Quotes about Responsibility

It never does any good when one knave punishes another without first becoming good himself.

We all shouldn't try to do the same work. Rather, each of us should pay attention to our own responsibilities. Otherwise, we cannot be of one mind and one heart. We must allow the works to be varied so that each of us can remain with what God has entrusted to us. We should simply do the work at hand.

If I were emperor, king, or prince in a campaign against the Turk, I would exhort my bishops and priests to stay at home and mind the duties of their office, praying, fasting, saying mass, preaching, and caring for the poor, as not only Holy Scripture, but their own canon law teaches and requires.

You are commanded to get angry, not on your own behalf, but on behalf of your office and of God; you must not confuse the two, your person and your office.

In the same way, people who sleep when they should be working are testing God. Because God promised to take care of them, they assume that God will find a way. But in Proverbs, God told them to work: "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth" (Proverbs 10:4).

Every city should support its own poor, and if it was too small, the people in the surrounding villages should also be urged to contribute

The Lord is our glory. Such gifts as we possess we acknowledge to be the gifts of God, given to us for the good of the Church of Christ. Therefore we are not proud because of them. We know that more is required of them to whom much is given, than of such to whom little is given. We also know that God is no respecter of persons. A plain factory hand who does his work faithfully pleases God just as much as a minister of the Word.

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir . . . America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned.

And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.

I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the "oughtness" that forever confronts him.

I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality