Individual Responsibility Quotes

Success, they taught me, is built on the foundation of courage, hard-work and individual responsibility. Despite what some would have us believe, success is not built on resentment and fears. ~ Susana Martinez

Anarchism is that political philosophy which advocates the maximization of individual responsibility and the reduction of concentrated power regal, dictatorial, parliamentary: the institutions which go loosely by the name of "government" to a vanishing minimum. ~ Alex Comfort

The most dangerous aspect of present-day life is the dissolution of the feeling of individual responsibility. Mass solitude has done away with any difference between the internal and the external, between the intellectual and the physical. ~ Eugenio Montale

We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility. ~ Benito Mussolini

Along with individual responsibility goes some societal responsibility to enable young people and their parents to do what they need to do. Otherwise, what is a society? ~ Robert B. Reich

Here is individual responsibility and the invention of conscience. You can if you will but it is up to you. This little story(from the Bible)turns out to be one of the most profound in the world. I always felt it was,but now I know it is.
~ John Steinbeck

Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily recreated in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one's own conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one's own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name. ~ Friedrich Hayek

The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of religion, of special revelation from God; but it is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow - man. ~ Daniel Webster

Nations and individuals accept national and individual responsibility to take action to solve the problem, or else deny responsibility by self-pity, blaming others, and assuming the role of victim. ~ Jared Diamond

I came to understand that the perception that freedom is decadence is a fictitious one. Freedom is a good that is preserved and defended because it places individual responsibility at the heart of society. ~ Omar Saif Ghobash

Malaria prevention and eradication should be inspired by General George Patton's advice: "A good plan executed violently today is better than a perfect plan in a week." In this war of attrition, millions of people will be lost while waiting on researchers to finally emerge triumphant from their labs with the perfect malaria cure; yet meanwhile, there are plenty of time-proven, practical actions that individuals, families and communities can do today with what is already in hand that can decisively defeat malaria transmission if applied with vigor and disciplined consistency. ~ T.K. Naliaka

You go into a community and they will vote 80 percent to 20 percent in favor of a tougher Clean Air Act, but if you ask them to devote 20 minutes a year to having their car emissions inspected, they will vote 80 to 20 against it. We are a long way in this country from taking individual responsibility for the environmental problem. ~ William Ruckelshaus

I have gone from a Barry Goldwater Republican to a New Democrat, but I think my underlying values have remained pretty constant; individual responsibility and community. I do not see those as being mutually inconsistent. ~ Hillary Clinton

Social justice is a cancer. Social justice means you are ruled by whatever the mob does. What social justice does is destroy individual responsibility. ~ Rafael Cruz

Traditionalists like me believe the USA has become strong because of its core values, the freedom, individual responsibility and institutions like traditional marriage, which foster common goals. ~ Bill O'Reilly

That way of life against which my generation rebelled had given us grim courage, fortitude, self-discipline, a sense of individual responsibility, and a capacity for relentless hard work. ~ Rose Wilder Lane

Every individual has a role to play for the betterment of our nation. ~ Sunday Adelaja

The Democratic Party believes that health insurance is a social responsibility of the nation. I believe that health insurance is an individual responsibility. And that's a really hard philosophy to mesh. ~ Raul Labrador

A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity. ~ Aldo Leopold

Why have we had such a decline in moral climate? I submit to you that a major factor has been a change in the philosophy which has been dominant, a change from belief in individual responsibility to belief in social responsibility. If you adopt the view that a man is not responsible for his own behavior, that somehow society is responsible, why should he seek to make his behavior good? ~ Milton Friedman

The [nonprofit] sector enhances our creativity, enlivens our communities, nurtures individual responsibility, stirs life at the grassroots, and reminds us that we were born free. ~ John W. Gardner

Nations are beginning to look to some vague organization, some nebulous course of humanity, to pay their bills and tell them what to do. This is not local self-government. It is not American. It is not the method which has made this country what it is. We can not maintain the western standard of civilization on that theory. If it is supported at all, it will have to be supported on the principle of individual responsibility. ~ Calvin Coolidge

