Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Each one of us is bound to make the little circle in which he or she lives better and happier. Bound to see that out of that small circle the widest good may flow.

In duty the individual acquires his substantive freedom

A community is an alibi for the failure of individual love.

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.

I am convinced that any attempt to restore harmony in the world can only rest on the renewal of personal responsibility.

For change to happen in any community, the initiative must come from the individual.

To be individually righteous is the first of all duties, come what may to ones self, to one's country, to society, and to civilization itself.

Duty is that mode of action on the part of the individual which constitutes the best possible application of his capacity to the general benefit.

Responsibility is a unique concept. It can only reside and inhere in a single individual. You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you. You may disclaim it, but you cannot divest yourself of it. If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.

A nation, as an individual, has duties to fulfill appointed by God and His moral law.

The problem with the old ideology was that it suppressed the individual by starting with society. But it is from a sense of individual duty that we connect the greater good and the interests of the community

Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.

It is the responsibility of every human to know their actions and the consequences of their actions and to ask questions and to question things when they are wrong.

The foundation of the world lies in the nation. The foundation of the nation lies in the family. The foundation of the family lies in the individual.

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

In the past, friendship was a huge thing. But it's hard for us to think of friendship as a calling, because it's not a vocation.

The cumulative effect of each person making a change in his or her own life will make a difference.

Earlier in my college career, there was no doubt in my mind that as a member of the Black community I was somehow obligated to this community and would utilize all of my present and future resources to benefit this community first and foremost.

No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships.

New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.

To take the choice of another ... to forget their concrete reality, to abstract them, to forget that you are a node in a matrix, that actions have consequences. We must not take the choice of another being. What is community but a means to ... for all we individuals to have ... our choices.

One cannot separate the health of the individual from the health of the community, from the health of the world.

No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community.

The time has come to accept in our hearts and minds that with freedom comes responsibility.

Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.