Quotes about obligation
page 11

“Where we can prevent predation without occasioning as much or more suffering than we would prevent, we are obligated to do so by the principle that we are obligated to alleviate avoidable animal suffering. Where we cannot prevent or cannot do so without occasioning as much or more suffering than we would prevent, that principle does not obligate us to attempt to prevent predation.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Steve Sapontzis, " Predation https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=ethicsandanimals", Ethics and Animals, Vol. 5, Iss. 2, Art. 4 (1984), p. 36

Suffering, Animals

“When our interests or the interests of those we care for will be hurt, we do not recognize a moral obligation to "let nature take its course," but when we do not want to be bothered with an obligation, "that's just the way the world works" provides a handy excuse.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Steve Sapontzis, " Predation https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=ethicsandanimals", Ethics and Animals, Vol. 5, Iss. 2, Art. 4 (1984), p. 29

World, Way, Nature, Hurt

“...where we were obliged to part company with our friends was here—that we held and still hold that war was neither intended nor desired by the Government and the people of Great Britain, but that it was forced upon us without adequate reason, entirely against our will.”

H. H. Asquith (1852–1928) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the Liverpool Street Station Hotel, London (20 June 1901) on the Boer War, quoted in Speeches by The Earl of Oxford and Asquith, K.G. (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1927), p. 40
Opposition MP

War, People, Parting

“I am a citizen of Great Britain, therefore I have a legal and moral obligation to live like other Britons and raise my children as British citizens, who are free to practise any religion they like.”

Anwar Shaikh (1928–2006) British Pakistani writer

Quoted from Elst, Koenraad. The Problem with Secularism (2007)

Children, Religion

“[I]f it is the moral right we are to look at, I say, that on every principle of moral obligation, I hold that the Jew has a right to political power.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Commons (5 April 1830) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1830/apr/05/the-jews#column_1313 in favour of Robert Grant's Jewish Disabilities Bill <br class="br">1830s

“You aspired to be God’s advocate, you got the job, you performed admirably. But God’s advocate was ipso facto my advocate. Theodicy’s a sucker’s game, Professor. When Yahweh was operational, humanity’s obligation wasn’t to worship Him, for chrissakes. It was to celebrate His creativity and stand forevermore opposed to His malice. And anybody such as yourself, anybody who sought to shoehorn an omnibenevolent God into the same universe as Auschwitz...that person, Dr. Gregory Francis Lovett—that person did the Devil’s work for him.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 391; spoken by the Devil)

God, Game, Universe, Personality

“Asia gave us dowry deaths and the caste system. Africa elevated famine to an art form. North America cultivated chattel slavery for far longer than I would have dared hope; South America has done things with political oppression that I am obliged to call brilliant; Australia showed the world that the only good aborigine is a dead aborigine; and Antarctica has fabulous weather. Of all the continents that constitute Earth’s terrain, however, Europe remains dearest to my heart and closest to my soul.
I allude here not to the sweatshops, the world wars, or totalitarian socialism (though none of these innovations has escaped my notice) but to the fact that the European imagination endowed me with a degree of glamour—you might even say charm—that in pre-coma times enabled me to function with extraordinary effectiveness. The concept of an Evil One is intrinsic to Islam, of course; the ancient Hebrews had their “adversary,” their satan; the Egyptians feared a dark deity called Set; Zoroastrians believed in Ahriman, essence of destruction (forever warring with Ohrmazd, source of all things bright and beautiful). But only in Christian Europe did the Prince of Hell acquire a personality as vivid and endearing as any you will meet in a Dickens novel.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 253; spoken by the Devil)

Death, War, World, Fear

“Your son may simultaneously feel that the male role is pressuring him to feel obligated to earn money someone else spends while he dies sooner.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 52

Money, Feeling

“Dharma means duty, or obligation, and it is your definite and specific obligation to develop the intuition. The means or methods whereby this development is to be brought about, can be by the study of symbols.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), Certain Preliminary Clarifications

Study

“When I announced in April of 1961 that this kind of comprehensive tax reform would follow the bill enacted this year, I had hoped to present it in an atmosphere of a balanced budget. But it has been necessary to augment sharply our nuclear and conventional forces, to step up our efforts in space, to meet the increased cost of servicing the national debt and meeting our obligations, established by law, to veterans. These expenditure increases, let me stress, constitute practically all of the increases which have occurred under this administration, the remainder having gone to fight the recession we found in industry--mostly through the supplemental employment bill-and in agriculture. We shall, therefore, neither postpone our tax cut plans nor cut into essential national security programs. This administration is determined to protect America's security and survival and we are also determined to step up its economic growth. I think we must do both.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Law, Hope, Thinking, Effort

“Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred; for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together, and will be always attained by one who abstains from interfering with the property of his citizens and subjects or with their women. And when he is obliged to take the life of any one, to do so when there is a proper justification and manifest reason for it; but above all he must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Then also pretexts for seizing property are never wanting, and one who begins to live by rapine will always find some reason for taking the goods of others, whereas causes for taking life are rarer and more quickly destroyed.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 17; translated by Luigi Ricci

Love, Life, Death, Women

“Our nation is founded on the principle that we do not have kings. We have presidents. And the Constitution is our compass. When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something. To do something. Our children and their children will ask us, ‘What did you do? What did you say?'”

