Quotes about Responsibility

If you don't want the effect, do something to remove the causes. There is no use loving the cause and fearing the effect and being surprised when the effect inevitably follows the cause.

The inner self is "purified" by the acknowledgment of sin, not precisely because the inner self is the seat of sin, but because both our sinfulness and our interiority tend to be rejected in one and the same movement by the exterior self and relegated to the same darkness, so that when the inner self is brought back to light, sin emerges and is liquidated by the assuming of responsibility and by sorrow.

We are not responsible for more than our own action, but for this we should take complete responsibility. Then the results will follow of themselves, in a manner we may not always be able to foresee. We do not always have to foresee every possibility.

It is easier to serve the hate-gods because they thrive on the worship of collective fanaticism. To serve the hate-gods, one has only to be blinded by collective passion. To serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one's neighbor.

we too easily assume that we are our real selves, and that our choices are really the ones we want to make when, in fact, our acts of free choice are (though morally imputable, no doubt) largely dictated by psychological compulsions, flowing from our inordinate ideas of our own importance.

Actually I feel more sure than I ever have in my life that I am obeying the Lord and am on the way He wills for me, though at the same time I am struck and appalled (more than ever!) by the shoddiness of my response.

God does not give us graces or talents or virtues for ourselves alone. We are members one of another and everything that is given to one member is given for the whole body. I do not wash my feet to make them more beautiful than my face.

Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.

Blaming others wouldn't do. Only when I began to see the world's ills mirrored in myself did I begin to find an answer; only as I began to address that uncomfortable word, sin, did I see that I was not being handed a load of needless guilt so much as a useful tool for confronting the negative side of human behavior.

But some object and ask, what about the "innocent children" — if there were any left — at the time of the Flood? First they weren't innocent (Romans 3:2329). But again, the onus would be on the parents and guardians who refused to allow their evil children the possibility of survival on the ark!

He that is not with me is against me" (Mat 12:30). If you are not gathering, then you are scattering. If you are not walking in light, then you are walking in darkness! There is no neutral position;  there is no middle ground!

That's our job as Christians—to perpetually bring renewal and supply everywhere we go. When things get out of hand and situations on earth start to go wild (whether it's the economy, or politics, or natural disasters) we're not supposed to jump into the flow of negativity with everyone else and start talking about how bad things are. We're supposed to change them! We're