make people smile inanely and would take on the responsibility of making them think.

Everyone has the right to run his own life- even if you're heading for a crash. What I'm against is blind flying.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us.

I no longer hold you responsible for how I feel.

The doer is merely a fiction added to the deed ? the deed is everything.

If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

It's your decisions, not your conditions, which shape your life.

Every punch that's thrown is mine. Every punch that's caught, I catch.

Omission to do what is necessary Seals a commission to a blank of danger; And danger, like an ague, subtly taints Even then when we sit idly in the sun.

As people alive today, we must consider future generations: a clean environment is a human right like any other. It is therefore part of our responsibility toward others to ensure that the world we pass on is as healthy, if not healthier, than we found it.

Most people would rather complain about some painful life pattern than dare to meet the level of their own consciousness responsible for its repeated appearance... and therein do the work needed to change it once and for all.

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

If I don't ask "Why me?" after my victories, I cannot ask "Why me?" after my setbacks and disasters.

If you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out. Nothing can come out of you that is not in you. If when you are pressured, anger comes out, it is not the fault of the person who pressured.

So long as freedom from hunger is only half achieved, so long as two thirds of the nations have food deficits, no citizen, no nation can afford to be satisfied. We have the ability, as members of the human race, we have the means, we have the capacity to eliminate hunger from the face of the earth in our lifetime. We only need the will.

All earlier pluralist societies destroyed themselves because no one took care of the common good. They abounded in communities but could not sustain community, let alone create it.

Thus, and not otherwise, the world was made. Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices.

If you are in the habit of creating suffering for yourself, then you are probably creating suffering for others too

The ground of being is the ground of our being, and when we simply turn outward, we see all of these little problems here and there. But, if we look inward, we see that we are the source of them all.

Why should I expect to be exempt from censure; the unfailing lot of an elevated station? My Heart tells me it has been my unremitted aim to do the best circumstances would permit; yet, I may have been very often mistaken in my judgment of the means.

To be a manager requires more than a title, a big office, and other outward symbols of rank. It requires competence and performance of a high order.

O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

Failure is an opportunity. If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame. Therefore the Master fulfills her own obligations and corrects her own mistakes. She does what she needs to do and demands nothing of others.

Whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance.

Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was. Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination.

Was it that you wanted to pull my leg by transporting me to the frozen Himalayan heights of 'mahatmaship' and claiming for yourself absolution from having to follow my precepts?

Peace is hard work and we must not allow people to forget it.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.