Responsibility quotes
5.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside responsibility — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"In the present circumstances, no one can afford to assume that someone else will solve their problems. Every individual has a responsibility to help guide our global family in the right direction. Good wishes are not sufficient; we must become actively engaged."
"If you contribute to other peoples happiness, you will find the true meaning of life. The key point is to have a genuine sense of universal responsibility"
"Education is the best way to train ourselves that we will secure our own well-being by concerning ourselves with others. It is possible to create a better world, a more compassionate, more peaceful world, which is not only in everyone’s interest, but is everyone’s responsibility to achieve."
"Compassion can be roughly defined in terms of a state of mind that is nonviolent, nonharming, and nonaggressive. It is a mental attitude based on the wish for others to be free of their suffering and is associated with a sense of commitment, responsibility, and respect towards others."
"Each individual has a universal responsibility to shape institutions to serve human needs."
"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship."
"in times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity."
"This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility."
"Next to the assumption of power was the responsibility of relinquishing it."
"Tomorrow's leaders not only have dreams, goals and plans. They are willing to work hard and to take responsibility for turning their plans into energy, perspiration and effort. They don't sit back and wait for someone else to turn their dreams into action. They take charge of executing their own plan."
"You must accept responsibility for your actions, but not the credit for your achievements."
"I think a responsibility comes with notoriety, but I never think of it as power. It's more like something you hold, like grains of sand. If you keep your hand closed, you can have it and possess it, but if you open your fingers in any way, you can lose it just as quickly."
"The Federal Government has a responsibility to manage wisely those public lands and forests under its jurisdiction necessary in the interest of the public as a whole. ... In the utilization of these lands, the people are entitled to expect that their timber, minerals, streams and water supply, wildlife and recreational values should be safeguarded, improved and made available not only for this but for future generations."
"It is a great privilege, as well as our responsibility, to pray for our government leaders."
"The Evangelistic Harvest is always urgent. The destiny of men and of nations is always being decided. Every generation is strategic. We are not responsible for the past generation, and we cannot bear the full responsibility for the next one; but we do have our generation. God will hold us responsible as to how well we fulfill our responsibilities to this age and take advantage of our opportunities."
"Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great- grandparents, according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack their innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve the parents, whom they invariably love, of all responsibility."
"I'm still not comfortable recommending that people eat saturated fat with abandon, but it's clear to me that sugar, flour and oxidized seed oils create inflammatory effects in the body that almost certainly bear most of the responsibility for elevating heart disease risk."
"Sometimes it is easy... to enhance your prestige by not exercising your responsibility, but that's not been the tradition of the court."
""It's a question of discipline," the little prince told me later on. "When you've finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet.""
"A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten,' he does not say 'My men were beaten.'"
