Stanislaw Jerzy Lec Quotes

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

We all have a responsibility to create a just society

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

Judaism, I would argue, does demand love for our fellow human beings, but only to an extent. 'Hate' is not always synonymous with the terribly sinful.

The Church emphasis responsibility more than rights.

Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life.

A man can give up a right, but he may not give up a duty without being guilty of a grave dereliction.

Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.

If once we admit, be it for a single hour or in a single instance, that there can be anything more important than compassion for a fellow human being, then there is no crime against man that we cannot commit with an easy conscience.

Why wouldn't I help? What good reason do I have as a human being with power and a sense of empathy and morality, why wouldn't I do something?

It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice

Yes, it is difficult for man to cross beyond the idea of duty.

Wherever injustice occurs, we all need to be concerned.

With great power comes great responsibilty.

If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.

If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.

I urge you by all this is dear, by all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only that you pray but also that you act!

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.

What could be more unjust than hurting an animal or a child? When you've been gifted dominion over something, that responsibility is real.

We talk so much about one's rights... so little about what is actually right.

Surely it should be a matter of moral responsibility that we humans, different from other animals mainly by virtue of our more highly developed intellect and, with it, our greater capacity for understanding and compassion, ensure that medical progress slowly detaches its roots from the manure of non-human animal suffering and despair.

To be human you must bear witness to justice.

Forget the laws. If the laws don't make sense, if they run contrary to your conscience, you have to disobey them.

You are responsible for what you have done and the people whom you have influenced.

How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.