77 Inspiring Responsibility Quotes

In a world where actions speak louder than words, embracing responsibility stands as a testament to one’s character and integrity. Whether it's in personal growth, professional endeavors, or nurturing relationships, the ability to act responsibly defines not just who we are, but also the legacy we leave behind. In this collection of 77 inspiring responsibility quotes, you'll find wisdom from leaders, thinkers, and visionaries who understand the power and importance of owning our actions. Venture into these reflections to ignite your sense of duty and inspire a commitment to making a positive impact in every facet of life.

1. “A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.” - John Stuart Mill

2. “To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.” - Jacques Derrida

3. “Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.” - Tom Robbins

4. “Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” - Joan Didion

5. “To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is."[The Title Always Comes Last; NEH 2003 Jefferson Lecturer interview profile]” - David McCullough

6. “Bedauern ist die Trübung des Geistes und nicht seine Läuterung.” - Khalil Gibran

7. “If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.” - Carl Schurz

8. “Handle so, daß die Maxime deines Willens jederzeit zugleich als Prinzip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung gelten könne.” - Immanuel Kant

9. “The ArmfulFor every parcel I stoop down to seizeI lose some other off my arms and knees,And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,Extremes too hard to comprehend at. onceYet nothing I should care to leave behind.With all I have to hold with hand and mindAnd heart, if need be, I will do my best.To keep their building balanced at my breast.I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;Then sit down in the middle of them all.I had to drop the armful in the roadAnd try to stack them in a better load.” - Robert Frost

10. “Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.” - Colin Powell

11. “[F]rom now on, the act of creating and circulating evidence of wrongdoing to more than a few people, even if they all work together, will be seen as a delayed but public act.” - Clay Shirky

12. “Responsibility and Trust -- these two are like Yin and Yang, together perfectly complete, and each one requiring the presence of the other.The next time you mistrust someone, consider this -- does that person feel responsible for you in any way? If the answer is yes, then go ahead and trust them. Very likely, they are looking out for your best interest.” - Vera Nazarian

13. “This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.” - Terry Pratchett

14. “The writer’s job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that’s part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.” - Mario Vargas Llosa

15. “There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men. ...Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same God that made you and me made this earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest.” - Ralph Moody

16. “The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.” - Vera Nazarian

17. “What is particularly striking about his reconstruction and criticisms of the traditional account of friendship is that he finds it deficient not only by the light of his own Christian viewpoint; he also finds friendship deficient when judged from the perspective of its own self-proclaimed ethical foundations. Thus, Kierkegaard concludes that the reciprocity involved in friendship actually betrays its essential selfishness.” - Graham Smith

18. “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

19. “As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.” - Viktor E. Frankl

20. “I keep what I know about Sarah Lynn and Lawrence to myself. I also remind myself that even if Sarah Lynn does have a scary strict father, that doesn't release her from the responsibility of treating others with respect. Abuse of power is wrong, no matter the context, no matter the history.What is "power" anyway? Power is an ego trip. Power is a way to rise yourself up by lowering others, and I want nothing of it.” - Lauren Myracle

21. “Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that which you refuse to know, is an account of infamy growing in your soul. Make every allowance for errors of knowledge; do not forgive or accept any break of morality.” - Ayn Rand

22. “If you want to see a man come to his senses, try something like, Do you happen to carry a rubber in your wallet? Did I mention I'm not on the pill?” - Catherine Ryan Hyde

23. “Geschichte lebt nicht, wenn man ihr keine Heimat im Bewusstsein gibt; sie ist eine Last, die kein freier Mensch zu tragen gezwungen werden kann.” - J.M. Coetzee

24. “Euere Schuld, Deichgraf!" schrie eine Stimme aus dem Haufen.” - Theodor Storm

25. “Good is never accomplished except at the cost of those who do it, truth never breaks through except through the sacrifice of those who spread it.” - John Henry Newman

26. “Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

27. “Yes, it's vital to make lifestyle choices to mitigate damage caused by being a member of industrialized civilization, but to assign primary responsibility to oneself, and to focus primarily on making oneself better, is an immense copout, an abrogation of responsibility.” - Derrick Jensen

28. “Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things, then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is slaving seventy hours a week to put food on the table; a responsibility at the very least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that, it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not.” - Noam Chomsky

29. “Those of us who have seen violent death up close, who have seen what high-powered bullets can do to living human tissue, have a horror of inflicting that nightmarish, never forgotten damage on a fellow human being. Perhaps the only more terrifying prospect is that such a fate should befall us or our loved ones. This is why we, a representative cross-section of America's population, keep deadly weapons for personal defense.” - Massad F. Ayoob

30. “She, too, spoke only when the queen or king addressed her first, but she looked searchingly at every supplicant, and her clear face said that she had opinions about everything she heard, and that it was her proud duty to think out those opinions, and make them responsible and coherent.” - Robin McKinley

31. “Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.” - Orson Scott Card

32. “Reverence is an emotion that we can nurture in our very young children, respect is an attitude that we instill in our children as they become school-agers, and responsibility is an act that we inspire in our children as they grow through the middle years and become adolescents.” - Zoe Weil

33. “I believe in recovery, and as a role model I have the responsibility to let young people know that you can make a mistake and come back from it.” - Ann Richards

