Quotes about responsibility
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“Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response.”

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917–2007) American historian, social critic, and public intellectual

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1993 Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings. As quoted in: Olivia Waxman (August 2, 2018): Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wishes This Case Had Legalized Abortion Instead of Roe v. Wade. In: Time Magazine. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220527151841/https://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ from [hhttps://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ the original] on May 27, 2022. As quoted in: Louise Melling (Deputy Legal Director and Director of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty, ACLU) (September 23, 2020): For Justice Ginsburg, Abortion Was About Equality. In: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220527144342/https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/for-justice-ginsburg-abortion-was-about-equality from the original https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/for-justice-ginsburg-abortion-was-about-equality on May 27, 2022. 1990s

Life, Decision

“No one can successfully shun natural responsibilities and find peace in the lifetime.”

Idegu Ojonugwa Shadrach (1995)

Peace, Nature

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman

#25
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)
Source: Man and Superman

Men

“Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

“Reactivity is enslavement. Responsibility is freedom.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Freedom

“Women's deference is rooted not only in their social subordination but also in the substance of their moral concern. Sensitivity to the needs of others and the assumption of responsibility for taking care lead women to attend to voices other than their own and to include in their judgement other points of view.”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

Women

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Quoted in Vernon K. McLellan (2000) Wise Words and Quotes
Misattributed

“Remember me? I'm back to my old self again. No responsibilities, no attachments, no encumbrances. I don't want to own anything, love anyone, or get too attached to people, places or things. It's a rule that seems to work well for me.”

Danielle Steel Second Chance

Source: Second Chance

Love, People

“The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Life, Wise, Attitude

“Mistakes are a fact of life: It is the response to the error that counts.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

Life, Error, Life

“Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

“As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

Behavior, Thinking, Personality

“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Sect. 38
Source: Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Life, Men, Freedom, Indifference

“You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Understanding, Universe

“I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond, that character—not wealth or power or position—is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

Love, Life, God, Hate

“The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives.”

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. 178

Truth, Education

“Very few people do this any more. It's too risky. First of all, it's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

People, Hell

“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Law

“Neither claimed any responsibility for Milton Keynes, but both reported it as a success.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Success

“Few in this world are ever simply nasty; those who hurt us are themselves in pain. The appropriate response is hence never cynicism nor aggression but, at the rare moments one can manage it, always love.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Course of Love

Love, Pain, World, Hurt

“Some things are so frightful that a bit of madness is the only sane response. You know that, don’t you?”

Sarah Waters book The Paying Guests

Source: The Paying Guests

Madness

“You only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.”

Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director

Thinking

“It is a better world. A place where we ate responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and becauseit is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

World

“You might be locked in a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.”

Barack Obama book Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Source: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

World

“Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Spring, Attitude

“Eventually we all have to accept full and total responsibility for our actions, everything we have done, and have not done.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Source: Requiem for a Dream

“Having kids — the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings — is the biggest job anyone can embark on”

Maria Shriver (1955) journalist and author from the United States

Mother's Day, For Mother

“intuition is always right in at least two important ways;
It is always in response to something.
it always has your best interest at heart”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Way, Heart

“He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could use terms like "core values" at him with impunity.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

People

“In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 97.
Context: In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel. It hurt when I lost each of the various men I fell in love with. Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.

Love, Feeling

“For me, living means I can be responsive to the other person. It means I can show my emotions and my feelings. Talk to them. Feel with them …”

Morrie Schwartz (1916–1995) American sociologist

Feeling, Personality

“In dreams begins responsibility.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Variant: In Dreams begins Responsibility.
Source: Epigraph to the book Responsibilities (1914); this was later adapted as the title of the story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" (1937) by Delmore Schwartz.