John Lewis (civil rights leader) (1940) American politician and civil rights leader

For some, he concluded, this vote may be hard. But we have a mission and a mandate to be on the right side of history. <br class="br">Source: Quoted in Impeachment is Over, But Don’t Despair by Diallo Brooks, CounterPunch https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/07/impeachment-is-over-but-dont-despair/, (7 Feb 2020)

Children

“No one knows better than I with forty years' political experience that policy--particularly a revolutionary policy--has its tactical requirements. I recognised the Soviets in 1924. In 1934, I signed with them a treaty of commerce and friendship. I, therefore, understood that, especially as Ribbentrop's forecast about the non-intervention of Britain and France has not come off, you are obliged to avoid the second front [with Russia]. You have had to pay for this in that Russia has, without striking a blow, been the great profiteer of the war in Poland and the Baltic. But I, who was born a revolutionary and have not modified my revolutionary mentality, tell you that you cannot permanently sacrifice the principles of your revolution to the tactical requirements of a given moment... I have also the definite duty to add that a further step in the relations with Moscow would have catastrophic repercussions in Italy, where the unanimity of anti-Bolshevik feeling is absolute, granite-hard, and unbreakable. Permit me to think that this will not happen. The solution of your Lebensraum is in Russia, and nowhere else... The day when we shall have demolished Bolshevism we shall have kept faith with both our revolutions. Then it will be the turn of the great democracies, who will not be able to survive the cancer which gnaws them...”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1930s
Source: Letter to Hitler, quoted in Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm

Friendship, War, Faith, Feeling

“I yield to no man in sympathy for the gallant men under my command; but I am obliged to sweat them tonight, so that I may save their blood tomorrow. The line of hills southwest of Winchester must not be occupied by the enemy's artillery. My own must be there and in position by daylight. … You shall however have two hours rest.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

To Col. Sam Fulkerson, who reported on the weariness of their troops and suggested that they should be given an hour or so to rest from a forced march in the night. (24 May 1862); as quoted in Mighty Stonewall (1957) by Frank E. Vandiver, p. 250
Q him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow…]]

Men

“To feel obligated to finish all of your food is to be living with a mindset of scarcity. It is the little things from our childhood that have the longest impact.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

Food, Feeling, Childhood

“If pastors and theologians are asked to reflect and follow the direction indicated by the Holy Father, they are certainly not obliged to think that the proposed approach, with the preambles supporting it, are exempt from danger, nor that the advice given is appropriate. They are even fully justified in drawing the attention of the Holy See of the bishops to the serious ambiguities of the underlying doctrine and on the dangers of the proposed pastoral care.”

Louis-Marie de Blignières (1949) French traditionalist Catholic priest

Extensive Article on the problems of Amoris Laetitia -- English translation of the French original https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2016/09/extensive-article-on-problems-of-amoris.html

Support, Thinking, Drawing

“If a woman has chosen to gift a fetus with life, it does not necessarily follow that she is obligated to continue to support it with her body, especially if that support threatens the woman’s life. A woman’s body is her property, to do with as she wishes.”

Mary Ruwart (1949) American scientist and libertarian activist

Source: Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked, (2012), p. 141

Life, Support

“Sometimes in our activist and production-oriented American society and culture we succumb to pragmatism looking at the Christian life and our sharing in the apostolic mission of the Church as a matter being able to “do” things for Christ, the Church or others. In fact, the Christian life is a gift and a call to truth and love given to us by God. It is first a matter of "being," of simply existing as a person created by God and redeemed by him in Christ. We live out this truth and love in specific ways according to our age, talents, and unique vocation. At no point are the sacraments about what we have done or promise to do for God. They are God's free gift of grace to us. At the same time, these gifts of love entail an obligation to bear witness to God's love in word and deed by our collaboration in freedom with the grace given.”

