Social Obligation Quotes

Actually, I think the Princess has no rights whatever. She was born a lady, came into the world in her right mind, ought to have known what was implied by marrying the heir to the throne, and accordingly put up with whatever befell her. In fact, duty.

I remember being forced to go to Sunday school for a number of years, even though my parents were not religious. No one was really religious; it was just the framework. There was no passion for it. No passion for anything. Just a quiet, kind of floaty, kind of semi-oppressive, blank palette that youre living in.

I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.

...no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.

If I am virtuous and worthy, for whom should I not maintain a proper concern?

It is no less the duty of the minority than a majority to endeavour to defend the country.

It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

A body politic is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.

Labor is the source of all wealth, and of all civilization; and since it is only through society that generally productive labor is possible, the whole product of labor, where there is a general obligation to work, belongs to society, - that is, to all its members, by equal right, to each according to his reasonable needs.

Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours.

I'd have to say I've become more aware of my communal responsibility.

Whatever is a privilege rather than a right, may be made dependent upon citizenship.

From Alexander the Platonic, not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations.

I believe corporations that benefit from everything America has to offer should feel (ph) some sense of responsibility, not just to their biggest shareholders, but to their workers, to their customers, to their communities and, yes, to our country.

Nobody has ever given a reason why men should be their brother's keepers.

The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm

Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920's and 1930's when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother's keeper.

Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?

We have learned to turn out lots of goods and services, but we haven't learned as well how to have everybody share in the bounty. The obligation of a society as prosperous as ours is to figure out how nobody gets left too far behind.

Privilege is here, and with privilege goes responsibility.

After Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the belief in decent housing as a political right or social obligation was supplanted in the U.S. by the notion that suitable shelter should be an act of charity.

If someone asks me to go to speak at, say, Princeton, I might or might not go. But if someone asks me from Norman, Oklahoma, I certainly will go.