Dreams

“Being responsible is taking ownership of your life. It means you have taken the first radical step to becoming a complete human being—fully conscious and fully human. In taking responsibility and beginning the journey toward conscious living, you are putting an end to the age-old patterns of assigning blame outward or heavenward. You have begun the greatest adventure life has to offer: the voyage inward.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Life, Age

“I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

Behavior

“Responsibility is the ability to respond.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

“Every man's happiness is his own responsibility.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Happiness

“I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

People, Daughters

“Even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

“Punishment is now unfashionable… because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Men

“The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Interview for KFRC RKO Radio (8 December 1980)

“Pay attention to what's happening around you. Read the book before you see the movie. Remember, though you, alone, are responsible for your own happiness, its still okay to feel responsible for someone else's. Liveto learn.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

Source: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned

Happiness, Books, Feeling, Learning

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Freedom, Personality

“Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Joke during his 1965 campaign for Governor of California, as quoted by Leo E. Litwak in The New York Times Magazine (14 November 1965), p. 174 http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50F13FC3B591B7A93C6A8178AD95F418685F9. Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. As quoted in The Reagan Wit (1981) by Bill Adler, p. 30 1960s

Baby

“In times like the present men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)

Men, Time

“Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Leadership

“Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

“Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life, World, Hell

“The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived - not always looked forward to as though the "real" living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Let Me be a Woman

Life, God, Faith, Time

“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.”

Les Brown (1945) American politician

Life, Wise, Life, Business

“She smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her and directed it toward him, making him a profound promise of herself for so little, for the beat of a response, the assurance of a complimentary vibration in him.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Smile

“The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

“I was on duty when our submarine went into port in Nassau and tied up at the Prince George Wharf, and I was the officer who accepted an invitation from the governor-general of the Bahamas for our officers and crewmen to attend an official ball to honor the U. S. Navy. There was a more private comment that a number of young ladies would be present with their chaperones. All of us were pleased and excited, and Captain Andrews responded affirmatively. We received a notice the next day that, of course, the nonwhite crewmen would not be included. When I brought this message to the captain, he had the crew assemble in the mess hall and asked for their guidance in drafting a response. After multiple expletives were censored from the message, we unanimously declined to participate. The decision by the crew of the K-1 was an indication of how equal racial treatment had been accepted—and relished. I was very proud of my ship. On leave”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety

Decision

“In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Foreword (January 1960)
You Learn by Living (1960)
Context: One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

“[A]nd soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.”

Robert Penn Warren book All the King's Men

Source: All the King's Men

World, History, Time, Housing

“The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Pain, Behavior

“Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

Behavior

“When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"The Doctrine of Free Will"
1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Way, Imagination, Birth, Thinking

“And try not to get too depressed in the part of the journey, because there’s a professional responsibility. If you are depressed, you can’t motivate your staff to extraordinary measures. So you have to keep your own spirits up even though you well understand that you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

Cited in: " Andy Grove Tells The Truth About What Great Leaders Do http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/03/andy_grove_tell.html." bobsutton.typepad.com/my weblog. by Bob Sutton, March 11, 2007. New millennium, Harvard Business School Press conference, 2002

Motivation, Understanding, Parting

“Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words, but in our deeds, that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Inaugural Address (1905)

Friendship, People, Justice, Strong

“Every technology creates good and bad. You can sit here and say, "AI is really bad, we shouldn't have AI" - that's nonsense. We have to figure out how to use it in a responsible way, that's our job.”

Michael Dell (1965) Businessman, CEO

ZDNet: "AI shouldn't be held back by scaremongering: Michael Dell" https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-shouldnt-be-held-back-by-scaremongering-michael-dell/ (02 May 2018)

Way

“Freedom is the nature of man; every person is self-controlling and himself responsible for his thoughts, his speech, his acts.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority (1943)

Nature, Freedom, Personality

“A proper division of responsibilities.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856)

“If and when the war starts(WW2), no matter where or whoever you are or if you are young or old, Northner or Southner, you all have the responsibility of protecting our home and repelling the enemy, you all must have the will to achieve ultimate sacrifice.”

Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) Chinese politician and military leader

Original: 如果戰端一開，就是地無分南北，年無分老幼，無論何人，皆有守土抗戰之責任,皆應抱定犧牲一切之決心！
蔣介石廬山《應戰宣言》

War, Home

“Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen.”

