Quotes about responsibility

The virtue of the market is that it disperses responsibility.

But it may be that there is happiness in the very things we rejected - in work and responsibility. In the rearing of children and in the challenge of permanent love.

When responsibility is thrust upon you, can you run from it? No—you have never and you never will. That is what makes you as you are. That is why men follow you, though they hate your blood. They trust you.

"Well lad, this is what you have chosen. Are you pleased with yourself?"

“I am alive," said Bane.

“And eight men are dead," said Landis. “Eight souls cast out of the world. More mothers to grieve, more children to know sorrow. Is this a life you want for yourself?”

“No it is not," Bane told him. “But we do what we must.”

“Not true! We do what we choose. And we face the consequences."

Power broken into a thousand pieces can be hidden and disowned. If no individual or institution possesses the authority to act without of everybody else in the room, then nobody is at fault if anything goes wrong.

Men at some time are masters of their fates:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Jonas did not want to go back. He did not want the memories, didn't want the honor, didn't want the wisdom, didn't want the pain. He wanted his childhood again, his scraped knees and ball games. He sat in his dwelling alone, watching through the window, seeing children at play, citizens bicycling home from uneventful days at work, ordinary lives free of anguish because he had been selected, as others before him had, to bear their burden. But the choice was not his. He returned each day to the Annex room.

She’s probably only now beginning to be able to think for herself, he thought. And she’ll be hating it. Will she acknowledge the responsibilities that she can now clearly see, or will they be so appalling that she’ll just want to return to the selfless haze?

What's really wrong with making them the problem is that you abdicate your own responsibility. Once you say some mysterious they is in charge, then you're able to sit back comfortably and complain about how they are doing it.

To give up responsibility for our lives is not healthy.

In the end, leadership is a choice. Rank, authority, and even responsibility can be inherited or assigned, whether or not an individual desires or deserves them. Even the mantle of leadership occasionally falls to people who haven't sought it. But actually leading is different. A leader decides to accept responsibility for others in a way that assumes stewardship of their hopes, their dreams, and sometimes their very lives. It can be a crushing burden, but I found it an indescribable honor.

We relinquished our freedom that day, and we were more than happy to see it go. From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and say “They told me to do it! It’s their fault, not mine.” The freedom, God help us, to say “I was only following orders.”