Cool Quotes on Responsibility

Responsibility is a trait that is not only good to have but one that is needed in order to succeed at work, at home and at life in general. Here’s a comprehensive list of quotes on responsibility to help keep your focus:

Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off. — General Colin Powell
A free man is a jealous of his responsibilities as he is of his liberties. -Cyril James
The only way to get rid of responsibilities is to discharge them. -Walter S. Robertson
Responsibility educates. -Wendell Phillips
No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood. -Anonymous
The ability to accept responsibility is the measure of the man. -Roy L. Hunt
Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity. -Nadine Gordimer
Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others. — Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness
A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with — a man is what he makes of himself. -Alexander Graham Bell
The day you take complete responsibility for yourself, the day you stop making any excuses, that’s the day you start to the top. -O. J. Simpson
Be more aware of responsibility than you are of your rights. -Anonymous
A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed. -William James
When there is hell to pay, it is usually cheaper to pay it than to finance an endless purgatory. -Robert Brault
You must accept responsibility for your actions, but not the credit for your achievements. -Denis Waitley
You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself. -Napoleon Hill
Responsibility is the price of greatness. -Winston Churchill
Why do children want to grow up? Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition of greater freedom and opportunity. But what is there today, in America, that very poor and very rich adolescents want to do but cannot do? Not much: they can do drugs, have sex, make babies, and get money (from their parents, crime, or the State). For such adolescents, adulthood becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than liberty. Is it any surprise that they remain adolescents? -Thomas Szasz
The ultimate folly is to think that something crucial to your welfare is being taken care of for you. -Robert Brault
Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility . . . . In the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have is the ability to take on responsibility. — Michael Korda Editor-in-Cheif, Simon & Schuster
From my tribe I take nothing I am the maker of my own fortune. -Tecumseh
There has been in recent years excessive emphasis on a citizen’s rights and inadequate stress put upon his duties and responsibilities. -Paxton Blair
I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do. -Helen Keller
No man was ever endowed with a right without being at the same time saddled with a responsibility. -Gerald W. Johnson
Much misconstruction and bitterness are spared to him who thinks naturally upon what he owes to others rather than what he ought to expect from them. -Madame Guizot
You are not responsible for the programming you picked up in childhood. However, as an adult, you are one hundred percent responsible for fixing it. -Ken Keyes, Jr.
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect. — Eleanor Roosevelt
The burden one likes is cheerfully carried. -Proverb
There are always those who think they know what is your responsibility better than you do. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
I guess more players lick themselves that are ever licked by an opposing team. The first thing any man has to know is how to handle himself. -Connie Mack
Never point a finger where you never lent a hand. -Robert Brault
Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting, then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that one as well. -Maya Angelou
As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us. -Arnold Toynbee
Put on your big girl panties and deal with it. -Author Unknown
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. -Jim Rohn
Nothing strengthens the judgement and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. -Elizabeth Cady Stanton
In dreams begin responsibilities. — W.B. Yeats
We have a Bill of rights. What we need is a Bill of responsibilities. -Bill Maher
Well done is better than well said. – Benjamin Franklin
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. -Erica Jong
You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don’t seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together. –Henry Ford
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. — George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
When we have begun to take charge of our lives, to own ourselves, there is no longer any need to ask permission of someone. -George O’Neil
Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will — his personal responsibility. -Albert Schweitzer
If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams. –Les Brown
One must care about a world one will not see. -Bertrand Russell
You can awaken each day to obligations you never chose — or you can decide now to choose them. -Robert Brault
All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. — Wayne Dyer
Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach. -William Ellery Channing
Nothing happens by itself. It all will come your way, once you understand that you have to make it come your way, by your own exertions. -Ben Stein
Responsibility is the thing people dread most of all. Yet it is the one thing in the world that develops us, gives us manhood or womanhood fiber. -Frank Crane
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant. -Max Depree
I will not surrender responsibility for my life and my actions. -John Enoch Powell
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you, never excuse yourself. -Henry Ward Beecher
Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else. –Les Brown
Responsibility: A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star. -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911
When others, a man begins to blame He’ll soon find himself alone, The same. -Nigel Bloomfield
Mistakes fail in their mission of helping the person who blames them on the other fellow. -Henry S. Haskins
A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. -James Allen
I was taught very early that I would have to depend entirely upon myself; that my future lay in my own hands. -Darius Ogden Mills
