Human responsibility

“ With respect to their responsibility, it is difficult to conceive how it could be increased. Every consideration that can influence the human mind, such as honor, oaths, reputations, conscience, the love of country, and family affections and attachments, afford security for their fidelity. ”

“ Our policies must be premised on and must reinforce values such as family, hard work, integrity, personal responsibility. ”

“ Everywhere we are commencing to hear of "social duty," of obligation to the lesser and unfortunate, of the responsibility of the leaders to the led, of the well to the sick, of the law-abiding to the criminal. ”

“ But most of all, it will require a renewed sense of responsibility from every American -– a responsibility to ourselves and one another; a responsibility that's already been demonstrated by the men and women who are sitting behind me here today. ”

“ And the more numerous the body, and the more changeable its component parts, the more difficult it will be to preserve the personal responsibility, as well as the uniform action, of the successive members to the great objects of the public welfare. ”

“ These are duties which I hold every man is bound, in honesty to his family and in moral responsibility to society, to perform, unless he have, by some other means, laid up a provision to supply the wants of those who in his lifetime look to him for their support. ”

“ To say what it is people are responsible to is of course a great extension of the question: briefly, to social expectation, to propriety, to morality, to “position,” to the conventional English conscience, which is, after all, such a powerful factor. With us there is infinitely less responsibility ”

“ Among laymen, a deep responsibility would appear to rest on those particularly, whose profession leads them most directly to consider the boundaries of the various rights and duties, which fill the space of civilized Society. ”

“ It involves a tremendous responsibility, not merely for the present, but for all future time; for, if we go wrong on this subject, we shall have done an act that will produce conditions under which the whole character of the people will be changed. ”

“ And when society has thus deputed a certain number of their equals to take care of their personal rights, and the interest of the whole community, it must be considered that responsibility is the great security of integrity and honour ”

“ When I think of conduct as required of me, I think of it as my duty; when I think of it as conduct which if I do not perform, I shall be rightly punished, I have the sense of responsibility." The sense of responsibility is thus a knowledge of the requirements of the law, and it is only as we have law-abiding instincts that we feel it; and we feel it differently according as we think of the authority of the law as derived from its mere enactment or as founded upon the social good, or as established in our own conscience and self-respect, which represent the social good. ”

“ Reason, too, in harmony with these laws, shows that the true dignity of Humanity is in the moral and intellectual nature, and that the labors of Justice and Benevolence, directed by intelligence and abasing that part which is in common with beasts, are the highest forms of human conduct. ”

“ Could not the people with large influence, who are interested in this matter, band together and discuss some scheme for the sending out of lecturers all over England who would explain, with common sense entirely stripped of all politics or religion, to the rising generation, the vast importance of individual responsibility—the duty of all citizens—the glory of helping the great force aright? ”

“ The responsibility therefore, rests entirely with the individual, as to what use he makes of his opportunities, as to his purposes and aims, and as he advances in his course, involved in the circle of necessity, he influences whether he will or no, those whose spheres of life touch at any point his own. As ye sow, so shall ye also reap. By and by the cycle will close and both the evil and the good will return like bread cast upon the waters. ”

“ DO YOUR PART.—Do your part, and be a man among men. Assume your portion of social responsibility, and see that you discharge it well. If you do not do this, then you are mean, and society has the right to despise you just as much as it chooses to do so. You are, to use a word more emphatic than agreeable, a sneak, and have not a claim upon your neighbors for a single polite word. ”

“ Has responsibility still its moral value, are we the actors of our actions, are we still good, are we still guilty, when every deed follows as necessary effect? Is not, then, the whole constitution of the world, which has made us, responsible whenever we move our hand for good or for bad? ”

“ But the Governing Mind must comprehend also the laws of the responsible creatures which the world contains, and must entertain the purposes for which their responsible agency was given them. It must include these laws and purposes, connected by means of the notions, which responsibility implies, of desert and reward, of moral excellence in various degrees, and of well-being as associated with right doing. All the laws which govern the moral world are expressions of the thought and intentions of our Supreme Ruler. ”

“ We may see in it, especially, the spirit of personal responsibility, the loss of which—if we ever do lose it, should authority be able to reassert her old power—will be fatal to intellectual or moral advance. Personal responsibility brings with it personal dignity, enterprise, courage, patience, all the virtues. ”

“ It is therefore evidently the intention of that part of the moral government with which we are acquainted, to impress these principles deeply on the human mind, and to induce the human race to regulate their conduct accordingly. ”

“ We may consider these paternal functions of government under three heads: the improvement of human environment, to make it more beautiful and convenient; the development, through educational agencies, of the mental and moral life of the people; and the improvement, by various means, of the human stock itself. ”

“ Wherefore for the public interest and benefit of human society it is requisite that the highest obligations possible should be laid upon the consciences of men. ”

“ Wherever collective standards, codes, ideals, and motives take the place of individual responsibility, we know from ample experience that the spontaneity and independent responsibility which are essential to moral vigor are sure to be lost.
The things which men call "goods," therefore, because they are means or powers, are not positive gains; they only open the lists and give the chance for a struggle. ”

