This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Provision for others is a fundamental responsibility of human life.
Life | Life | Responsibility |
Responsibility educates, and politics is but another name for God’s way of teaching the masses ethics, under the responsibility of great present interests.
Ethics | God | Politics | Present | Responsibility |
Frequently people say, “He made me angry.” This is inaccurate. No one can make you angry. You make yourself angry by what you tell yourself about a given situation. When you say, “I made myself angry because of what I told myself about this person’s behavior,” you are accepting the responsibility upon yourself, which is the first step leading to improvement.
Behavior | Improvement | People | Responsibility |
Carlos Castaneda, fully Carlos César Salvador Arana Castaneda
When a man decides to do something he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does. He must know first why he is doing it and then he must proceed with his actions with no doubts or remorse.
Man | Remorse | Responsibility |
Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle
Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.
Action | Character | Man | Responsibility |
The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.
Heredity is a splendid phenomenon that relieves us of responsibility for our shortcomings.
Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence.
Peril | Responsibility |
If there is any responsibility in the cycle of life it must be that one generation owes to the next that strength by which it can come to face ultimate concerns in its own way.
Life | Life | Responsibility | Strength |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibilty would be blind if they were not guided by the knowledge of the person's individuality.
Ability | Care | Fear | Individuality | Knowing | Knowledge | Love | Respect | Responsibility | Respect |
Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.
Fritz Perls, fully Friedrich "Fritz" (Frederick) Salomon Perls
To mature means to take responsibility for your life, to be on your own. Psychoanalysis fosters the infantile state by considering that the past is responsible for the illness.
Means | Past | Psychoanalysis | Responsibility |
When you assume responsibility for what you experience and share what you experience in a spirit of companionship,that is the same as forgiveness. When you hold someone responsible for what you experience, you lose power.
Experience | Responsibility | Spirit |
Harold Lewis, fully Harold "Hal" Warren Lewis
To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man.
Responsibility | Society | Society |
Harvey Cox, fully Harvey Gallagher Cox, Jr.
Man must now assume the responsibility for his world. He can no longer shove it off on religious power.
Anarchy is everywhere when responsibility is nowhere to be found.
Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams
Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.
Absence | Individual | Liberty | Responsibility |
I think [the Enneagram] is here because we need it, on a global basis, to take more responsibility for our thoughts and emotions and to consider, deeply, how to stand in someone else's shoes, and see the decision or the event from very different sets of eyes and see the validity of it.
Decision | Emotions | Global | Need | Responsibility | Think |