The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn
It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn
You must choose the thoughts and actions that will lead you on to success. -R. C. Allen
No one will improve your lot if you do not yourself. -Bertolt Brecht
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.. — Jim Rohn
An individual without information can’t take responsibility. An individual with information can’t help but take responsibility. -Jan Carlzon
The thorns which I have reap’d are of the tree I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed. I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed. -George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Friendship is always a sweet responsibility; never an opportunity. -Kahlil Gibran
Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man’s lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one’s self. -Max Stirner
The commands of democracy are as imperative as its privileges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us. -Woodrow Wilson
Eventually we all have to accept full and total responsibility for our actions, everything we have done, and have not done. — Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream
One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is to be prepared. -Dan Quayle
Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility. -George Orwell
You have to do it yourself, no one else will do it for you. You must work out your own salvation. -Charles E. Popplestone
In the old days, words like sin and Satan had a moral certitude. Today, they’re replaced with self-help jargon, words like dysfunction and antisocial behavior, discouraging any responsibility for one’s actions.. — Don Henley Singer/Songwriter
They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. -Andy Warhol
Accountability breeds response-ability. -Stephen R. Covey
In dreams begin responsibility. -William Butler Yeats
Ninety-nine percent of all failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses. — George Washington Carver
Duty is what one expects from others. -Oscar Wilde
The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. -Albert Ellis
All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster’s eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you. -Thomas Carlyle
Freedom is a package deal — with it comes responsibilities and consequences. -Anonymous
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I don’t remember, I didn’t do it. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it -Joe Simmons
Psychologically I should say that a person becomes an adult at the point when he produces more than he consumes or earns more than he spends. This may be a the age of eighteen, twenty-five, or thirty-five. Some people remain unproductive and dependent children forever and therefore intellectually and emotionally immature. -Henry C. Link
Deal with the consequences of your actions, ’cause life ain’t no video game. -Animal Crossing: Wild World (Nintendo video game) written by Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka, and Toshihiro Kawabata
God has entrusted me with myself. -Epictetus
The great thought, the great concern, the great anxiety of men is to restrict, as much as possible, the limits of their own responsibility. -Giosué Borsi
We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions. -Ronald Reagan
Sign over the gates of hell: Doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. -Robert Brault
I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast. -Viktor E. Frankl
We all participate in weaving the social fabric; we should therefore all participate in patching the fabric when it develops holes. -Anne C. Weisberg, Everything a Working Mother Needs to Know, 1994
Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing… they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers. -Samuel Smiles
We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty. It is the other side of rights. -Pearl Buck
In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity. — Abraham Lincoln
A human being’s first responsibility is to shake hands with himself. -Henry Winkler
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. -Abraham Lincoln
The mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands. -Francis Bacon
To shun one’s cross is to make it heavier. -Henri Frederic Amiel
Whether or not you have children yourself, you are a parent to the next generation. If we can only stop thinking of children as individual property and think of them as the next generation, then we can realize we all have a role to play. -Charlotte Davis Kasl, Finding Joy, 1994
You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think. — Marianne Williamson, Return to Love
In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility. — Eleanor Roosevelt
The reason people blame things on the previous generation is that there’s only one other choice. — Doug Larson
If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders. -Abigail Van Buren
The way to avoid responsibility is to say, ”I’ve got responsibilities.” -Richard Bach
It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming. — J. W. Goethe
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility. -Louis Armstrong
The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority. -Stanley Milgram
I know that no one can really stop me but myself and that really no one can help me but myself. -Peter Nivio Zarlenga
Responsibility’s like a string we can only see the middle of. Both ends are out of sight. -William McFee, Casuals of the Sea, 1916
I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have ? life itself. -Walter Anderson
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. -Voltaire
It is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of action. -Stanley Milgram
The essence of Vanderbilt is still learning, the essence of its outlook is still liberty, and liberty and learning will be and must be the touchstones of Vanderbilt University and of any free university in this country or the world. I say two touchstones, yet they are almost inseparable, inseparable if not indistinguishable, for liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain. — John F. Kennedy, Remarks in Nashville at the 90th Anniversary Convocation of Vanderbilt University, May 18, 1963
Champions take responsibility. When the ball is coming over the net, you can be sure I want the ball. -Billie Jean King
