Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty. It is the other side of rights.

The true source of rights is duty.

The basic of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.

Every nation has a moral obligation to safeguard the future.

I learned from my illiterate but wise mother that all rights to be deserved and preserved came from duty well done. Thus the very right to live accrues to us only when we do the duty of citizenship of the world. From this one fundamental statement, perhaps it is easy enough to define the duties of Man and Woman and correlate every right to some corresponding duty to be first performed. Every other right can be shown to be a usurpation hardly worth fighting for.

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

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

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

A decent society is not based on rights. It is based on duty. Our duty to one another. To all should be given opportunity; from all responsibility demanded.

Duty, recognizing an individual's subordination to community welfare, is as important as rights ...

I don't believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

Violence becomes imperative when an attempt is made to assert rights without any reference to duties.

Being honest with you, if I would run into a situation where I'd have to pick up a firearm to save another child, would I? Absolutely! I wouldn't even think about it. I rescue people and feed people. I will do whatever I have to do, as long as it's within the law, to rescue a life.

Liberty is a duty, not a right.

There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.

We cannot abdicate our conscience to an organization, nor to a government. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Most certainly I am! I cannot escape my responsibility by saying the State will do all that is necessary. It is a tragedy that nowadays so many think and feel otherwise.

Not only virtue, but also insight, not only sanctity but also wisdom, are the duties and tasks of mankind.

The Islamic ethic is that if God has given you the capacity or good fortune to be a privileged individual in society, you have a moral responsibility to society.

I think it's the responsibility of every human being, not just those who wear the identity of poet, activist, voter, religious person... it's the responsibility of every person. Our responsibility is to use our intelligence as clearly and coherently as we possibly can.

Morality is an utterly meaningless term unless defined as the good one does to others, the fulfilling of one's function in the sociopolitical whole.

To be individually righteous is the first of all duties, come what may to ones self, to one's country, to society, and to civilization itself.

I think we need to insist on a certain responsibility, which people have - particularly those who have made it into the ranks of the middle class because as [ Martin Luther] King said many years ago in a sense they have climbed out of the masses on the shoulders of their sisters and brothers and therefore, they do have some responsibility.

Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility.

You assist an administration most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil administration never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good man will therefore resist an evil system or administration with his whole soul.

I was raised to believe that everybody has a responsibility to their community.