George Eliot Quotes

We live in a globalising world. That means that all of us, consciously or not, depend on each other. Whatever we do or refrain from doing affects the lives of people who live in places we'll never visit.

Do not you know that people's sin fall upon the prince, and the prince's sin falls upon the people?

Because of a few, disasters come upon a whole people, and because of the evil deeds of one, many have to taste their fruits.

Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind.

Whether or not one has won the Nobel Prize, each of us living in contact with our fellowmen feels a joint responsibility for all forms of suffering, both physical and moral.

No sin, especially no great sin, is just a harm done to the individual who commits it. I believe myself that the future of the human race is bound up with that idea. The soul that is conscious of a grievous sin is conscious of a great harm done to the community - to someone else. That common hurt should now be forgiven.

We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night.

Don't worry, if there is a hell below, we're all going to go.

If somebody murders somewhere, I have a part in it. Even if I am a sleeper - I was sleeping, I don´t know about the man, I will never hear about him - and somebody somewhere, in the Himalayas, commits a murder, if we are not individuals I have a part in it, I am also responsible. It is not so easy to throw the responsibility: "I am not committing a murder, I am a saint." No saint is a saint because every sinner is implied in him.

But you are involved in the world, and your actions have consequences for other people, and if you don't recognize that, then that's the supreme kind of cruelty. Everyone shares someone else's fate to some extent.

Humanity happy, I get benefit. Humanity in state of trouble, or violence, I cannot escape from that.

Being concerned about other people is especially relevant in today's world. If we consider the complex inter-connected ness of our modern lives, how we depend on others and others depend on us, our outlook will change. We’ll begin to see 'others' not as somehow distant from us, but as people we are in touch with, people close to us; we will no longer feel indifferent to them.

If one finger brings oil it soils the others.

practically nothing we do ever stands by itself. If it is good, it will serve some good purpose in the future. If it is evil, it may haunt us and handicap our efforts in unimagined ways.

Since no man ever can, or could, live by himself and for himself alone, the destinies of thousands of other people were bound to be affected, some remotely, but some very directly and near-at-hand, by my own choices and decisions and desires, as my own life would also be formed and modified according to theirs.

When we ignore the world outside the walls we suffer-as does it.

When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him.

Even if they're not reaching out to us, we're going to reach out to them anyway and involve them in a meaningful way. Because if we don't, we will fail to learn the lesson of a generation before us, that reached out for us and never let us go.

We are members of one great body. Nature planted in us a mutual love, and fitted us for a social life. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole.

Collective crimes incriminate no one.

People say it takes a village to raise a child. People ask me how my daughter is doing. She’s only doing good if your daughter’s doing good. We’re all one family.

All go free when multitudes offend.

If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn't be where we are now.

But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people--first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy.

There is a sense in which we are all each other's consequences