Golda Meir (1898–1978) former prime minister of Israel

Speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner (October 1961)

“We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don’t work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence.
We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks after the Umpqua Community College shooting (October 2015)

Death, Law, Way, Country

“Far from secularization inexorably leading to the death of religion, it has instead given birth to the search for new forms of religious life. The imminent victory of the Kingdom of Reason has never materialized. As a whole, mankind can never get rid of the need for religious self-identification: who am I, where did I come from, where do I fit in, why am I responsible, what does my life mean, how will I face death? Religion is a paramount aspect of human culture. Religious need cannot be excommunicated from culture by rationalist incantation. Man does not live by reason alone.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Interview with Nathan Gardels http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2009_fall_2010_winter/04_kolakowski.html (1991)

Life, Death, Religion, Search

“The overdevelopment of the maternal instinct is identical with that well-known image of the mother which has been glorified in all ages and all tongues. This is the motherlove which is one of the most moving and unforgettable memories of our lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends. Intimately known and yet strange like Nature, lovingly tender and yet cruel like fate, 'oyous and untiring giver of life-mater dolorosa and mute implacable portal that closes upon the dead. Mother is motherlove, my experience and my secret. Why risk saying too much, too much that is false and inadequate and beside the point, about that human being who was our mother, the accidental carrier of that great experience which includes herself and myself and all mankind, and indeed the whole of created nature, the experience of life whose children we are? The attempt to say these things has always been made, and probably always will be; but a sensitive person cannot in all fairness load that enormous burden of meaning, responsibility, duty, heaven and hell, on to the shoulders of one frail and fallible human being-so deserving of love, indulgence, understanding, and forgiveness-who was our mother. He knows that the mother carries for us that inborn image of the mater nature and mater spiritualis, of the totality of life of which we are a small and helpless part.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious P.172

Love, Life, Fate, Children

“I began my political responsibility as an ultra-conservative. I wanted the Kaiser to come back; and now I am a revolutionary. I really mean that. If I live to be a hundred I shall maybe be an anarchist, for an anarchist wants to do without all government.”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

As quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 223

“We have to stop thinking that God is going to fix everything and saying that if God made everything bad in this universe then we are here to do to, too, again. If there is a God, we are here to help him. This requires that we take possession of the world and of ourselves. We must do what we want to do with full consciousness and with full responsibility. In this level of divine consciousness, we find true art.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

God, World, Art, Thinking

“With a lot of blacks, there's quite a bit of resentment along with their dissent, and possibly rightfully so. But we can't all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the blacks. I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

Playboy interview, May 1971

People, Education

“Leaders encourage reflective backtalk. Norbert Wiener told me, “I never know what I say until I hear the response.” Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Warren G. Bennis (2009) On Becoming a Leader. p. 190
2000s

Truth

“We cannot abdicate our conscience to an organization, nor to a government. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Most certainly I am! I cannot escape my responsibility by saying the State will do all that is necessary. It is a tragedy that nowadays so many think and feel otherwise.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 309

Feeling, Thinking

“When human affairs are so ordered that there is no recognition of God, there is a belittling of man. That is why, in the final analysis, worship and law cannot be completely separated from each other. God has a right to a response from man, to man himself, and where that right of God totally disappears, the order of law among men is dissolved, because there is no cornerstone to keep the whole structure together.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2000, The Spirit of the Liturgy (2000)

Men, God, Law

“We also know that our support for civil society is not just about what we’re against, but also what we’re for. Because we’ve noticed that governments that are more responsive and effective are typically governments where the people are free to assemble, and speak their minds, and petition their leaders, and hold us accountable.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks at Panama Civil Society Forum (April 2015)

People, Support

“JB: And the practical consequences of that political reason would be then aggression against the Russians interviewer: might have been world war III. JB: Absolutely. And that's why we were querying our instruction from an American general. Fortunately, up on the radio came Gen Mike Jackson, whose exact words at the time were, 'I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War III”

James Blunt (1974) English singer-songwriter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11753050

War, World, Time

“Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

Fear

“And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq…. Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

August 1992, at the Discovery Institute in Seattle http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/192908_cheney29.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/192828_joel29.html 1990s

Question, Problem, Thinking, Decision

“Already, the United States has imposed strong sanctions on Syria’s leaders. We supported a transfer of power that is responsive to the Syrian people. And many of our allies have joined in this effort. But for the sake of Syria -- and the peace and security of the world -- we must speak with one voice. There's no excuse for inaction. Now is the time for the United Nations Security Council to sanction the Syrian regime, and to stand with the Syrian people.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, UN speech to General Assembly (September 2011)

People, World, Peace, Support

“We are all responsible. We are all complicit. White T-shirts catch the light. What matters is what we then do with that light. (The peace activists wore white t-shirts during their protests.)”

