Andrew Cohen Quotes

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

It's indifference and ignorance that stops people from doing the right thing.

Mrs. Spencer said it was wicked of me to talk like that, but I didn’t mean to be wicked. It’s so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn’t it?

I didn't have evil intentions, but I guess I did have power.

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

I've no regrets. You take responsibility for your actions.

Doing the right thing has power.

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.

Even if I have to stand alone, I will not be afraid to stand alone. I'm going to fight for you. I'm going to fight for what's right. I'm going to fight to hold people accountable.

I don't think I'm bad for people. If I did think I was bad for people, I would go back to driving a truck, and I really mean this.

Talking isn't doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

If I think something is right, I'll fight for it - always have. If it's wrong or I've been proved wrong, I'll walk away, and I'll apologise.

One must always be aware, to notice even though the cost of noticing is to become responsible.

In honorable dealing you should consider what you intended, not what you said or thought.

The people who think it a shame when anything goes wrong—who rush to the conclusion that evil could or ought to have been prevented, are those who, in the long run, do most to make the world better.

My parents always told me if I believed something was wrong, I should try to fix it.

I'm not perfect, I just do what I think is right. So if I can't fulfil people's expectations, I'm sorry, but it's not my fault.

If I was going to act irresponsibly, the least I could do was be responsible for it.

The realization that just as no action is really indifferent, so no utterance is without its responsibility introduces, it is true, a certain strenuosity into life.

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; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.

Ignorance of the law of irreducibility was no excuse. I could no longer excuse myself with the claim that I didn't know the law -- for knowledge of self and of the world is the law that, even though unattainable, cannot be broken, and no one can excuse himself by saying that he doesn't know it. . . . The renewed originality of the sin is this: I have to carry out my unknowing, I shall be sinning originally against life.

I may be irresponsible but I am a good irresponsible.

Nothing in Chomsky's account acknowledges the difference between intending to kill a child, because of the effect you hope to produce on its parents (we call this “terrorism”), and inadvertently killing a child in an attempt to capture or kill an avowed child murderer (we call this “collateral damage”). In both cases a child has died, and in both cases it is a tragedy. But the ethical status of the perpetrators, be they individuals or states, could not be more distinct For Chomsky, intentions do not seem to matter. Body count is all.

There's less of a connection for a lot of people between the technical decisions we make and the ethical ramifications we are responsible for.