Self-responsibility is the core quality of the fully mature, fully functioning, self-actualizing individual. ~ Brian Tracy

Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom." ~ Eric Hoffer

There is no "scientific worldview" just as there is no uniform enterprise "science"- except in the minds of metaphysicians, school masters, and scientists blinded by the achievements of their own particular niche ... There is no objective principle that could direct us away from the supermarket "religion" or the supermarket "art" toward the more modern, and much more expensive supermarket "science." Besides, the search for such guidance would be in conflict with the idea of individual responsibility which allegedly is an important ingredient of a "rational" or scientific age. ~ Paul Feyerabend

The very idea of penalizing based on propensities is nauseating. To accuse a person of some possible future behavior is to negate the very foundation of justice: that one must have done something before we can hold him accountable for it. After all, thinking bad things is not illegal, doing them is. It is a fundamental tenet of our society that individual responsibility is tied to individual choice of action. [ ... ] Were perfect predictions possible, they would deny human volition, our ability to live our lives freely. Also, ironically, by depriving us of choice they would exculpate us from any responsibility. ~ Viktor Mayer-Schonberger

Nature has come to a point where now, unless you take individual responsibility, you cannot grow. ~ Rajneesh

Individual responsibility, hard work, paying attention in school, faith, family all these things are important. ~ J. C. Watts

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

There is an increasing push to compartmentalize faith separately from our life in the public square - and it's not possible - at least, it's not possible if we continue the American tradition of true individual freedom, which also implies individual responsibility. Without an objective moral standard, that's not possible. ~ Mike Huckabee

Each and every member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bears a personal responsibility to learn and live the truths of the Savior's restored gospel and to receive by proper authority the ordinances of salvation. We should not expect the Church as an organization to teach or tell us all of the things we need to know and do to become devote disciples and endure valiantly to the end (see Doctrine and Covenants 121:29). Rather, our individual responsibility is to learn what we should learn, to live as we know we should live, and to become what the Master would have us become. . . .

Our individual responsibility to learn truth, to love truth, and to live according to truth is increasingly important in a world that is "in commotion" (Doctrine and Covenants 45:26) and grows ever more confused and wicked. We cannot expect simply to attend Church meetings and to participate in programs and thereby receive all of the spiritual fortification and protection that will enable us to "withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand" (Ephesians 6:13). Certainly inspired leaders and activities help and support individual and family efforts to grow spiritually. But the ultimate responsibility for developing spiritual strength and stamina rests upon each and every member of the Church. ~ David A. Bednar

When you take out individual initiative, individual responsibility, and the hope that every individual is born with, to better their lives, to climb the economic ladder, to pursue happiness, that is, in fact, a neoslavery. ~ Niger Innis

Conservatives are also against unions and want to legislate them out of existence via what are called "right to work" laws. Such laws see employment through a Strict Father lens: as simply a matter of individual responsibility by the employee. Conservative enmity against unions follows from the moral hierarchy: Rich Over Poor; Employer Over Employee. Unions are actually agents of freedom - freedom from corporate servitude and wage slavery. Without unions, employees have to individually take what is offered, usually far less than they would get with a union: not just pay but worker safety, health care benefits, pensions, reasonable working conditions and hours, reasonable vacation time. What is "reasonable"? What the union members can negotiate. Unions create freedom. Austerity ~ George Lakoff

Anyone can be a cause of his or her own destruction, but no one can claim individual responsibility for having created a great good. ~ Russell Banks

How do we turn our nation around? President Obama thinks the answer is more and more government. Government is not the answer. You are not doing anyone a favor by creating dependency, destroying individual responsibility. ~ Ted Cruz

A minimal level of sportsman ethics afield is mandated by written law. Beyond that, say, when an action is legal but ethically questionable, or when (as Aldo Leopold long ago pointed out) no one is watching, hunter ethics is an individual responsibility. As the existentialists would have it, we determine our own honor minute by minute, action by action, one decision at a time. ~ David Petersen

Changing mass consciousness is an individual responsibility. ~ Dennis Weaver

I believe it is now the duty of the slaves of the South to rebuke their masters for their robbery, oppression and crime ... Nostation or character can destroy individual responsibility, in the matter of reproving sin. ~ Angelina Grimke

The only thing I believe is individual responsibility doesn't mean the government is the answer to ever fear and every problem every individual has. We are the masters of our own destiny. ~ Sean Hannity

The patrol system leads each boy to see that he has some individual responsibility for the good of his patrol. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

The most important thought that ever occupied my mind is that of my individual responsibility to God. ~ Daniel Webster

Politicians obfuscate. It gets them re-elected. If no-one can understand what is going on, then the perception is that we need someone to guide us through the fog. Many people want to be led. A few people even think that they need to be led. ~ Sieg Pedde

The years I spent in a Steelers uniform & the years I spent in the military stressed the importance of teamwork and the sacrifices you had to make to accomplish the mission. And each emphasized individual responsibility and accountability. ~ Rocky Bleier

What must occur is a greater recognition by investors of their individual responsibility. ~ Arthur Levitt

In a justly ordered
universe, where loss of equipoise would mean total destruction, individual responsibility must be absolute. ~ James Allen

In baseball you have individual responsibility, and if you fail it, you get an error. But at the same time, your focus is on the common goal of the team to win. This is part of what resonates with people about baseball. This is how they would like society to work. ~ Jed S. Rakoff

Debate is never finished; it can't be, lest democracy be no longer democratic and society be stripped of or forfeit its autonomy. Democracy means that the citizen's task is never complete. Democracy exists through persevering and unyielding citizens' concern. Once that concern is put to sleep, democracy expires.
And so there is no, and cannot be, a democracy, an autonomous society, without autonomous citizens - that is, citizens endowed with individual liberty and individual responsibility for the ways they use it. That liberty is another value - though unthinkable in separation from the value of democracy. Democracy rests on the freedom of its citizens, and citizens rest their confidence of being free and the courage to be free on the democracy of their polis. The two make each other and are made in the process of that making. ~ Zygmunt Bauman

Smaller government, more individual responsibility, more individual control creates more Republicans. More state power and ownership and control and top-down decision-making creates more Democrats. ~ Grover Norquist

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. ~ John W. Gardner

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The rise of "teamwork" has made it difficult to trace individual responsibility, ~ Matthew B. Crawford

It may sound reactionary, I know. But we can all feel it. We've changed the way we think of ourselves as citizens. We don't think of ourselves as citizens in the old sense of being small parts of something larger and infinitely more important to which we have serious responsibilities. We do still think of ourselves as citizens in the sense of being beneficiaries
we're actually conscious of our rights as American citizens and the nation's responsibilities to us and ensuring we get our share of the American pie. We think of ourselves now as eaters of the pie instead of makers of the pie. So who makes the pie?
...
Something has happened where we've decided on a personal level that it's all right to abdicate our individual responsibility to the common good and let government worry about the common good while we all go about our individual self-interested business and struggle to gratify our various appetites. ~ David Foster Wallace

Under the constitution, there was never meant to be a federal police force. Even an FBI limited only to investigations was not accepted until this century. Yet today, fueled by the federal government's misdirected war on drugs, radical environmentalism, and the aggressive behavior of the nanny state, we have witnessed the massive buildup of a virtual army of armed regulators prowling the States where they have no legal authority. The sacrifice of individual responsibility and the concept of local government by the majority of American citizens has permitted the army of bureaucrats to thrive. ~ Ron Paul

We believe that the government has an important role to create the conditions that promote entrepreneurship, upward mobility, and individual responsibility. ~ Paul Ryan

On Lou's lips a trace of pinot and out of them poured tales of acts of viciousness worthy of the great Lucifer himself, stories told through the night, the tortures, the beatings, the broken bones, every school has its Tigellinus, but his had more than one and each with followers, all-American boys who delighted in discovering how much pain a soul could withstand, two suicide attempts and all his parents and school could do was try to make Lou change his behavior, his behavior, his behavior, his, his, his, to modify his being just a bit. It gets better, Doc, fucking gets better, no one dared suggest that maybe the family and the school should change, or heaven forbid, that it was the all-Americans who should be modifying their beings, no, the homo should grin and bear it dumbly... ~ Rabih Alameddine

