Milton Friedman Quotes

To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man.

How do we change as a culture, and how do we each individually take responsibility for the one piece of the solution that we are in charge of, and that is our own behavior?

We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility

There is no public out there who needs to change. It's each one of us.

I feel deeply my responsibility to teach sacred things. I am so aware that the world is changing and will be vastly different from the one I have known. Values have shifted. Basic decency and respect for good things are eroding.

In the ever-evolving society we live in, it is the responsibility of all of us, as individuals and as Americans, to rid ourselves of this culture of violence.

It is time to break the bad habit of expecting something for nothing from our Government or from each other. Let us all take more responsibility not only for ourselves and our families but our communities and our country.

Most politicians will not stick their necks out unless they sense grass-roots support ... neither you nor I should expect someone else to take our responsibility.

Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility …

The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilized society.

I still totally believe in individual rights and individual responsibility and in choosing to do good.

We live in such a corporate world where everyone is passing the buck, it seems to me. Therefore I like stories where the individual takes responsibility for BEING the individual, and not just for himself, but for his comrades, his society and ultimately for his country. Ultimately, we can all learn a lesson from that and not be browbeaten by the corporate world which is taking over.

I fail to understand why gethes (Humans), talk about individuals versus society. They are the same thing. The action of every individual counts, and those individual acts of personal responsibility accumulate to create society. Snowflakes are equally blind to their role in causing avalanches.

Every time you ask yourself where hip-hop's going, ask yourself where you're going; how are you doing?

One exemplary act may affect one life, or even millions of lives. All those who set standards for themselves, who strengthen the bonds of community, who do their work creditably and accept individual responsibility, are building the common future.

I don't think anybody can be held accountable or responsible for anyone's behaviors expect the individual. This goes beyond that particular situation.

We cannot abdicate our conscience to an organization, nor to a government. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Most certainly I am! I cannot escape my responsibility by saying the State will do all that is necessary. It is a tragedy that nowadays so many think and feel otherwise.

Man must now assume the responsibility for his world. He can no longer shove it off on religious power.

Each individual in fact has moral responsibility for the acts which he personally performs; no one can be exempted from this responsibility, and on the basis of it everyone will be judged by God himself.

We've somehow allowed ourselves to think it's okay to neglect and abandon our responsibility to ourselves and to our community. Everything cannot be blamed on the system.

I never looked at the masses as my responsibility. I can only love one person at a time. So I began. I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn't pick up that one person, I wouldn't have picked up forty-two thousand.

Everyone in the full enjoyment of all the blessings of his life, in his normal condition, feels some individual responsibility forthe poverty of others. When the sympathies are not blunted by any false philosophy, one feels reproached by one's own abundance.

However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.

There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.