Jesmyn Ward Quotes

America always pivots between collective responsibility and the idea that the individual can pull himself up by his bootstraps.

You can't hide behind race any more. You can't hide behind class structure any more. You can't hide behind family. You need to produce.

If you really think everything in your life, everything that you benefit from comes from socially aware, like-minded, good-hearted people, then you're out of your mind. If you want only those people to have good jobs, we would have to learn how to adjust very quickly without those people. Maybe I'm cynical, but I truly believe that.

Frontiersman ideas of individualism stand exposed as we realise just how much our actions impact others.

Judge Thomas was a man who had used the system to get where he wanted to be, but then felt that everyone else should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

If you want something you can have it, but you have to do some work. It's the ethic my mother brought me up with.

I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made.

Liberals tend to put the onus of your success on society and conservatives on you and your family.

Man must assume responsibility for the direction of his life and destiny.

There is always a very delicate interplay between individual actions and institutional conditions. But there is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility.

I didn't want to have people open doors for me. My dad never made a call on my behalf to anyone - not to a producer, a director, or a casting agent.

Just as we demand that people take responsibility for their actions, we as a society must take responsibility for fighting injustice.

You have to do it by yourself. You can not do it alone.

There is too little idea of personal responsibility; too much of "the world owes me a living," forgetting that if the world does owe you a living, you must be your own collector.

My mother let me know that we're all connected. If some of us become more affluent it's not because we're better or even smarter people - we have a responsibility to ourselves to be a good boy.

If the whole responsibility is thrown upon our own shoulders, we shall be at our highest and best; when we have nobody to grope towards, no devil to lay our blame upon, no Personal God to carry our burdens, when we are alone responsible, then we shall rise to our highest and best. I am responsible for my fate, I am the bringer of good unto myself, I am the bringer of evil.

If you think that you are where you are just because you worked hard, it is easy to become self-righteous and make classist moral judgments about others.

Living in a society, instead of on a desert island, does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own life.

Freedon succeeds from the moment people stop looking to others to improve their lives and start taking responsibility.

Every individual has to assume responsibility for his or her own actions, even the poor and the young. A social system that decrees otherwise is inviting intellectual atrophy and spiritual stagnation.

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say "It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem." Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.

we're responsible for our own lives.

The American culture ideal of the "self-made-man," of everyone "standing on his own feet" seemed as tragic a picture as the initiative-destroying dependence on a benevolent despot. He felt and perceived clearly that we all need continuous help from each other, and that this type of interdependence is the greatest challenge to maturity of individual and group functioning.