Duty Quotes

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Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.

- Vaclav Havel

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.

- Henri-Frederic Amiel

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.

- Marie Curie

Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.

- Madame de Stael

Love is a better teacher than duty.

- Albert Einstein

Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.

- Madame de Stael

For my own part, I abandon the ethics of duty to the Hegelian critique with no regrets; it would appear to me, indeed, to have been correctly characterized by Hegel as an abstract thought, as a thought of understanding.

- Paul Ricoeur

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We preach the virtues of democracy abroad. We must practice its duties here at home. Voting is the first duty of democracy.

- Lyndon B. Johnson

For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.

- Lillian Hellman

This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century -- solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.

- Elie Wiesel

Ethics cannot be based upon our obligations toward [people], but they are complete and natural only when we feel this Reverence for Life and the desire to have compassion for and to help all creatures insofar as it is in our power. I think that this ethic will become more and more recognized because of its great naturalness and because it is the foundation of a true humanism toward which we must strive if our culture is to become truly ethical.

- Albert Schweitzer

A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.

- Bertrand Russell

Only do what your heart tells you.

- Princess Diana

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

- Denis Diderot

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

- Epictetus

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The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct.

- Paul Ricoeur

Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.

- Thomas Carlyle

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.

- Immanuel Kant

Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

- Mark Twain

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There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular one is Providence.

- Mark Twain

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As far as I know, to date, this Earth is the only thing we have at our disposal. The trick is to NOT dispose of it, yanno?

- Winter BelViso

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What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson