Responsibility Quotes

"No governmental action, no economic doctrine, no economic plan or project can replace that God-imposed responsibility of the individual man and woman to their neighbors."

- Herbert Hoover, 1931

"Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having."

- Mohandas Gandhi

"It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."

- Robert H. Jackson

"It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part."

- James Madison

"No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government from the highest to the lowest are bound to obey it."

- Samuel F. Miller

"Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote."

- George Jean Nathan

"Active citizens … are public meeting-goers and joiners of voluntary organizations who discuss and deliberate with others about the policies that will affect them all, and who serve their country not only as taxpayers and occasional soldiers, but by having a considered notion of the public good that they genuinely take to heart. The good citizen is a patriot."

- Judith N. Shklar

"The simple act of voting is the ground upon which the edifice of elective government rests ultimately."

- Judith N. Shklar

"Whether in private or in public, the good citizen does something to support democratic habits and the constitutional order."

- Judith N. Shklar

"As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the lawgivers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end."

- Adlai Stevenson

"Act as if the whole election depended on your single vote, and as if the whole Parliament (and therein the whole nation) on the single person whom you now chose to be a member of it."

- John Wesley

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed it ourselves."

- Abraham Lincoln

"God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest."

- P. D. James

"A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."

- Thomas Jefferson

"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail."

- Thomas Jefferson

"I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country."

- Thomas Jefferson

"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

- Thomas Jefferson

"We identify the flag with almost everything we hold dear on earth, peace, security, liberty, our family, our friends, our home… but when we look at our flag and behold it emblazoned with all our rights we must remember that it is equally a symbol of our duties. Every glory that we associate with it is the result of duty done."

- Calvin Coolidge

"We identify the flag with almost everything we hold dear on earth, peace, security, liberty, our family, our friends, our home... But when we look at our flag and behold it emblazoned with all our rights we must remember that it is equally a symbol of our duties. Every glory that we associate with it is the result of duty done."

- Calvin Coolidge

"It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable."

- Moliere

"If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt."

- Dean Martin

"No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique."

- Sun Tzu

"Failing to hold someone accountable is ultimately an act of selfishness."

- Patrick Lencioni

"A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody."

- Thomas Paine

"You are the reason of your own good-luck and bad-luck; success and failure; happiness and pain. Your choices are responsible for your present. Don’t blame someone else for your sufferings or failures."

- Sanjeev Himachali

"Good morning! Your future is created by what you do today."

"Your day is only as good as you make it."

"The morning shines upon everyone the same. It's up to you to make it worth the light."