Quotes about responsibility

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."

Calamity and happiness have no volition. Man brings them on himself. Go in a flaxen cape to put out a fire and you'll be consumed by flames.

“If everyone took personal responsibility for their animals, we wouldn’t have a lot of the animal problems that we do.

No one wants to think they are the cause of their own misery.

Hardly any part of anyone's conduct concerns only himself.

Whenever the roles of individuals within a group become specialized, it becomes both possible and easy for the individual to pass the moral buck to some other part of the group. In this way, not only does the individual forsake his conscience but the conscience of the group as a whole can become so fragmented and diluted as to be nonexistent.

Owning your mistakes meant not making them twice.

“Sometimes you don’t get redeemed,” she said, and here voice made it clear she’d thought about the question. Tired and strong at the same time. “Not every stain comes out. Sometimes you do something bad enough that you carry the consequences for the rest of your life and take the regrets to the grave. That’s your happy ending.”

I knew that if things were going to improve, I was the one responsible for making it happen

One of the secrets Martin must have learned down below the Northern Marsh was how not to care about some things, and there was power in that, the power to live as though his actions had no consequences. It fell to us to witness the consequences, and they were ugly.

To be honest, Quentin felt superior to anybody who still messed around with magic. They could delude themselves if they liked, those self-indulgent magical mandarins, but he’d outgrown that stuff. He wasn’t a magician anymore, he was a man, and a man took responsibility for his actions.

What one does is never enough. I don't want this challenge we're facing to defeat us. I want to do my bit, I want future generations to understand how hard we fought to stop the triumph of the unacceptable. (V)