Álvaro Corrada del Río (1942) Puerto Rican Catholic bishop

Pastoral Reflection on the Sacrament of Confirmation http://www.americancatholicpress.org/Bishop_Corrada_Pastoral_Reflecton%20_on_Confirmation.html (October 7, 2005)

Love, Life, God, Truth

“We are certainly ready to fulfill our obligations as ally but we clearly must refuse to be drawn lightly into a world conflagration by Vienna without consideration of our proposals.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Letter to Schoen, Pourtales, and Tschirschky (29 July 1914), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 68

World

“Each person is morally obliged to regard the good of anyone else as much as his own good, except when he judges it to be less, when impartially viewed, or less certainly knowable or attainable by him.”

Henry Sidgwick book The Methods of Ethics

Source: The Methods of Ethics (1874), Book 3, chapter 13, section 3 (7th ed., 1907)

Personality

“You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939) American children's rights activist

“Freedom of conscience and freedom of choice are not the same; where conscience dictates, choice decides. Where freedom of conscience is at stake, the relevant right is to perform a duty, not to make a choice. This was the issue for Madison and Jefferson. Religious liberty addressed the problem of encumbered selves, claimed by duties they cannot renounce, even in the face of civil obligations that may conflict.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

Chap. 3. Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

Problem, Freedom

“Luck egalitarianism defends inequalities that arise from effort and choice. This highlights a point of convergence with free-market liberalism. Both emphasize personal responsibility and make the community’s obligation to help the needy conditional on showing that their neediness is no fault of their own.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

Chap. 5. Success Ethics
The Tyranny of Merits (2020)

Communication, Effort, Help, Personality

“One of the effects, among others, of modern science has been that of mortally wounding religion by posing in concrete terms problems which esoterism alone can resolve and which remain unresolved because esoterism is not heeded and is heeded less now than ever. Faced by these new problems, religion is disarmed, and it borrows clumsily and gropingly the arguments of the enemy, and this obliges it to falsify its own perspective imperceptibly and disavow itself more and more; its doctrine is certainly not affected, but false opinions borrowed from its repudiators corrode it insidiously "from within", as witnessed by modernist exegesis, the demagogic leveling of the liturgy, Teilhardian Darwinism or the "sacred art" of surrealist and "abstract" persuasion.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2006, Light on the Ancient Worlds, World Wisdom, 27, 978-0-941532-72-3]
Miscellaneous, Religion

Religion, Art, Problem, Science

“Humanly, no one escapes the obligation to "believe in order to be able to understand"”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

credo ut intelligam
[2013, From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom, 33, 978-1-936597-32-1]
Spiritual life, Faith

Understanding

“A car would not be allowed to drive without crash tests - so there should be an obligation to penetration testing for IT systems.”

Peter Wilfahrt (1986) German author and entrepreneur

9. Cyber-Security-Day, Alliance for Cyber-Security, 06-16-2015.] <br class="br">Source: 9. Cyber-Security-Day https://www.allianz-fuer-cybersicherheit.de/Webs/ACS/DE/Netzwerk-Formate/Veranstaltungen-und-Austausch/Cyber-Sicherheits-Tage/Archiv-der-Termine/Agenda/cst_programm9_160615.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=1 German Alliance for Cyber-Security. Retrieved on 08-16-2021.

Cars

“We have an obligation to those who died ... to remember.”

Oliver Stone (1946) American film director, screenwriter, and producer

Oliver Stone: Satire and Controversy - Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s2gBKApxyk (Oliver Stone reminiscing about Charlie Sheen's comments on Platoon's relevance as message vs entertainment)

“The highest obligation of a soldier is not to die in war but to live through it.”

Suraj Sani (1996) Nigerian writer, Spoken word artist

P. 127. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10937449-the-highest-obligation-of-a-soldier-is-not-to-die

War

“A good place to start is with yourself. See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance, or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation—to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (2005)

Feeling, Universe, Time

“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”

Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Law, History

“We mustn’t let our hands be bound by commitments to third parties who do not meet their own obligations.”

Bronisław Komorowski (1952) Polish politician, president of Poland

"Polish president warns in Berlin of rebirth of 1930s nationalism" in Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-poland-president/polish-president-warns-in-berlin-of-rebirth-of-1930s-nationalism-idUSKBN0H51C420140910 (10 September 2014)

“The beautiful is not that which we love and because we love it, but that which by its objective value obliges us to love it.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2006, Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, World Wisdom, 96, 978-1-933316-28-4]
God, Beauty

Love, Beauty

“In Islam, it is an obligation to prepare yourself for defense and to train. This is no different than any nation having its young people train to defend the nation.”

