Responsibility Quotes

“When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters.”
― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

“Next you will cry about taxation without representation, and throw a basket of tea into the harbor. You are indeed a very Jacobin at heart, and I think I must give up trying to cure you of it; I can but wash my hands and deny responsibility”
― Naomi Novik, His Majesty's Dragon

“One of the most jolting days of adulthood comes the first time you run out of toilet paper. Toilet paper, up until this point, always just existed. And now it's a finite resource, constantly in danger of extinction, that must be carefully tracked and monitored, like pandas?”
― kelly williams brown, Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps

“fruit of passive-aggressive people. These people resist demands by indirect tactics. They will not take responsibility for their own choices; instead, they turn around and blame someone else for making them do it. Or they will agree to do things that they don’t really want to do, and then gripe about the person behind her back.”
― Henry Cloud, Changes That Heal: How to Understand the Past to Ensure a Healthier Future

“The average person is still under the aberrant delusion that food should be somebody else's responsibility until I'm ready to eat it.”
― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World

“If a young man gets married, starts a family, and spends the rest of his life working at a soul-destroying job, he is held up as an example of virtue and responsibility. The other type of man, living only for himself, working only for himself, doing first one thing and then another simply because he enjoys it and because he has to keep only himself, sleeping where and when he wants, and facing woman when he meets her, on equal terms and not as one of a million slaves, is rejected by society. The free, unshackled man has no place in its midst.”
― Esther Vilar, The Manipulated Man

“You have no sense of your true duty, which is to be a man and preserve humanity. You imitate wise men so badly and bandits so well. Your movies and radio programs are full of murder.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“We're not responsible, he thought. This planet is a temporary affair. It's whizzing with all kinds of other ones, a whole range of planetary stuff, toward a star in the Milky Way. On that kind of a planet we're not responsible, he thought.”
― Bertolt Brecht

“Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand-from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: 'How can I be good?' and 'How can I do something good?' Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: 'What is the will of God?”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

“Love is active, not passive. It is our love for one another, for Mother Earth, for our fellow creatures that compels us to act on their behalf.”
― Laurence Overmire, The One Idea That Saves The World: A Call to Conscience and A Call to Action

“When you start to accept responsibility for the results you get in life, you also take back the power to change your future outcome.”
― Kevin Ngo, Let's Do This! 100 Powerful Messages to Help You Take Action

“Our existence deforms the universe. That's responsibility.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Whatever is triggering you, is on you.”
― Richie Norton

“Information sharing produces shared awareness among the participants, and collaborative production relies on shared creation, but collective action creates shared responsibility, by tying the user's identity to the identity of the group.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“I am responsible for my own existence and happiness.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“Understand this first and foremost that you are the center of your existence; nobody else is responsible. No matter how burdensome it feels, but you alone are responsible. If you accept this truth all sorrow will soon disappear. Because once it is clear that I am making this game, how long will it take you to destroy it?”
― Osho, Bliss: Living beyond happiness and misery

“Wenn ein Mann alt genug ist, um unrecht zu tun, so sollte er alt genug sein, um recht zu tun.”
― Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

“Those of us who have seen violent death up close, who have seen what high-powered bullets can do to living human tissue, have a horror of inflicting that nightmarish, never forgotten damage on a fellow human being. Perhaps the only more terrifying prospect is that such a fate should befall us or our loved ones. This is why we, a representative cross-section of America's population, keep deadly weapons for personal defense.”
― Massad F. Ayoob, In the Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection

“It’s adult swim time and I’m diving in here at the shallow end.”
― Suzanne Finnamore

“The problem with ID, of course, is that it leaves open the possibility that the intelligence behind nature may have a moral interest in us, having communicated already with humanity in the past, and might try to boss you around in your private affairs.

With hypothetical advanced aliens residing at a safely distant address in the hypothetical multiverse, that is - to the relief of folks like Gribbin, Dawkins and the New Scientist - manifestly not the case.”
― David Klinghoffer

“Anyone can change the world and everyone should try.”
― Chantal Wiebe, M.Ed

“Think of responsibility as a blessing, not a burden.”
― Haresh Sippy

“What is particularly striking about his reconstruction and criticisms of the traditional account of friendship is that he finds it deficient not only by the light of his own Christian viewpoint; he also finds friendship deficient when judged from the perspective of its own self-proclaimed ethical foundations. Thus, Kierkegaard concludes that the reciprocity involved in friendship actually betrays its essential selfishness.”
― Graham Smith

“Wir lernen aus unserer eigenen Geschichte, wozu der Mensch fähig ist. Deshalb dürfen wir uns nicht einbilden, wir seien nun als Menschen anders und besser geworden. Es gibt keine endgültig errungene moralische Vollkommenheit - für niemanden und kein Land! Wir haben als Menschen gelernt, wir bleiben als Menschen gefährdet. Aber wir haben die Kraft, Gefährdungen immer von neuem zu überwinden."

[Ansprache am 8. Mai 1985 in der Gedenkstunde im Plenarsaal des Deutschen Bundestages]”
― Richard von Weizsäcker

“I should try to pass along the good that has happened to me. That’s my responsibility as being part of this planet.”
― Jameson Currier, The Third Buddha

“As a chief resident, nearly all responsibility fell on my shoulders, & the opportunities to succeed -- or fail -- were greater than ever. The pain of failure had led me to understand that technical excellence was a moral requirement. Good intentions were not enough, not when so much depended on my skills, when the difference between tragedy & triumph was defined by one or two millimetres. ”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“But God does give us responsibility, and it takes biblical faith to do those things in dependence on God.”
― Craig Groeschel, The Christian Atheist: Believing in God but Living As If He Doesn't Exist

“Always be the light. Do not wait for others to take responsibility”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Where am I asking others to take responsibility for my life? Let's face it - we would all love to be taken care of. We all are recovering children who project the dynamics of intrapsychic parent onto an institution, an ideology ...Growing up is ever more difficult because it requires letting go of old expectations of rescue and redemption. We are it; this is it; this is as good as it gets, and we better deal with it.”
― James Hollis, Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path

“When you don't understand the consequences of your acts, how can you be blamed for them?" ...

"You don't take the blame," he answered. "But you still take responsibility. For healing the wounds you caused.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide