Obligation Quotes - Page 32

• We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these places, to provide these sanctuaries, so that people may be in the presence of forces larger than those of the moment.

  Ken Burns

  Wise, Past, Echoes

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• I've always sensed for myself an obligation to bear witness to my time.

  Athol Fugard

  Bears, Witness, My Time

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• He who is unconscious of the ties which connect him with every individual of his species feels no obligation to make sacrifices for their welfare or happiness.

  Benjamin Robbins Curtis

  Sacrifice, Ties, Welfare

  Benjamin Robbins Curtis, George Ticknor Curtis (1879). “A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, LL. D.: Professional and miscellaneous writings”, Boston : Little, Brown,

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• To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man.

  John Updike

  Dream, Reality, Men

  "Why Updike delved into suicide killers' psyches", www.today.com. June 28, 2006.

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• We've begun at last to wonder about our origins, star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps throughout the cosmos.  Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Spring, Long

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• Nobody can tell you what to do. No matter what they pay you. No matter what obligations you feel you owe them. Every second defines you. Be who you are, not who anyone else is, or who anyone else wants you to be.

  James Altucher

  Be Who You Are, Want, Pay

  Twitter post from Mar 29, 2018

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• Americans need help understanding their world now more than ever. [TV] believes it's filled its obligation to the public because it's presented both sides. But most of what we're living through now has multiple sides, and those sides, if you take the extreme oppositional views, have to be brought together for people to make a decision about how to act on the information.

  Hillary Clinton

  Believe, Views, People

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• We have got to defeat this attack on the freedom of the mind...But it takes courage for a young man with a family to stand up to it; all the more obligation on those of us who have nothing left to lose. At any age it is better to be a dead lion than a living dog - though better still, of course, to be a living and victorious lion - but it is easier to run the risk of being killed (or fired) in action if before long you are going to be dead anyway. This freedom seems to me the chief consolation of old age.

  Elmer Davis

  Running, Dog, Men

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• The law... dictated by God Himself is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Country, Law, All Time

  Alexander Hamilton, John Church Hamilton (1850). “The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789: A full vindication; The farmer refuted; Quebec bill; Resolutions in Congress; Letters from Phocion; New-York Legislature, etc”, p.43

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• As a citizen, you have an obligation to the countrys tax system, but you also have an obligation to yourself to know your rights under the law and possible tax deductions -- and to claim every one of them.

  Donald Alexander

  Rights, Law, Citizens

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• "We thought that, perhaps," said I, hesitating, "it is right to begin with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted for them."

  Charles Dickens

  Home, Words Of Wisdom, Said

  Charles Dickens (1873). “Bleak House”, p.40

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• Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of inspiration. It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge - that is to say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be civilized.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Christian, Children, Inspiration

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.2145, Library of Alexandria

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• You have, at the same time, placed your confidence in me, and in my ability to render a free, fair judgment - to uphold the Constitution and my oath of office - and to reject any kind of religious pressure or obligation that might directly or indirectly interfere with my conduct of the Presidency in the national interest.

  John F. Kennedy

  Religious, Oath Of Office, Religion

  "To the New Frontier". www.cnn.com. July 25, 1960.

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• What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindeness, personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience.

  John Stuart Mill

  Christian, Religious, Ideas

  "On Liberty". Philosophical work by John Stuart Mill, 1859.

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• I like the fans, but I don't feel an obligation that I have to be an example to them, like say maybe a baseball player would, or a football player or maybe some other type of musicians. I don't feel I have to really set an example that somebody else has to live up to.

  Bob Dylan

  Baseball, Football, Player

  Source: www.rightwingbob.com

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• Every nation has a moral obligation to safeguard the future.

  Al Gore

  Moral, Moral Obligation, Nations

  Interview with George Negus, www.sbs.com.au. August 23, 2013.

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• Happy the man to whom heaven has given a morsel of bread without laying him under the obligation of thanking any other for it than heaven itself.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Men, Heaven, Bread

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1853). “Don Quixote de La Mancha”, p.362

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• No child should be brought up to suppose that its food and clothes come down from heaven or are miraculously conjured from empty space by papa. Loathsome as we have made the idea of duty (like the idea of work) we must habituate children to a sense of repayable obligation to the community for what they consume and enjoy, and inculcate the repayment as a point of honor.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Children, Ideas, Clothes

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit”, p.1987, e-artnow

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• Saying "I love you" makes a demand, but creates no obligations.

  Mason Cooley

  Love, Demand, Love You

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• We hold the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance.

  Thomas Paine

  Justice, Age, Extravagance

  Thomas Paine (2016). “THE AGE OF REASON - Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (Including “The Life of Thomas Paine”): Deistic Critique of Bible and Christian Church”, p.350, e-artnow

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• If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Writing, Hands, Choices

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• It is fitting that the Government of the United States should assume the obligation of the establishment and maintenance of a first-class university for the education of colored menand I wish to put in this caveatthat the colored race today, all of them, would be better off if they all had university education.... Of course, the basis of education of the colored people is in the primary schools and in industrial schools.... In those schools must be introduced teachers from such university institutions as this.

  William Howard Taft

  Education, Teacher, School

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• The more the specific feelings of being under obligation range themselves under a supreme principle of human dependence the clearer and more fertile will be the realization of the concept, indispensable to all true culture, of service; from the service of God down to the simple social relationship as between employer and employee.

  Johan Huizinga

  Simple, Feelings, Principles

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• Old men, imagining themselves under obligation to young paramours, seldom keep any thing from their knowledge.

  Samuel Richardson

  Men, Age, Imagine

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• All morality depends upon our sentiments; and when any action or quality of the mind pleases us after a certain manner we say it is virtuous; and when the neglect or nonperformance of it displeases us after a like manner, we say that we lie under an obligation to perform it.

  David Hume

  Lying, Mind, Quality

  David Hume (2010). “Moral and Political Philosophy”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

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