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. -Jean-Paul Sartre
For me the diamond dawns are set In rings of beauty, And all my ways are dewy wet With pleasant duty. -John Townsend Trowbridge
We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities. -Bill Maher
Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them. -Tom Stoppard
Life’s heaviest burden is to have nothing to carry. -Anonymous
All business depends upon men fulfilling their responsibilities. -Mahatma Gandhi
The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs. -Joan Didion
To be a man is to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one’s comrades. It is to feel, when setting one’s stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world. -Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Even when we know what is right, too often we fail to act. More often we grab greedily for the day, letting tomorrow bring what it will, putting off the unpleasant and unpopular. -Bernard M. Baruch
Ef you take a sword an’ dror it, An’ go stick a feller thru, Guv’ment ain’t to answer for it, God’ll send the bill to you. -James Russell Lowell
More power than all the success slogans ever penned by human hand is the realization for every man that he has but one boss. That boss is the man — he — himself. -Gabriel Heatter
The price of greatness is responsibility. -Winston Churchill
We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible. -Allan Massie
No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it. -Aristotle
Those who are unwilling to invest in the future haven’t earned one. -H.W. Lewis, Technological Risk, 1990
A man carries his success or his failure with him, it does not depend on outside conditions. -Ralph Waldo Trine
I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. -John D. Rockefeller
Only you can hold yourself back, only you can stand in your own way. Only you can help yourself. -Mikhail Strabo
If you mess up, ‘fess up. -Author Unknown
As novices, we think we’re entirely responsible for the way people treat us. I have long since learned that we are responsible only for the way we treat people. -Rose Wilder Lane
When you blame others, you give up your power to change. -Author Unknown
Life is not accountable to us. We are accountable to life. -Denis Waitley
It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do for which we are accountable. -MoliFre
Dr. Miller says we are pessimistic because life seems like a very bad, very screwed-up film. If you ask “What the hell is wrong with the projector?” and go up to the control room, you find it’s empty. You are the projectionist, and you should have been up there all the time. -Colin Wilson
In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for ”finding himself.” If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. -Thomas Merton
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. — Sigmund Freud
I must do something always solves more problems than Something must be done. -Author Unknown
If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month. -Theodore Roosevelt
Responsibility walks hand in hand with capacity and power. -Josiah Gilbert Holland
The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life. -Brian Tracy
Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him. -Booker T Washington
I am responsible for everything except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world… in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant. -Jean-Paul Sartre
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. -Douglas Adams
Accept the consequences of your actions in order to become the agent of your mental, physical, spiritual and material success. –Les Brown
If you load responsibility on a man unworthy of it he will always betray himself. -August Heckscher
We are accountable only to ourselves for what happens to us in our lives. -Mildred Newman
Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility. In the final analysis, the only quality that all successful people have is the ability to take on responsibility. -Michael Korda
Each is responsible for his own actions. -H. L. Hunt
The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it. — Lou Holtz
The important thing is to concentrate upon what you can do — by yourself, upon your own initiative. -Harry Browne
No alibi will save you from accepting the responsibility. -Napoleon Hill
If people concentrated on their responsibilities, others would have their rights. -Stuart Briscoe
Provision for others is a fundamental responsibility of human life. -Woodrow T. Wilson
We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until… we have stopped saying It got lost, and say I lost it. -Sidney J. Harris
Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it’s addressed to someone else. -Ivern Ball
Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself. -Thomas Jefferson
God, Private Enterprise and government have made me what I am, and now they have to take some of the blame. -Joy Baluch
It’s a question of discipline, the little prince told me later on. When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 1943, translated from French by Richard Howard
Work on yourself first, take responsibility for your own progress. -I Ching
Good men prefer to be accountable. -Michael Edwardes
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future. — George Bernard Shaw
We are each responsible for all of our experiences. -Louise L. Hay
Nobody can do it for you. -Ralph Cordiner
Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely like exercising authority usually lose it. -Malcolm S. Forbes
The superior man blames himself. The inferior man blames others. -Don Shula
Everyone has a responsibility to not only tolerate another person’s point of view, but also to accept it eagerly as a challenge to your own understanding. And express those challenges in terms of serving other people. -Arlo Guthrie
We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt. -Sir Walter Scott
You take on the responsibility for making your dream a reality. –Les Brown
Bear one another’s burdens. -Bible
When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself. -Louis Nizer
Whatever happens, take responsibility. -Anthony Robbins
With every civil right there has to be a corresponding civil obligation. -Edison Haines
Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required. [Luke 12:48] -Bible
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Related Posts