Henry David Thoreau Quotes

The emphasis has been on rights, not responsibilities. When it comes to piecing together the fragments of broken lives, we have tended to place the entire burden on the state and its agencies.

Somewhere along the line, the actions of this government are the actions of me.

I don't think any one person, whether artist or not, has been given permission by anyone to put the responsibility of the way things are on anyone else.

It is time to break the bad habit of expecting something for nothing from our Government or from each other. Let us all take more responsibility not only for ourselves and our families but our communities and our country.

The first fundamental of successful city life: People must take a modicum of responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other. This is a lesson no one learns by being told. It is learned from the experience of having other people without ties of kinship or close friendship or formal responsibility to you take a modicum of responsibility for you.

I was raised to believe that everybody has a responsibility to their community and I use the word very loosely. It's a big community. If I get recognized in the middle of the Sinai Desert I have a big community.

You have to recognise your responsibility to your community for your actions. Liberty doesn't mean that you are not held accountable. Without accountability, there can be no freedom. I know it seems like a paradox.

Let us all take more responsibility, not only for ourselves and our families but for our communities and our country.

A decent society is not based on rights. It is based on duty. Our duty to one another. To all should be given opportunity; from all responsibility demanded.

We too often prefer the individual thrill to collective responsibility.

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

What would you have me do? I have two masters who always have an eye fixed on me. They are my neighbors and France is far away.

The story of America is the story of an ever widening circle of human care and responsibility.

Most politicians will not stick their necks out unless they sense grass-roots support ... neither you nor I should expect someone else to take our responsibility.

In the final analysis, a democratic government represents the sum total of the courage and the integrity of its individuals. It cannot be better than they are.

Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility …

We live in such a corporate world where everyone is passing the buck, it seems to me. Therefore I like stories where the individual takes responsibility for BEING the individual, and not just for himself, but for his comrades, his society and ultimately for his country. Ultimately, we can all learn a lesson from that and not be browbeaten by the corporate world which is taking over.

Wouldn't it be better for the human spirit and for the soul of this nation to encourage people to accept more responsibility to care for each other rather than leaving those tasks to paid bureaucrats.

Freedom & Duty always go hand in hand and if the free do not accept the duty of social responsibility, they will not long remain free.

Nations begin to dig their own graves when men talk more of human rights and less of human duties.

When approached right, citizens never fail to shoulder their responsibilities.

What the majority of American children needs is to stop being pampered, stop being indulged, stop being chauffeured, stop being catered to. In the final analysis, it is not what you do for you children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.

We also need to find a language capable of defending government as an element of the common good, one that does not define itself as both a punishing and corporate state. This is not merely a matter of redefining sovereignty, but also rethinking what is distinctive about the social state, social responsibility, and the common good.

The world is our responsibility. We cannot evade it.