This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.
Justice | People | Responsibility | Sense |
Raúl Juliá, aka Raul Rafael Carlos Julia y Arceley
Once you are willing to take responsibility for your life you become a master of it and you expand - you become more alive and healthier, mentally and physically.
Life | Life | Responsibility |
The path of purposeful action bears a double blessing for those who walk it: in the blessing of the world is your own. Right action is the key to the re-establishment of God consciousness within your world... Let your deeds speak your message to the world. Your actions have the power to heal. This is a responsibility of great and wonderful magnitude. It is your responsibility, and it is the easiest one, for when you choose the responsibility to heal the world, you instantly allow God to heal the world through you.
Action | Consciousness | Deeds | God | Power | Responsibility | Right | World | Deeds | God |
To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man.
Man | Responsibility | Society | Society |
The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.
Art | Circumstances | Contempt | Freedom | Life | Life | Man | Responsibility | Work | World | Art |
I am not a victim of circumstances. I do not choose to abdicate my responsibility for my own pleasure. It is my responsibility, and my happiness resides in that awareness and in the actions that result from that awareness... You maximize your potential for happiness if you decide right now to accept responsibility for your life.
Awareness | Circumstances | Life | Life | Pleasure | Responsibility | Right | Awareness | Happiness | Victim |
Alex Comfort, fully Alexander Comfort
In a state of war each sincere citizen feels responsibility to society in the abstract, and none to the people he kills.
Abstract | People | Responsibility | Society | War | Society |
The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precaution for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust... The most effectual one is such a limitation of the term of appointments as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people.
Good | Men | People | Public | Responsibility | Society | Trust | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wisdom |
The responsibility for change… lies with us. We must begin with ourselves, teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, the surprising, the seemingly radical. This means fighting off the idea-assassins who rush forward to kill any new suggestion on grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, not matter how absurd, oppressive, or unworkable it may be. It means fighting for freedom of expression – the right of people to voice their ideas, even if heretical.
Absurd | Change | Fighting | Freedom | Ideas | Kill | Means | People | Responsibility | Right |
Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.
Life | Life | Opportunity | Responsibility |
I have accustomed myself to receive with respect the opinion of others but always take the responsibility of deciding for myself.
Opinion | Receive | Respect | Responsibility | Respect |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
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.
[Man’s] self-conscious existence as man forces on him a choice of uses for his faculties... This choice is what is called free will. Free will, therefore, not only a prerogative but an obligation for man. Free will thus understood, has nothing to do with destiny. It is a power which man is compelled by his own nature to use, whether the use he makes of it is predestined or not... the responsibility of deciding rests with me just the same whether the outcome is predetermined or not. If it is predetermined, it is my own past habit-forming and character-forming decisions in this and previous lifetimes which have predetermined it; and this decision in its turn will help to condition my mind, thus determining future ones.
Character | Choice | Decision | Destiny | Existence | Free will | Future | Habit | Man | Mind | Nature | Nothing | Obligation | Past | Power | Responsibility | Self | Will |
Booker T. Washington, fully Booker Taliaferro Washington
Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon them and to let them know that you trust them.
Individual | Responsibility | Trust |