Margaret Deland Quotes

Serve a cause greater than your self interest.

We all have the duty to do good.

Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero?

I am not keen just for the position; I'm keen to help and to serve. If I can really avoid any bad things on my country, I will not hesitate one second.

If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person.

Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.

I'm in the lucky position that I can help a huge amount of people. It's a great privilege and freedom to have.

I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and help save the world.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

And it is this sense that some of us have to contribute to the culture, to the society in ways that may hurt financially, so what? We do it because we are born to do it, we feel we have no other choice and so be it.

Human life has meaning only to that degree and as long as it is lived in the service of humanity.

I do it because I want to exercise people's compassion and I do it because I really believe that for some reason what I do is important and meaningful.

And if the great fear had not come upon me, as it did, and forced me to do my duty, I might have been less good to the people than some man who had never dreamed at all, even with the memory of so great a vision in me.

No man has come to true greatness who has not felt that his life belongs to his race, and that which God gives to him, He gives him for mankind.

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

One of the key issues will be personal honour vs. the good of the many, and unforeseen consequences.

You have tremendous flexibility in defining both the greater good and the greater community. If you don't succeed in this, then you will continue to pull that heavy wagon up the mountain, and despite the fact that you are pulling it, it will somehow run over your own foot.

The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.

You don't ever earn a right to stop doing anything if you feel there is an obligation to move in terms of public service.

In the Old Testament, it says that if you have the power to do something good, then you have to do it. You're not to avoid helping somebody in their time of need.

Survival is a privilege which entails obligations. I am forever asking myself what I can do for those who have not survived.

Most of us believe that we are morally bound to live as long as we can and to help our neighbors do the same.

Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe myself.

In all your acts, self interest shall be cast away. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people, and have always in view not only the present, but of the coming generations.