Zadie Smith Quotes

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.

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.

We've placed a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people's rights. That's how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities.

Every person in a well-ordered state is fully conscious of both his responsibilities and his rights.

No people have risen who thought only of rights. Only those did so who thought of duties.

The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

it make no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities

In giving rights to others which belong to them, we give rights to ourselves and to our country

If all simply insist on rights and no duties, there will be utter confusion and chaos.

Our society is obsessed with personal rights, but it will survive only if we adopt personal obligations.

Every man has obligations which belong to his station. Duties extend beyond obligations, and direct the affections, desires, and intentions, as well as the actions.

Every right is married to a duty, every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility.

I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I... [am] convinced [man] has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

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.

But without a caring society, without each citizen voluntarily accepting the weight of responsibility, government is destined to grow even larger, taking more of your money, burrowing deeper into your lives.

The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people.

Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.

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

In the nineties, everybody wants to talk about their rights and privileges. Twenty-five years ago, people talked about their obligations and responsibilities.

I think that anything that has privileges have responsibility and all people that is clear about their responsibility has compromise.

Republican government loses half its value where the moral and social duties are ... negligently practiced.

The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual’s private rights.