Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

I cannot shift the blame for Chechnya, for the sorrow of numerous mothers and fathers. I made the decision, therefore I am responsible.

Never accept the blame for what evil people do. We are all responsible for our own actions." She was lecturing him, so she stopped. "Sorry. Hang around with Bran too long, and see if you don’t start passing around the Marrok’s advice as if he were Confucius.

In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.

What influences our behavior, and what our level of responsibility is, are very complex issues. And anytime we try to make this simplistic, we don't serve people well.

Evil is important for us to look at, in my opinion, only insofar as it makes us look at our own actions and make us wonder, 'Am I participating in some kind of human evil that I really should stop doing?'

Asking someone else to do something immoral is immoral.

I think most people are not willing to make the tough choices.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice.

You have to be responsible when you're running an organization, and firing people who are your friends is part of that responsibility.

There never is a good time for tough decisions. There will always be an election or something else. You have to pick courage and do it. Governance is about taking tough, even unpopular, decisions.

One of the things I liked about playing Tony Gates in 'Line of Duty' was that I don't think he gave much thought to justifying his actions until he was under investigation.

I ask you to accept one thing. Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong. That's your call

If you have sacrificed my nation to save the peace of the world, I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, gentlemen, God help your souls.

While faith need not be monolithic - it can motivate both voting behavior and character development - focus matters. A Christianity constantly looking for political answers to moral and spiritual problems gives believers an excuse to blame other people when they should be looking in the mirror.

My father volunteered in early 1941, before Pearl Harbor, and became an officer in the U.S. Navy. As I was growing up, he taught me the responsibility of command: A leader is ultimately responsible for every aspect of the welfare of people under his or her care. That was a deeply felt obligation in his generation.

Obviously everybody is accountable for their own actions, and everybody has to make judgments based on their own conscience as to whether or not they believe what they were doing is right or wrong.

It's hard to be a leader when you have to make hard choices and when you have to do what's right, even though people are not going to like you for it.

I realise that sometimes you have to make tough decisions and football doesn't wait for people.

there are risks you'll take for yourself because you know that if your plan goes wrong, it'll be too late for regrets. but if you risk the lives of others and fail, you'll have a lifetime to regret it.

I was only following orders," the Mayor mocks. "The refuge of scoundrels since the dawn of time.

Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions? Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.

A weapon is a tool," she repeated, a little breathlessly. "A tool for killing and destroying. And there will be times when, as an Envoy, you must kill and destroy. Then you will choose and equip yourself with the tools that you need. But remember the weakness of weapons. They are an extension--you are the killer and destroyer. You are whole, with or without them.

The evil of technology was not technology itself, Lindbergh came to see after the war, not in airplanes or the myriad contrivances of modern technical igenuity, but in the extent to which they can distance us from our better moral nature, or sense of personal accountability.

How can you do the right thing when you can't figure out what that is? When all you have before you are choices in various shades of wrong?