Leymah Gbowee (1972) Liberian peace activist

Interview for The Daily Beast (April 5, 2010)

Peace, Light

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Stanisław Jerzy Lec, More Unkempt Thoughts [Myśli nieuczesane nowe] (1964)
Misattributed

Feeling

“Every man among us is more fit to meet the duties and responsibilities of citizenship because of the perils over which, in the past, the nation has triumphed; because of the blood and sweat and tears, the labor and the anguish, through which, in the days that have gone, our forefathers moved on to triumph.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Speech before the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island (June 1897), reported in "Washington’s Forgotten Maxim", American Ideals (1926), vol. 13 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., chapter 12, p. 198
1890s

Tear, Past

““So you are still our Master,” said Sabrina. She was frowning. She had come to be afraid again.
“Not so!” Lucifer turned, almost in rage. “You are your own masters. Your destiny is yours. Your lives are your own. Do you not see that this means an end to the miraculous? You are at the beginning of a new age for Man, an age of investigation and analysis.”
“The Age of Lucifer,” I said, echoing some of His own irony.
He saw the joke in it. He smiled.
“Man, whether he be Christian or pagan, must lean to rule himself, to understand himself, to take responsibility for himself. There can be no Armageddon now. If Man is destroyed, he shall have destroyed himself.”
“So we are to live without aid,” said Sabrina. Her face was clearing.
“And without hindrance,” said Lucifer. “It will be your fellows, your children and their children who will find the Cure for the World’s Pain.”
“Or perish in the attempt,” said I.
“It is a fair risk,” said Lucifer. “And you must remember, von Bek, that it is in my interest that you succeed. I have wisdom and knowledge at your disposal. I always had that gift for Man. And now that I may give it freely I choose not to do so. Each fragment of wisdom shall be earned. And it shall be hard-earned, captain.””

Michael Moorcock book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 18 (p. 166)

Wisdom, Pain, Children, Age

“… there was one principle underlying their approach to all these problems—a principle upon which they stood in fundamental opposition to Socialism. The Conservative objective was a nation-wide property-owning democracy. Both parties believed in a form of capitalism, but whereas their opponents believed in State capitalism they believed in the widest measure of individual capitalism. Man should be master of his environment, and not its slave. That was what freedom meant…. we of the Conservative Party must maintain that the ownership of property is not a crime or a sin, but a reward, a right, and a responsibility that must be shared as equitably as possible among all our citizens.”

Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool (3 October 1946), quoted in The Times (4 October 1946), p. 2.

Democracy, Problem, Freedom

“Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), p. 179

Birth, Science, Personality

“These are our kids. This is what they’re thinking about. And so what we should be thinking about is our responsibility to care for them, and shield them from harm, and give them the tools they need to grow up and do everything that they’re capable of doing -- not just to pursue their own dreams, but to help build this country. This is our first task as a society, keeping our children safe. This is how we will be judged. And their voices should compel us to change.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by the President and the Vice President on Gun Violence, 2013-01-16, January 16, 2013 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/16/remarks-president-and-vice-president-gun-violence, 2013

Children, Dreams, Thinking, Change

“My uncle, it seems, had quickly instituted a prodigiously far-flung body of inquires amongst nearly all the friends whom he could question without impertinence, asking for nightly reports of their dreams, and the dates of any notable visions for some time past. The reception of his request seems to have varied; but he must, at the very least, have received more responses than any ordinary man could have handled without a secretary.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Dreams, Question, Time, Past

“What is meant here is that man should not become immersed in loving the world which will make him forget the responsibilities that Allah had ordered him to hold, but he has to look at the world in its reality, in which it represents a place for obeying Allah.”

