Quotes about Responsibility

By virtue of being created by God, the world knows how to live and is under obligation to live that way, but it has declined. It has thus "profaned" the earth, made it something God no longer wishes to have anything to do with, something God could not continue to have anything to do with without compromising who he is.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.

Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.

The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nations greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. [Inaugural Address, January 20 1961]

One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.

Take charge of your life or someone else will!

They have forgotten these immortal words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor whose passion for truth drove him to confront Adolf Hitler and Germany:   Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.1.

Boys do not fully know what is good and what is evil; they do wrong things at first almost innocently. Novelty hides vice from them; there is no one to warn them or give them rules; and they become slaves of sin, while they are learning what sin is.

Considering myself called of my God to instruct the ignorant, comfort the sorrowful, confirm the weak, and rebuke the proud; by tongue and lively voice in these corrupt days rather than to compose books for the age to come, seeing that so much is written, and yet so little well observed, I decree to contain myself within the bounds of that vocation whereunto I found myself especially called.