Pope John Paul II Quotes

We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility

We must differentiate between guilt and duty. The soldier on the front, like the common man, who does his duty everywhere, should not be held responsible for the actions of a few who also called themselves Germans.

We know that we are not collectively guilty, so how can we accuse any other nation, no matter what some of its people have done, of being collectively guilty?

The most dangerous aspect of contemporary life is the dissolution of the feeling of individual responsibility.

We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom." It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?

Idiots are not responsible for what they do. The real guilt falls on rational people who sit on their hands while morons run wild. You can opt out if you want to. Play it safe. But if you do, don't complain when the roof comes down.

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.

For the Christian there can be no social or political panaceas, no easy escapes from personal responsibility achieved by collectivising guilt or virtue. The true ends of temporal life lie beyond it, and, though the tyrannical State may diminish virtue, the benevolent State cannot procure it.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

[James] Baldwin explained that you have your own history, and that you cannot be responsible, for example, for slavery.

We've somehow allowed ourselves to think it's okay to neglect and abandon our responsibility to ourselves and to our community. Everything cannot be blamed on the system.

I mean not to accuse any one, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty—we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others; and I therefore deprecate every kind of reflection against the various descriptions of people who are more immediately involved in this wretched business.

The confession of one man humbles all.

When a nation has allowed itself to fall under a tyrannical regime, it cannot be absolved from the faults due to the guilt of that regime.

I think it's the responsibility of every human being, not just those who wear the identity of poet, activist, voter, religious person... it's the responsibility of every person. Our responsibility is to use our intelligence as clearly and coherently as we possibly can.

When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.

Only individuals have a sense of responsibility.

We do good by ourselves, but we seldom do wrong alone.

If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn't be where we are now.

I'm tired of hearing about innocent victims. It's fiction, If you live on this planet you're guilty, period, f*** you, next case, end of report. Your birth certificate is proof of guilt.

The fault is as great as hee that is faulty.

All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America; in doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichman chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows?

No one is responsible under liberalism.

I don't believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled long ago!.