If someone who wanted to learn to dance were to say: For centuries, one generation after the other has learned the positions, and it is high time that I take advantage of this and promptly begin with the quadrille
people would presumably laugh a little at him, but in the world of spirit this is very plausible. What, then, is education? I believed it is the course the individual goes through in order to catch up with himself, and the person who will not go through this course is not much helped by being born in the most enlightened age. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Sin defies God, utterly corrupts each individual, corrodes all social relationships, and issues in death. ~ D. A. Carson

New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute. ~ E.B. White

Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes. ~ Arthur Eddington

Love is no individual's experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal ... ~ Henry David Thoreau

Do not wait for someone else to validate your existence; it is your own responsibility. ~ Jasz Gill

There's nothing in the First Amendment that even remotely talks about spending money for political contests, and to say that an individual can spend as much of his or her own money as he or she wants constitutionally without any limitation, I think is just absurd. ~ Arlen Specter

Rama is a fairly common name in India. It symbolizes an individual who is interested both in enlightenment and martial arts. I do not claim to have any past life connection with the historical Rama. It's just a name I liked. ~ Frederick Lenz

Primary responsibility for Brexit lies with British conservatives, who took an entire continent hostage. ~ Martin Schulz

The draft is a monstrous violation of individual liberty, and even a good motive cannot make it otherwise. In a free society no one should be compelled to take up arms, or be forced to kill or risk being killed ... But who can blame prospective volunteers from doubting that there is a threat from Iraq? The Bush administration has yet to make a persuasive argument to that effect. ~ Sheldon Richman

Since the beginning of the Bush administration when we were attacked, September 11th, we've not had any major terrorist attack in this country. We've had individual crazy people, of normally, they look more like me than they look like Middle Easterners. ~ Sherrod Brown

If you accept full responsibility for yourself, you will be released forever from expectation, resentment, blame and guilt. ~ Leonard Jacobson

Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services. ~ Pope John Paul II

One ironic thing is that although (the Soviet Union) was one of the most oppressive systems, with no respect for the individual, it somehow produced the freest hockey on the planet. These guys, when they got on the ice, it was like watching jazz. They could do anything. I find that a paradox. It's interesting because I think the North American style was a lot less free. It was not encouraged to be creative. ~ Gabe Polsky

For if the choice were given to any individual between his own destruction and that of the world, I do not need to say where it would land in the great majority. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

I know myself as mortal, but this raises the question: "What is I?" Am I an individual, or am I an evolving life stream composed of countless selves? ~ Charles Lindbergh

The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and complex causes.
We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.
Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.
There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its ~ Leo Tolstoy

To be of good quality, you have to excuse yourself from the presence of shallow and callow minded individuals. ~ Michael Bassey

As far as responsibility goes, no one really wants it -- but all of us are responsible to the community we live in & its laws. ~ Truman Capote

I want the French people to respect values that allow each individual to practice his or her faith, but in the frame of our common rules of secularism. ~ Francois Hollande

How do you make RoboCop? How do you slowly bring a guy to be a robot? How do you actually take humanity out of someone and how do you program a brain, so to speak, and how does that affect an individual? ~ Jose Padilha

Even though some individual scholars try to tell us there is no direct connection between images of violence and the violence confronting us in our lives, the commonsense truth remains- we are affected by the images we consume and by the states of mind we are in when watching them. If consumers want to be entertained, and the images shown us as entertaining are images of violent dehumanization, it makes sense that these acts become more acceptable in our daily lives and that we become less likely to respond to them with moral outrage or concern. Were we all seeing more images of loving human interaction, it would undoubtedly have a positive impact on our lives. ~ Bell Hooks

402Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . They're not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer you're gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe – for one thing – only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe there's worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: "Know thyself". Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense – the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other. ~ Alan Moore

No man can choose to serve only himself when he has something to offer his state. No one can put his own wishes above the needs of so many. ~ Megan Whalen Turner

I think that suffering is the way we test our love. Every act of suffering, no matter how small or agonisingly great, is a test of love in some way. Most of the time, suffering is also a test of our love for God... I think that there are two points about suffering that we should remember, and they have to do with pleasure and pain. The first is this: that pain and suffering are connected, but they are not the same thing. Pain can exist without suffering, and it is also possible to suffer without feeling pain...

