“You can't have the conversation about rights without the conversation about responsibility, because your rights are my responsibility. That's what they are technically. So, you just can't have only half of that discussion. And we're only having half of that discussion. Then the questions is, 'well what are you leaving out if you're only having that half of the discussion.' And the answer is, 'well, you're leaving out responsibility.' And then the questions is, 'Well, what are you leaving out if you're leaving out responsibility.' And the answer might be: 'Well maybe you're leaving out the meaning of life.' Here you are, suffering away. What makes it worthwhile? Rights? It's almost impossible to describe how bad an idea that is. Responsibility. That's what gives life meaning. Lift a load. Then you can tolerate yourself. Look at yourself. You're useless. Easily hurt. Easily killed. Why should you have any self-respect? Pick something up and carry it. Make it heavy enough so that you can think, yah, well, useless as I am, at least I can move that from there to there. For men, there's nothing but responsibility. Women have their sets of responsibilities. They're not the same. Women have to take primary responsibility for having infants at least, then also for caring for them. They're structured differently than men for biological necessity. Women know what they have to do. Men have to figure out what they have to do. And if they have nothing worth living for, then they stay Peter Pan. And why the hell not? The alternative to valued responsibility is low class pleasure. Why lift a load if there's nothing in it for you? And that's what we're doing to men and boys that's a very bad idea. Basically we give them the message, 'you're pathological and oppressive.' They often respond, 'fine then, why the hell should I play? If I get no credit for bearing responsibility, then you can be sure I won't bear any.”

— Jordan Peterson

Then your life is useless and meaningless, and you're full of self contempt and nihilism, and that's not good. And so that's what I think is going on at a deeper level with regard to men needing this direction. A man has to decide that he's going to do something. He has to decide that."
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Jordan Peterson 202

Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and profes… 1962

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“In every relationship there are two halves of that relationship. One half is you, and the other half is your son, your daughter, your father, your mother, your friend, your partner. Of those halves, you are only responsible for your half; you are not responsible for the other half.”

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“Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that's half the battle right there.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

The Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program Oral History Interview http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/sj1.html, Advice for Future Entrepreneurs (20 April 1995)
1990s
Context: I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don't blame them. Its really tough and it consumes your life. If you've got a family and you're in the early days of a company, I can't imagine how one could do it. I'm sure its been done but its rough. Its pretty much an eighteen hour day job, seven days a week for awhile. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that's half the battle right there.

“You can either look at your career as the things you're going to leave behind, and they have to be executed flawlessly and you have to know exactly what it is that you're doing. Or you can be realistic about the fact that you're going to learn as you practice what you do.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

About the film, The Social Network
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“[Q: do you believe that a nation should suffer a detrimental cost in order to compensate for wrongs committed by the governors of that nations, or by segments of that nation in the past? ] Suppose you're living under a dictatorship, and the dictators carry out some horrendous acts. So you're living in Stalinist Russia, let's say, and Stalin carries out horrible crimes. Are the people of Russia responsible for those crimes? Well, to only a very limited extent, because living under a brutal, harsh, terrorist regime, there isn't very much they can do about it. There's something they can do, and to the extent that you can do something, you're responsible for what happens. Suppose you're living in a free, democratic society, with lots of privilege, enormous, incomparable freedoms, and the government carries out violent, brutal acts. Are you responsible for it? Yeah, a lot more responsible, because there's a lot that you can do about it. If you share responsibility in criminal acts, you are liable for the consequences.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Brian Lamb on C-SPAN, June 1, 2003 https://www.c-span.org/video/?176809-1/depth-noam-chomsky
Quotes 2000s, 2003

“Majority rule will only work if you're considering individual rights. You can't have five wolves and one sheep vote on what they want to have for supper”

Larry Flynt (1942) American publisher

[Carol LLoyd, Flynt's revenge http://www.salon.com/news/1999/02/cov_23newsa.html, Salon, 1999-02-23]

“What's so good about goodbye?
All it does is make you cry.
Well, if leaving causes grieving,
And depart can break you heart,

Tell me (what's so good about it)
I could have done without it.
What's so good about goodbye?”

Smokey Robinson (1940) American R&B singer-songwriter and record producer

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Song lyrics, With The Miracles

“You can't discuss the ocean with a well frog - he's limited by the space he lives in. You can't discuss ice with a summer insect - he's bound to a single season.”

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Source: The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

“I leave you gentleman now. You will now write it; you will interpret it; that's your right. But as I leave you I want you to know…. just think how much you're going to be missing. You don't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference, and I hope that what I have said today will at least make television, radio, the press recognize that they have a right and a responsibility, if they're against a candidate give him the shaft, but also recognize if they give him the shaft, put one lonely reporter on the campaign who'll report what the candidate says now and then. Thank you, gentlemen, and good day.”

Richard Nixon book The Memoirs of Richard Nixon

Press conference after losing the election for Governor of California (November 7, 1962) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RMSb-tS_OM; most reports used an official "Transcript of Nixon's News Conference on His Defeat by Brown in Race for Governor of California", as published in "The New York Times" (November 8, 1962), p. 18, also used in RN : The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978) and most published accounts which ended "You don't have Nixon to kick around any more because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you."
1960s

“I couldn't tell anyone about it. I didn't want anyone to know. It's only now that I've survived, I'm able to speak about it. As far as I know I'm clear and completely well - but it never leaves you completely. It's made me learn a lot about myself. When you're on your own, you've just got to get on with it, grit your teeth and think, 'Right, I'm going to beat this.' I did have my dear friend and, without him, I don't know what I would have done.”

Elaine Paige (1948) English singer and actress

Regarding Paige's battle with cancer; as quoted in "Elaine's close curtain call" by Rebecca Hardy in The Daily Mail (8 May 2004)

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