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith (1965) One of Al-Qaeda's official spokesmen

Source: Kronos US v Sulaiman Abu Ghayth Statement https://kronosadvisory.com/Kronos_US_v_Sulaiman_Abu_Ghayth_Statement.1.pdf (1st March 2013)

People, Training

“If anyone wants change, they have the obligation to do something to attain that change.”

Beatrice Mtetwa (1957) Zimbabwean human rights lawyer

Source: Courage of Zimbabwe human rights lawyer captured in film https://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/jun/18/zimbabwe-lawyer-film-beatrice-mtetwa <br class="br">Context: The only weapon I developed as a form of protest was to surreptitiously take out the air from the bicycle tyres every morning, which almost always delayed the cyclists. From then on, I questioned virtually everything I did not agree with.

Change

“China has always followed the path of peaceful development, pursued a mutually beneficial and win-win opening strategy, strengthened friendly exchanges with other countries, and actively fulfilled its international responsibilities and obligations.”

Liu Yandong (1945) Chinese politician

Source: "刘延东出席第五届世界和平论坛开幕式并致辞" https://www.mfa.gov.cn/ce/celk//chn/zgxw/t1382124.htm (16 July 2017)

Peace, Country

“As a nation, we have the moral obligation to protect our children from sexual abuse. We need to love, nurture and protect these children ensuring that this protection is both emotional and physical.”

Neo Masisi (1962) first lady of Botswana

Source: Neo Masisi https://www.unicef.org/botswana/media/191/file/E-Seng-Mo-Ngwaneng-Report-2019.pdf Campaign Brief, Botswana Country Office: Interim Update (17 January 2019) Retrieved 5 November 2021.

Love, Children

“Patriotism, or our love for our country, obliges us to mutual good will, solidarity, honesty and concern in building our common home.”

Wojciech Polak (1964) Polish priest

Source: Polish independence centenary commemorated worldwide https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/polish-independence-centenary-commemorated-worldwide-3228 (11 November 2018)

Love, Home, Country

“I am wholly decided and resolved to go in person to help my brother because his need is so great and the perils so extreme that it does not merely threaten him but places all Christendom at risk. I cannot and must not abandon him because of the office I hold and because of the obligations of fraternal friendship and also because he is such a good brother to me.”

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558) Holy Roman Emperor

Friendship, Help, Personality

“In view of Our special love for and inclination to the German Nation and the Holy Roman Empire…as Roman emperor and supreme steward of Christendom, it pertains to Our Imperial office to confess Our obligation to guard, protect, and maintain the holy Christian faith as it has been preserved until now.”

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558) Holy Roman Emperor

Diet of Augsburg (1530)
Source: Ruth Kastner, ed., Quellen zur Reformation 1517-1555. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994, pp. 501-20.

Love, Faith

“As president, I am obliged to protect the safety and well-being of our citizens, to ensure the unity of Kazakhstan.”

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (1953) Kazakh politician

Source: Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (2021) cited in: " Kassym-Jomart Tokayev: “We Will Come Out of This Crisis Even Stronger” https://astanatimes.com/2022/01/kassym-jomart-tokayev-we-will-come-out-of-this-crisis-even-stronger/" in The Astana Times, 5 January 2021.

“I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Source: A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling, Berkeley Hills Books (2000) p. 97

Children, World, Family, Way

“In fantasy, more than in other forms of literature, the obligation is to teach something universally true about the human condition.”

Larry Niven book N-Space

Introduction to All the Myriad Ways (p. 71)
Short fiction, N-Space (1990)

Literature, Universe

“From the Christian point of view, we have an obligation to inform our people that God heals. But at the same time, He heals us through our understanding that we can protect ourselves from such illnesses.”

Philip Arnold Subira Anyolo (1956) Kenyan Roman Catholic archbishop

Bishops in Africa Call for Appropriate Measures as Cases of COVID-19 are Confirmed https://www.aciafrica.org/news/925/bishops-in-africa-call-for-appropriate-measures-as-cases-of-covid-19-are-confirmed (5 March 2020)

God, People, Understanding, Time

“It is our moral and constitutional obligation that the life of every human being, born and unborn, is respected and protected under the law.”

Paul Gosar (1958) American politician and dentist

Source: REP. PAUL GOSAR ISSUES STATEMENT ON ROE V. WADE ANNIVERSARY https://gosar.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2241 (Washington, DC, January 22, 2013)

Life, Law

“We must come to see that God is not so much the cause of moral obligation or the sanction of duty as the very substance of Good. Then what we call the moral proof brings us in one leap to the true God, revealing himself as God of Charity.”

Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) Jesuit theologian and cardinal

Source: Paradoxes of Faith (1987), Ch. II. "Christianity", p. 24

God