“ Who has solved these questions? And if you have solved them for yourselves, where do you find the authority to solve them for others? Do not take useless responsibilities on yourselves. Everyone has his own, and that is sufficient. ”

“ This element of obvious usefulness is all the more to be counted on in sweetening tasks otherwise irksome, since social morality, the responsibility of man towards the life of man, will, in the new order of things, take the place of theological morality, or the responsibility of man to some abstract idea. ”

“ All notions of propriety, decency, chastity, politeness, order, duty, right, rights, discipline, respect, reverence, coöperation, and fellowship, especially all things in regard to which good and ill depend entirely on the point at which the line is drawn, are in the mores. The mores can make things seem right and good to one group or one age which to another seem antagonistic to every instinct of human nature. ”

“ Some of these moral conceptions are that all have common rights, that each owes to all common duties, that there should be no right without duties, and that duties should be proportioned to capabilities. ”

“ Shall our lives be secure? Shall our homes be safe? Shall our wives and children live in quiet? Shall right, and not might, be the governing principle of society?
“It is to decide questions thus vital to our happiness and that of those who are dependent upon us, that we have now met; and I beg you as fellow-men, as brothers, as friends and neighbors, as you value life, and liberty, and justice, and a good conscience, to come to their consideration ready and determined to act for the best good of the greatest number. ”

“ Justice, humanity, and benevolence, are the duties you owe to society in general. To your country the same duties are incumbent upon you, with the additional obligation of sacrificing ease, pleasure, wealth, and life itself for its defense and security. To your parents you owe love, reverence, and obedience to all just and equitable commands. ”

“ This is simply the long history of the origin of responsibility. That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more immediate task of first making man to a certain extent, necessitated, uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable. ”

“ In this question of looking after the welfare of your men there are two opposing considerations to be kept in mind. You are to build up in them self-respect, initiative, individual responsibility and self-determination, and therefore must not patronize [Pg 136] them, coddle them, or treat them like children. On the other hand you have to recognize the characteristic of an individual in a group—he immediately shifts individual responsibility to the shoulders of the group. ”

“ And where men or nations have broken down, it will almost invariably be found that neglect of little things was the rock on which they split. Every human being has duties to be performed, and, therefore, has need of cultivating the capacity for doing them; whether the sphere of action be the management of a household, the conduct of a trade or profession, or the government of a nation. ”

“ This growing sense of personal responsibility, and still better, of personal interest, this giving of one's abilities and one's time, in addition to one's means, is the beginning of the fulfilment of what I have long thought: namely, the great gain that will accrue to numberless communities and to the nation, when men of great means, men of great business and executive ability, give of their time and their abilities for the accomplishment of those things for the public welfare that otherwise would remain undone, or that would remain unduly delayed. ”

“ Their observation of human life must inform them of the ways that men take to conciliate the good will of their fellows, to prosecute their own advantages in the world, and to acquire the confidence and esteem of that society, in which they are stationed. What they find to be the rule of others, must be a rule to themselves. ”

“ Leaving out of sight the question of a society wider than the state, we must say that a man’s life with its moral duties is in the main filled up by his station in that system of wholes which the state is, and that this, partly by its laws and institutions, and still more by its spirit, gives him the life which he does live and ought to live. ”

“ Well may the boldest fear and the wisest tremble when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country's peace and prosperity, and in some degree the hopes and happiness of the whole human family. ”

“ It will come only when the whole nation, as one man, shall be guided in every transaction, small and great, by justice and judgment, and not till then. In the mean time, it is every man’s duty, who sees and acknowledges this truth, to do all in his power to give it vitality in the minds of the people. ”

“ It implies an ability to subordinate the individual to the general welfare, to sacrifice present comfort to future good, to decide whether an act is right or wrong by making it general, to put all questions on an impersonal basis. ”

“ Beyond all question, as thus witnessed in the universal moral consciousness, these relations from the most general, that of man to man, down through all special connections, as between parents and children, husband and wife, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, rulers and citizens, employer and employé, rich and poor, capable and helpless, and all the other human interrelations in their thousands of diversified forms, do determine and impose both general and specific duties. ”

“ Your responsibility is increased, and that not to such an extent as to crush you under its weight. It's of great consequence, I consider it, to have one's responsibility thus gradually increased. It fits one for a farther increase, when he has successfully carried his previous burden. ”

“ And the prosperity of individuals, of families, and of nations, for this life and the life to come, depends more on the proper control and regulation of these principles than on any other social or moral duty. ”

“ The issue of this may either be an apparent suspension of the moral growth of the individual, or a clearer apprehension of the spirit underlying the letter of the obligations laid on him by society, which makes his rational recognition of duty, when arrived at, a much more valuable influence in promoting the moral growth of society. ”

“ Can there then be a more stringent public duty for every man—and the greater the intelligence the greater the duty—than to take care, by all the influence he can command, that the country, the majority, public opinion, shall have a mind to do only what is just and pure and humane? ”