Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Richard H. Rice, fully Richard Henry Rice

The mature man knows that he is likely to make mistakes. He wants to take responsibility for them. Only by facing his mistakes does he learn to act more responsibly.

Character | Man | Responsibility | Wants | Learn |

Mary Lou Retton

We are each put on this earth to make a particular contribution to humanity... Although God, the Almighty, has a plan for every one of us, He gives us choices. It is our responsibility to make the best of those choices in order to achieve our ultimate purpose.

Character | Earth | God | Humanity | Order | Plan | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility |

Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith

Freedom and responsibility are like Siamese twins: they die if they are parted.

Character | Freedom | Responsibility |

Albert Schweitzer

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.

Character | Faith | Man | Problems | Responsibility | Will | Learn |

Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White

Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them - this is of the essence of leadership.

Character | Man | People | Power | Responsibility |

Walter H. Wheeler, Jr.

Our whole free dynamic society’s future depends upon a continued growth of our sense of responsibility and morality in direct proportion to the increase in our material wealth.

Character | Dynamic | Future | Growth | Morality | Responsibility | Sense | Society | Wealth |

Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

People | Responsibility | Thinking | Wisdom |

Owen D. Young

There is a single reason why 99 out of 100 average business men never become leaders. That is their unwillingness to pay the price of responsibility. By the price of responsibility I mean hard driving, continual work... the courage to make decisions, to stand the gaff... the scourging honesty of never fooling yourself about yourself... And the grooves that lead to the heights are not made between nine and five. They are burned in by the midnight oil.

Business | Character | Courage | Honesty | Men | Price | Reason | Responsibility | Work | Business |

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

Effeminacy is not a feminine possession any more than a masculine one. Men or women become effeminate when privilege and lack of responsibility have made them weak. The true female creature, unspoiled, is tough, persistent, and strong.

Men | Responsibility | Wisdom | Privilege |

John Christian Bovee

In one important respect a man is fortunate in being poor. His responsibility to God is so much the less.

God | Important | Man | Respect | Responsibility | Wisdom | Respect | God |

Elihu Burritt

We are forming characters for eternity. Forming characters! Whose? our own or other? Both - and in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence. Who is sufficient for the thought?

Eternity | Existence | Peril | Responsibility | Thought | Wisdom |

Tyron Edwards

Sin with the multitude, and your responsibility and guilt are as great and as truly personal, as if you alone had done the wrong.

Guilt | Responsibility | Sin | Wisdom | Wrong |

Paul Géraldy, pen name of Paul Lefevre

What we call love is the desire to awaken and to keep awake in another's body, heart and mind, the responsibility of flattering, in our place, the self of which we are not very sure.

Body | Desire | Heart | Love | Mind | Responsibility | Self | Wisdom |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

Ideas | Responsibility | Wisdom |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

Both these perspectives - that the government is responsible for us, and that we are responsible only for ourselves - are dehumanizing. To be fully human, we can neither give up responsibility for ourselves nor refuse responsibility for others. Indeed, we need to redefine individual responsibility to include social responsibility.

Government | Individual | Need | Responsibility | Wisdom | Government |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

The function and responsibility of the President is to set before the American people the unfinished business, the things we must do if we are going to succeed as a nation.

Business | People | Responsibility | Wisdom |