Sunday, January 10, 2010 – Assuming Responsibility
Responsibility: A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star. ~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911
Responsibility’s like a string we can only see the middle of. Both ends are out of sight. ~ William McFee, Casuals of the Sea, 1916
The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs. ~ Joan Didion
Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it’s addressed to someone else. ~ Ivern Ball
The great thought, the great concern, the great anxiety of men is to restrict, as much as possible, the limits of their own responsibility. ~ Giosué Borsi
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. ~ Erica Jong
Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity. ~ M. Scott Peck
Duty is what one expects from others. ~ Oscar Wilde
Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own. ~ Charles de Gaulle
To counter the avoidance of intellectual challenge and responsibility, we must reduce the domination of certainty in education. ~ William Glasser
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility. ~ Ambrose Bierce
By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself. ~ Franz Kafka
The other day the President said, I know you’ve had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. He paused, then said, would you like a puppy? ~ Dan Quayle
In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes. ~ Theodor Adorno
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. ~ George Burns
Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong. ~ Winston Churchill
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives. ~ C. S. Lewis
If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month. ~ Theodore Roosevelt
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary. ~ Blaise Pascal
We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin
Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours. ~ Grover Cleveland
Every woman needs one man in her life who is strong and responsible. Given this security, she can proceed to do what she really wants to do – fall in love with men who are weak and irresponsible. ~ Richard Needham
An idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it. ~ Don Marquis
Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible. ~ Lillian Hellman
It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities. ~ Josiah Charles Stamp
I am responsible only to God and history. ~ Francisco Franco
The man with the ball is responsible for what happens to the ball. ~ Branch Rickey
Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors. ~ Jonas Salk
There are always those who think they know what is your responsibility better than you do. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world. ~ Georges Duhamel
Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Just Above Sunset 