Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet
Love, Not Duty http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/lovenotduty.html, st. 1 (1841).
Source: The Bhagavadgītā (1973), p. 209. (47.)
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet
Love, Not Duty http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/lovenotduty.html, st. 1 (1841).
James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman
Source: The Principles of Organization, 1947, p. 29-30
Theodore Roosevelt The Strenuous Life
1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life
Context: We must see that there is civic honesty, civic cleanliness, civic good sense in our home administration of city, State, and nation. We must strive for honesty in office, for honesty toward the creditors of the nation and of the individual; for the widest freedom of individual initiative where possible, and for the wisest control of individual initiative where it is hostile to the welfare of the many. But because we set our own household in order we are not thereby excused from playing our part in the great affairs of the world. A man's first duty is to his own home, but he is not thereby excused from doing his duty to the State; for if he fails in this second duty it is under the penalty of ceasing to be a freeman. In the same way, while a nation's first duty is within its own borders, it is not thereby absolved from facing its duties in the world as a whole; and if it refuses to do so, it merely forfeits its right to struggle for a place among the peoples that shape the destiny of mankind.
Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist
Section II, p. 6
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter I. The Science of Justice.
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America
1963, Address at the Free University of Berlin
“England expects every Man will do his Duty.”
Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral
Famous signal to the British fleet before the battle of Trafalgar, as quoted in Life of Nelson, Ch. 9; Initially dictated as: "England confides that every man shall do his duty." The signaller pointed out that "expects" was in the signals alphabet, but "confides" was not and so had to be spelt out, taking longer, and Nelson agreed to the change.
Variant:
England expects every officer and man to do his duty this day.
As reported in The London Times (26 December 1805)
The Battle of Trafalgar (1805)
“When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.”
George Bernard Shaw Caesar and Cleopatra
Act III http://books.google.com/books?id=3wAOAQAAMAAJ <br class="br">Source: 1890s, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)
William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher
The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Weight Of Authority
Context: It is hardly in human nature that a man should quite accurately gauge the limits of his own insight; but it is the duty of those who profit by his work to consider carefully where he may have been carried beyond it. If we must needs embalm his possible errors along with his solid achievements, and use his authority as an excuse for believing what he cannot have known, we make of his goodness an occasion to sin.
Ali Zayn al-Abidin (659–713) Great-grandson of the Prophet Muhammad
Muhammad al-Hur al-Aamili, Wasā'il al-Shī‘ah, vol.11, p. 206.
Religious wisdom