Charles Horton Cooley Quotes

When one has come to accept a certain course as duty he has a pleasant sense of relief and of lifted responsibility, even if the course involves pain

Neither pleasure nor pain should enter as motives when one must do what must be done.

Modern man is weighed down more by the burden of responsibility than by the burden of sin. We think him more a savior who shoulders our responsibilities than him who shoulders our sins. If instead of making decisions we have but to obey and do our duty, we feel it as a sort of salvation.

Those commands of superiors which are contrary to our first duties are not to be obeyed.

Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.

All power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise.

As everybody likes to be honored, so people imagine that God also wants to be honored. They forget that the fulfillment of duty towards men is the only honor adequate to him.

A sense of duty imprisons you.

Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force.

Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest good.

Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it.

Duty, then is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more; you should never wish to do less.

Obedience sums up our entire duty.

In duty the individual acquires his substantive freedom

Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning.

Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms.

Duty does not consist in suffering everything, but in suffering everything for duty. Sometimes, indeed, it is our duty not to suffer.

Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring and reprove.

Every duty, even the least duty, involves the whole principle of obedience.

Obedience, as it regards the social relations, the rules of society, and the laws of nature and nature's God, should commence at the cradle and end only at the tomb.

Power always brings with it responsibility.

Do what you should, not what you may.

Ah, children, pity level-crossing keepers, pity lock-keepers - pity lighthouse-keepers - pity all the keepers of this world (pity even school teachers), caught between their conscience and the bleak horizon.

Duty is seldom liked either by the doer or the object ... And why should it be? It is not often of advantage to either.