Quotes about responsibility

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

— Douglas Adams

You must choose the thoughts and actions that will lead you on to success.

— R. C. Allen

To shun one's cross is to make it heavier.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have ? life itself.

— Walter Anderson

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting, then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that one as well.

— Maya Angelou

No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it.

— Aristotle

The way to avoid responsibility is to say, I've got responsibilities.

— Richard Bach

The mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.

— Francis Bacon

God, Private Enterprise and government have made me what I am, and now they have to take some of the blame.

— Joy Baluch

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you, never excuse yourself.

— Henry Ward Beecher

A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with -- a man is what he makes of himself.

— Alexander Graham Bell

Bear one another's burdens.

— Bible

Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required. [Luke 12:48]

— Bible

No one will improve your lot if you do not yourself.

— Bertolt Brecht

If people concentrated on their responsibilities, others would have their rights.

— Stuart Briscoe

Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.

— Les Brown

You take on the responsibility for making your dream a reality.

— Les Brown

Accept the consequences of your actions in order to become the agent of your mental, physical, spiritual and material success.

— Les Brown

If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams.

— Les Brown

The important thing is to concentrate upon what you can do -- by yourself, upon your own initiative.

— Harry Browne

All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.

— Thomas Carlyle

An individual without information can't take responsibility. An individual with information can't help but take responsibility.

— Jan Carlzon

Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.

— William Ellery Channing

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

— Winston Churchill

Nobody can do it for you.

— Ralph Cordiner

Accountability breeds response-ability.

— Stephen R. Covey

Responsibility is the thing people dread most of all. Yet it is the one thing in the world that develops us, gives us manhood or womanhood fiber.

— Frank Crane

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.

— Max Depree

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.

— Joan Didion

Good men prefer to be accountable.

— Michael Edwardes

Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely like exercising authority usually lose it.

— Malcolm S. Forbes

You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.

— Henry Ford

I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.

— Viktor E. Frankl

All business depends upon men fulfilling their responsibilities.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity.

— Nadine Gordimer

Much misconstruction and bitterness are spared to him who thinks naturally upon what he owes to others rather than what he ought to expect from them.

— Madame Guizot

Everyone has a responsibility to not only tolerate another person's point of view, but also to accept it eagerly as a challenge to your own understanding. And express those challenges in terms of serving other people.

— Arlo Guthrie

We are each responsible for all of our experiences.

— Louise L. Hay

More power than all the success slogans ever penned by human hand is the realization for every man that he has but one boss. That boss is the man -- he -- himself.

— Gabriel Heatter

If you load responsibility on a man unworthy of it he will always betray himself.

— August Heckscher

You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.

— Napoleon Hill

No alibi will save you from accepting the responsibility.

— Napoleon Hill

Responsibility walks hand in hand with capacity and power.

— Josiah Gilbert Holland

Each is responsible for his own actions.

— H. L. Hunt

The ability to accept responsibility is the measure of the man.

— Roy L. Hunt

A free man is as jealous of his responsibilities as he is of his liberties.

— Cyril James

No man was ever endowed with a right without being at the same time saddled with a responsibility.

— Gerald W. Johnson

Champions take responsibility. When the ball is coming over the net, you can be sure I want the ball.

— Billie Jean King

Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility. In the final analysis, the only quality that all successful people have is the ability to take on responsibility.

— Michael Korda

As novices, we think we're entirely responsible for the way people treat us. I have long since learned that we are responsible only for the way we treat people.

— Rose Wilder Lane

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

— Stanislaw J. Lec

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

— Abraham Lincoln

Psychologically I should say that a person becomes an adult at the point when he produces more than he consumes or earns more than he spends. This may be a the age of eighteen, twenty-five, or thirty-five. Some people remain unproductive and dependent children forever and therefore intellectually and emotionally immature.

— Henry C. Link

I guess more players lick themselves that are ever licked by an opposing team. The first thing any man has to know is how to handle himself.

— Connie Mack

We have a Bill of rights. What we need is a Bill of responsibilities.

— Bill Maher

We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible.

— Allan Massie

In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for finding himself. If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

— Thomas Merton

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.

— Stanley Milgram

I was taught very early that I would have to depend entirely upon myself; that my future lay in my own hands.

— Darius Ogden Mills

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

— Moliere

We are accountable only to ourselves for what happens to us in our lives.

— Mildred Newman

When we have begun to take charge of our lives, to own ourselves, there is no longer any need to ask permission of someone.

— George O'Neil

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

— George Orwell

Responsibility educates.

— Wendell Phillips

You have to do it yourself, no one else will do it for you. You must work out your own salvation.

— Charles E. Popplestone

I will not surrender responsibility for my life and my actions.

— John Enoch Powell

The burden one likes is cheerfully carried.

— Proverb

One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is to be prepared.

— Dan Quayle

We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

— Ronald Reagan

Whatever happens, take responsibility.

— Anthony Robbins

The only way to get rid of responsibilities is to discharge them.

— Walter S. Robertson

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty.

— John D. Rockefeller

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

— Jim Rohn

One must care about a world one will not see.

— Bertrand Russell

To be a man is to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.

— Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

I am responsible for everything except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will -- his personal responsibility.

— Albert Schweitzer

We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt.

— Sir Walter Scott

The superior man blames himself. The inferior man blames others.

— Don Shula

I don't remember, I didn't do it. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it

— Joe Simmons

The day you take complete responsibility for yourself, the day you stop making any excuses, that's the day you start to the top.

— O. J. Simpson

Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing... they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.

— Samuel Smiles

It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Nothing strengthens the judgement and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility.

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Nothing happens by itself. It all will come your way, once you understand that you have to make it come your way, by your own exertions.

— Ben Stein

Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.

— Max Stirner

Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.

— Tom Stoppard

Only you can hold yourself back, only you can stand in your own way. Only you can help yourself.

— Mikhail Strabo

From my tribe I take nothing I am the maker of my own fortune.

— Tecumseh

As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.

— Arnold Toynbee

The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.

— Brian Tracy

A man carries his success or his failure with him, it does not depend on outside conditions.

— Ralph Waldo Trine

Life's heaviest burden is to have nothing to carry.

— Source Unknown

Freedom is a package deal -- with it comes responsibilities and consequences.

— Source Unknown

Be more aware of responsibility than you are of your rights.

— Source Unknown

No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.

— Source Unknown

Life is not accountable to us. We are accountable to life.

— Denis Waitley

You must accept responsibility for your actions, but not the credit for your achievements.

— Denis Waitley