Richard von Weizsaecker Quotes

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. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.

Man is certainly free, but he is responsible for this freedom before God as before men. This responsibility is inevitably moral. In order of this morality, to be free is to protect the freedom of others and their dignities.

To be human you must bear witness to justice.

We commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong.

The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother's keeper.

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.

If a policy is wrongheaded, feckless and corrupt, I take it personally and consider it a moral obligation to sound off and not shut up until it's fixed.

If the history of the Day of Atonement has anything to say to us now it is: never relieve individuals of moral responsibility. The more we have, the more we grow.

Immoral is choosing not to act when you hold in your hands the power to create perfection.

No man ought to be condemned for exhorting people to pursue justice in a certain line, though he may foresee that in the pursuit of that justice the opposition given to those who are proceeding in a just course may produce collision, and that collision lead to the commission of crime; but our duty, as I conceive, is to seek for the injustice, and there to impute the crime… It is to that injustice, and not to those who pursue a just course for the attainment of a right end, that the guilt is to be ascribed.

We're supposed to be an example of freedom, and if we are doing things that are injustice to people, then what is our statement?

Silence is complicity. I believe that.

Every time we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act, we become a party to injustice.

Duty, then is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more; you should never wish to do less.

It’s every man’s business to see justice done.

It is important to act as if bearing witness matters.

A common lament of the World War II generation is the absence today of personal responsibility

If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it.

A weakened sense of responsibility does not weaken the fact of responsibility.

Justice! Custodian of the world! But since the world errs, justice must be custodian of the world's errors.

We become responsible for the actions of others the instant we become conscious of what they are doing wrong and fail to remind them of what is right.

We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others... When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers ... we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty. It is the other side of rights.

Passivity is the same as defending injustice.

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