Quotes about Duty

When any practice is proposed and enforced as a binding duty, we have a right to examine the grounds of the alleged obligation.

I've found my line- from now on this comes first. This is my immediate duty- without this I am nothing.

My duty to the army and to the republic whose battles we were waging forbade me assuming a position of seeming hostility to any portion of the brave men under my command.

Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.

Theirs is not to make reply: Theirs is not to reason why: Theirs is but to do and die.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

I have considered the subject of missions nearly a year and have found my mind gradually tending to a deep conviction that it is my duty personally to engage in this service.

It's true that Darwin didn't live the optimally utilitarian life. No one ever has. Still, as he prepared to die, he could rightly have reflected on a life decently and compassionately lived, a string of duties faithfully discharged, a painful, if only partial, struggle against the currents of selfishness whose source he was the first man to see. It wasn't a perfect life; but human beings are capable of worse.

Freedom is not free

Some people wonder all their lives if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem.

If freedom, democracy, and the rights of man are to be preserved through the ages, free men and women must accept the responsibilities that go with their freedoms.

It is up to us in our time to choose, and choose wisely, between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.