John le Carre Quotes

It is our responsibility, but not burden, to be champions.

I think that you really don't have a choice, when you see that things are wrong the only choice you really have is to just do what you can to make it better.

We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.

If we sit by and become complacent and put our heads in the sand, we're complicit.

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.

Our world demands action, not passivity; actors and not mere spectators.

To live with integrity in an unjust society we must work for justice. To walk with integrity through a landscape strewn with beer cans, we must stop and pick them up.

Freedom requires civil responsibility.

I feel like I have to share whatever I can. You're culpable if you don't act.

Better remain silent, better not even think, if you are not prepared to act.

There comes a time when you have to stand up and be counted.

It is easy enough to hold an opinion, but rather more testing to act on it.

If you have to do it, then you're doing the right thing.

My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.

I always feel compelled to lend my voice to things I strongly believe in.

We have got to stop being a society that turns our heads and looks the other way.

The measure of your quality as a public person, as a citizen, is the gap between what you do and what you say.

You can have an impact anywhere you are.

Our citizens and those who have gone before us charted the broad outlines of where we need to go, and they would envy our opportunity to translate those dreams into action. And I believe they will judge us very harshly should we fail to act.

There is a responsibility that goes with winning the Nobel Prize, and the responsibility is that if you have a forum, you should use it wisely.

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.

The more the power of men and women increases, the greater is their responsibility as individuals and as members of the community.

The people who think it a shame when anything goes wrong—who rush to the conclusion that evil could or ought to have been prevented, are those who, in the long run, do most to make the world better.

The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves. The more talents we possess, the bigger the responsibility we have to develop them to their fullest capacity.

I am only one. But I am one. I cannot do everything. But I can do something. What I can do I ought to do. What I ought to do I will do