Anna Sewell Quotes

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.

Immoral is choosing not to act when you hold in your hands the power to create perfection.

We are responsible not only for what we do but also for what we could have prevented.

I have no love for those who consider themselves 'good people' but stand idly by as the world crumbles around them. It's not enough to personally not do damage. If you're present as someone else destroys what's around you and you do nothing, you helped them.

Silence is complicity. I believe that.

We tend to think that people are more to blame for their acts than for their omissions.

Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.

If we sit by and become complacent and put our heads in the sand, we're complicit.

Who can protest and does not, is an accomplice in the act.

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.

We wrestle with the political issues of who has stewardship over life.

How do you defend inaction in the face of crisis? How is that defensible for anybody?

The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable.

Every generation is confronted anew with the task not to look the other way when injustice occurs. ... Everyone is responsible for what he does and co-responsible for what he lets happen.

Americans believe that if you know something, you should do something about it.

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.

There's a lot of bad things going on but I didn't do nothing.

We have got to stop being a society that turns our heads and looks the other way.

Asking someone else to do something immoral is immoral.

The most ethical way to deal with an unethical situation would be to simply say: 'We did something wrong.' But nobody in a family like mine would ever respond like this.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

A man may well be condemned, not for doing something, but for doing nothing.

Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.