...The difference between them is this, I think: that what we learn from pain--for example, that fire burns and is dangerous--is always individual, for ourselves alone, but what we learn from suffering is what unites us as one human people. If we do not suffer with our pain, then we have not learned about anything but ourselves. Pain without suffering is like victory without struggle. We do not learn from it what makes us stronger or better or closer to God. - Abdel Khader Khan ~ Gregory David Roberts

In short, it is much easier to see a thing through from the point of view of abstract principle than from that of concrete responsibility. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We need government and business to work together for the benefit of everyone. It should no longer be just about typical "corporate social responsibility" where the "responsibility" bit is usually the realm of a small team buried in a basement office - now it should be about every single person in a business taking responsibility to make a difference in everything they do, at work and in their personal lives. ~ Richard Branson

Communities tend to be guided less than individuals by conscience and a sense of responsibility. How much misery does this fact cause mankind! It is the source of wars and every kind of oppression, which fill the earth with pain, sighs and bitterness. ~ Albert Einstein

We seek true individuality and the true individuals. But we find them not. For lo, we mortals see what our poor eyes can see; and they, the true individuals, - they belong not to this world of our merely human sense and thought. ~ Josiah Royce

As a man, I have to accept responsibility for all the pain I've ever caused her and Rose'. ~ Mz. Lady P

The individuals in the high-IQ group might have scored better individually on intelligence tests, but when it came to solving problems as a group, diversity matters more than individual brainpower. ~ Steven Johnson

We've learned that women can and should do 'men's jobs,' for instance, and we've won the principle (if not the fact) of getting equal pay. But we haven't yet established the principle (much less the fact) that men can and should do 'women's jobs': that homemaking and child-rearing are as much a man's responsibility, too, and that those jobs in which women are concentrated outside the home would probably be better paid if more men became secretaries, file clerks, and nurses, too. ~ Gloria Steinem

I haven't had an easy life, but at some point, you have to take responsibility for yourself and shape who it is that you want to be. I have no time for moaners. I like to chase my dreams and surround myself with other people who are chasing their dreams, too. ~ Aimee Mullins

The ripped open houses with their exposed arrangements, their laid bare secrets, are like portraits. Each one has its own individual facial expression. More identity is on display in the midst of the destruction. More intimacy. It makes her realise how vulnerable these achievements are. Identity. Intimacy. ~ Glenn Haybittle

The restaurant, Bongiorno's, was bad and didn't know it. Everything was presented with a passive-aggressive flourish, as though we probably weren't savvy enough to appreciate the oregano-heavy garlic bread, the individual bowls for olive pits, the starched napkins stuffed into our wineglasses, or the waiter's strained enunciation of a long list of specials. ~ Jonathan Lethem

Freedom means Freedom for the Group, not Freedom for the Individual. ( ... ) Men must not be slaves to other men, but they must be slaves to their group. For, if they are not slaves to their own group, they will assuredly become slaves to some other. ~ Liang Qichao

In Europe it is particularly important that we build good relations to everyone who holds political responsibility because Europe can only be build together. ~ Angela Merkel

For a while parents seemed to forget that their responsibility as parents did not cease when the child turned on the radio; rather it increases. In the August, 1938, issue of Your Life, Mary Linton has this to say to the parent who is blaming everyone but himself for his child's actions:
It isn't up to the teachers in the schools, nor the Federal Radio Commissioners, nor anyone else on earth. It's up to us - it's our job! Our job to teach them right from wrong, honesty from dishonesty, a clean and intelligent attitude toward sex, a healthful fastidiousness about their own bodies. We can teach these things because we have the daily opportunity of knowing our children and their reactions. ~ Judith C. Waller