This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ethical subjectivism absolves people of ever having to deliberate before making a moral judgment, whereas cultural relativism absolves people from moral responsibility so long as they follow the crowd. At the same time, almost everyone wants others to treat them with respect and be held morally culpable for their hurtful actions.
Judgment | People | Respect | Responsibility | Time | Wants | Respect |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
To be free people we must assume total responsibility for ourselves, but in doing so we must possess the capacity to reject responsibility that is not truly ours.
Capacity | People | Responsibility |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
By attempting to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we are giving away our power to some other individual or organization. In this way, millions daily attempt to escape from freedom.
Behavior | Freedom | Giving | Individual | Organization | Power | Responsibility |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
Most of us believe that the freedom and power of adulthood is our due, but we have little taste for adult responsibility and self-discipline.
Discipline | Freedom | Little | Power | Responsibility | Self | Taste |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
As soon as we think with integrity we will realize that we are all properly stewards and that we cannot with integrity deny our responsibility for stewardship of every part of the whole.
Integrity | Responsibility | Stewardship | Will | Think |
Marie Curie, fully Marie Skłodowska-Curie, originally Manya Sklodowska
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.
Aid | Better | Duty | Hope | Humanity | Improvement | Responsibility | Time | Work | World | Think |
Genuine responsibility exists only where there is real responding.
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
Each of us has a responsibility for being alive: one responsibility to creation, of which we are a part, another to the creator - a debt we repay by trying to extend our areas of comprehension.
Debt | Responsibility |
Each of us should realize and should exhibit through our actions the following truth: Moral influence and ethical responsibility are more important and more forceful and more important and more forceful and more lasting than mere power. We are here to be moral forces in the universe, in the world of nations, in our communities and in our families.
Important | Influence | Nations | Power | Responsibility | Truth | Universe | World | Following |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Freedom without responsibility is destructive, unity without individual initiative stifling, and equality that does not recognize differences is demoralizing.
Equality | Freedom | Individual | Initiative | Responsibility | Unity |
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.
Day | Existence | Future | God | History | Life | Life | People | Responsibility | Style | Will | God |
It is a fusion of two hearts - the union of two lives - the coming together of two tributaries, which after being joined in marriage, will flow in the same channel in the same direction… carrying the same burdens of responsibility and obligation.
Marriage | Obligation | Responsibility | Will |
The enduring value of the relationship to the land might best be measured by the extent to which it evolves beyond self-interest. All healthy relationships entail sacrifice and are never solely about what makes one person feel good, but are about what's also good for someone else. Relationship implies a responsibility that goes beyond one's own dreams.
Dreams | Good | Land | Relationship | Responsibility | Sacrifice | Self | Self-interest | Value |
The enduring value of the relationship to the land might be best measured by the extent to which it evolves beyond self-interest. All healthy relationships entail sacrifice and are never solely about what makes one person feel good, but are about what’s also good for someone else. Relationship implies a responsibility that goes beyond one’s own dreams.
Dreams | Good | Land | Relationship | Responsibility | Sacrifice | Self | Self-interest | Value |
Virtue is free, and as a man honors and dishonors her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser.
Man | Responsibility | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you will choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a an honors or dishonors her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility of the chooser.
Choice | Destiny | Genius | Life | Life | Responsibility | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
Appetite | Government | Happy | Responsibility | Government |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
I feel the responsibility of the occasion. Responsibility is proportionate to opportunity.