Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

The European model is in danger if we obliterate the principle of personal responsibility.

But we must create in each person a sense of responsibility in order that each one of us can have the right to enjoy all his rights.

I feel like personally, it's on everybody to hold each other accountable.

Human beings exercise responsibilities within a social setting and a framework of obligations which transcend the principle of intelligence.

We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.

Thus, neither my government nor myself, personally, are without ideals and responsibilities.

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

Consciences keep silence more often than they should, that's why laws were created.

That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.

Everyone has to have a sense of duty. A duty to society, to their family. I mean, you name it.

I don't think any country is perfect. It's our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don't like. I think that's part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.

The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

To sit back and say, 'Oh, we're going to let the government do whatever they want, right or wrong,' is giving up.

There is no shame in black athletes not wanting to be role models, but there should be shame when they don't behave like one. It's a free country and people can do whatever they want. But just because we can doesn't mean we should.

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

We do not just blindly concede control to authorities; instead we follow the cues provided by our moral communities on how best to behave.

Yes, we have the freedom to do what we please, but it only works because we don't do everything we might please - we should exercise some degree of personal, and corporate, responsibility.

I believe in trying to get a balance between individual freedom on the one hand and social responsibility on the other.

Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: 'What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?'

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

Any political agenda and organization which doesn't begin with personal responsibility is just half the argument. It's just not going to succeed.

Personal responsibility is not only recognizing the errors of our ways. Personal responsibility lies in our willingness and ability to correct those errors individually and collectively.

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don't do that, we really deserve the world we get.

My conscience does not permit me to run for the presidency or any other official position unless it is within a democratic framework.

I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.