John Ruskin Quotes

Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.

There is no truth without responsibility following in its wake.

Only when the voice of duty is silent, or when it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the consequences of a particular action.

There is no sin but ignorance.

A man may well be condemned, not for doing something, but for doing nothing.

The first duty of man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.

You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.

If you back out of a convention... you can't dodge your obligation. Torture is still not acceptable.

it make no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities

Had laws not been, we never had been blam'd; For not to know we sinn'd is innocence.

I think it's my job to tell the truth.

A scientist has to be neutral in his search for the truth, but he cannot be neutral as to the use of that truth when found. If you know more than other people, you have more responsibility, rather than less.

Young girls are the chatelaines of truth; they must see that it is protected, that the guilty lead the life of the guilty, even if the world rocks on its foundations.

Hell is truth seen too lateduty neglected in its season.

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 shrink neither.

Every right is married to a duty, every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility.

A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . .

I have to do what's right.

We tend to think that people are more to blame for their acts than for their omissions.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

There's no question that as science, knowledge and technology advance, that we will attempt to do more significant things. And there's no question that we will always have to temper those things with ethics.

There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.

They are focused on whether they can do something. They never think whether they should do something.

Well, the truth is always what should be told. And the truth and the knowledge of the truth is what everybody should represent, regardless of the consequences of doing it.