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) Lebanese faqih

The mutual love between Allah and His servants http://english.bayynat.org.lb/Doctrines/Themutual1.htm

Love, World, Reality, Forgetting

“Let us be under no illusion. The Jewish spirit, which was responsible for the alliance of large-scale capital with Marxism and was the driving force behind so many anti-Spanish revolutionary agreements, will not be got rid of in a day.”

Francisco Franco (1892–1975) Spanish general and dictator

Victory speech in Madrid (19 May 1939)

“This is the land of the free, and it always will be. As Americans, we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights that no man or government can take away from us. But we've also long recognized, as our Founders recognized, that with rights come responsibilities. Along with our freedom to live our lives as we will comes an obligation to allow others to do the same. We don’t live in isolation. We live in a society, a government of, and by, and for the people. We are responsible for each other.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

People, Freedom

“You don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in.”

John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath

Advice given by von Neumann to Richard Feynman as quoted in "Los Alamos from Below" in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985).

World

“It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

BBC obituary (2004)

“This morning at Flanders Field, I was reminded of how war between peoples sent a generation to their deaths in the trenches and gas of the First World War. And just two decades later, extreme nationalism plunged this continent into war once again -- with populations enslaved, and great cities reduced to rubble, and tens of millions slaughtered, including those lost in the Holocaust. It is in response to this tragic history that, in the aftermath of World War II, America joined with Europe to reject the darker forces of the past and build a new architecture of peace. Workers and engineers gave life to the Marshall Plan. Sentinels stood vigilant in a NATO Alliance that would become the strongest the world has ever known. And across the Atlantic, we embraced a shared vision of Europe -- a vision based on representative democracy, individual rights, and a belief that nations can meet the interests of their citizens through trade and open markets; a social safety net and respect for those of different faiths and backgrounds.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

Life, Death, War, People

“Freedom and power bring responsibility.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

A Tryst With Destiny (1947)

Freedom

“The war was a “tragic error,” but not “fundamentally wrong or immoral” (as the overwhelming majority of the American people continue to believe), and surely not criminal aggression - the judgment that would be reached at once on similar evidence if the responsible agent were not the USA, or an ally or client. Our point is not that the retrospectives fail to draw what seem to us, as to much of the population, the obvious conclusions; the more significant and instructive point is that principled objection to the war as “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” or as an outright criminal aggression - a war crime - is inexpressible. It is not part of the spectrum of discussion. The background for such a principled critique cannot be developed in the media, and the conclusions cannot be drawn. It is not present even to be refuted. Rather, the idea is unthinkable. All of this reveals with great clarity how foreign to the mobilized media is a conception of the media as a free system of information and discussion, independent of state authority and elite interests.”

Noam Chomsky book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Herman and Chomsky (1988), Manufacturing Consent, p. 252.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s

War, People, Error, Idea

“I was solitary before, but now my solitariness becomes complete and awesome. Hence the dizziness, the vertigo. Like a statue on a plinth-that is how I live now. Jesus also was alone on the cross. I should not seek outside help to absolve me from my duty; my duty is too plain: decide, assume every responsibility for guiding others, even when it seems illogical and perhaps absurd. And to suffer alone… Me and God. The colloquy must be full and endless.”

Pope Paul VI (1897–1978) 262nd Pope of the Catholic Church

private note to himself of the solitude that infallibility and the papal office http://www.ucg.org/world-news-and-prophecy/hitlers-pope-the-roman-church-and-the-third-reich

God, Suffering, Help

“I don't see how you can be saying this. Look. You want to take…you want your god to take responsibility for the huge number of collapsing stars and imploding galaxies and destroyed universes and failed solar systems that have left us in this tiny corner on the one planet in this petty solar system that can support life some of the time on some of its surface. And you want a creator who filled this earth with species, since life began 99% of which are now extinct already…and this is some design, isn't it?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2007
Source: Hannity's America, May 13, 2007 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWoHh4_rVdg http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Sean_Hannity_Christopher_Hitchens_Hannity%27s_America_May13%2C_2007?venotify=created

Life, God, Star, Support

“Power invariably means both responsibility and danger.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Inaugural Address (1905)