34. “It's always seemed to me that flirtation is a man's device for avoiding responsibility. He can say whatever he wants and knows he won't be taken seriously.” - G.G. Vandagriff

35. “Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.” - Terry Pratchett

36. “you don't have to worry about burning bridges, if you're building your own” - Kerry E. Wagner

37. “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.” - Jean-Paul Sartre

38. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” - Elizabeth Warren

39. “Any problems that may occur have ultimately been caused by you, because you are responsible for where you are and what you are doing there.” - Garth Stein

40. “It's hard enough for a person to keep their own socks pulled up, let alone someone else's.” - Stephen King

41. “‎"If there is no discipline, there is anarchy. Good citizenship demands attention to responsibilities as well as rights.” - Joe Clark

42. “In our tribunal, we look only at personal criminal responsibility in a very tightly defined, narrow way and we demand proof beyond a resonable doubt about the involvement of the individual. We do no have a mandate to establish the moral responsibility of those who saw things happen and did nothing, including people who might have had the capacity to stop the process and did nothing. But we have to be careful in thinking that just because we focus on individual criminal guilt we therefore absolve the community. The old distinctions are too simplistic when we move up the chain of command and witness the merging of the collectivity into the personae of these charismatic political and military leaders.'-Louise Arbour, Chief Prosecutor for International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia” - Erna Paris

43. “A man must be prepared to face life, as well as death, there's no escape from either.” - Ellis Peters

44. “What I've found about it is that there are some folks you can talk to until you're blue in the face--they're never going to get it and they're never going to change. But every once in a while, you'll run into someone who is eager to listen, eager to learn, and willing to try new things. Those are the people we need to reach. We have a responsibility as parents, older people, teachers, people in the neighborhood to recognize that.” - Tyler Perry

45. “Anyone can change the world and everyone should try.” - Chantal Wiebe, M.Ed

46. “The power to lead is the power to mislead, and the power to mislead is the power to destroy.” - Thomas S. Monson

47. “The average person is still under the aberrant delusion that food should be somebody else's responsibility until I'm ready to eat it.” - Joel Salatin

48. “How many of us lobby for green energy or protected lands, but don't engage with the local bounty to lay by for tomorrow's unseasonal reality? That we tend to not even think about this as a foundation for solutions in our food systems shows how quickly we want other people to solve these issues.” - Joel Salatin

49. “I am blind and limited. I would be a fool think myself wise. And so, not knowing what the universe means, I can only try to be responsible with the knowledge, the strength, and the time given to me. I must be true to my heart.” - Jim Butcher

50. “Why was I chosen?''Such questions cannot be answered,' said Gandalf. 'You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

51. “Next you will cry about taxation without representation, and throw a basket of tea into the harbor. You are indeed a very Jacobin at heart, and I think I must give up trying to cure you of it; I can but wash my hands and deny responsibility” - Naomi Novik

52. “If I was going to act irresponsibly, the least I could do was be responsible for it.” - Danny Wallace

53. “The mind of Caesar. It is the reverse of most men's. It rejoices in committing itself. To us arrive each day a score of challenges; we must say yes or no to decisions that will set off chains of consequences. Some of us deliberate; some of us refuse the decision, which is itself a decision; some of us leap giddily into the decision, setting our jaws and closing our eyes, which is the sort of decision of despair. Caesar embraces decision. It is as though he felt his mind to be operating only when it is interlocking itself with significant consequences. Caesar shrinks from no responsibility. He heaps more and more upon his shoulders.” - Thornton Wilder

54. “Wir alle, ob schuldig oder nicht, ob alt oder jung, müssen die Vergangenheit annehmen. Wir alle sind von ihren Folgen betroffen und für sie in Haftung genommen. [...] Es geht nicht darum, Vergangenheit zu bewältigen. Das kann man gar nicht. Sie läßt sich ja nicht nachträglich ändern oder ungeschehen machen. Wer aber vor der Vergangenheit die Augen verschließt, wird blind für die Gegenwart. Wer sich der Unmenschlichkeit nicht erinnern will, der wird wieder anfällig für neue Ansteckungsgefahren."[Ansprache am 8. Mai 1985 in der Gedenkstunde im Plenarsaal des Deutschen Bundestages]” - Richard von Weizsäcker

55. “Oh I could be out, rollicking in the ripeness of my flesh and others’, could be drinking things and eating things and rubbing mine against theirs, speculating about this person or that, waving, indicating hello with a sudden upward jutting of my chin, sitting in the backseat of someone else’s car, bumping up and down the San Francisco hills, south of Market, seeing people attacking their instruments, afterward stopping at a bodega, parking, carrying the bottles in a paper bag, the glass clinking, all our faces bright, glowing under streetlamps, down the sidewalk to this or that apartment party, hi, hi, putting the bottles in the fridge, removing one for now, hating the apartment, checking the view, sitting on the arm of a couch and being told not to, and then waiting for the bathroom, staring idly at that ubiquitous Ansel Adams print, Yosemite, talking to a short-haired girl while waiting in the hallway, talking about teeth, no reason really, the train of thought unclear, asking to see her fillings, no, really, I’ll show you mine first, ha ha, then no, you go ahead, I’ll go after you, then, after using the bathroom she is still there, still in the hallway, she was waiting not just for the bathroom but for me, and so eventually we’ll go home together, her apartment, where she lives alone, in a wide, immaculate railroad type place, newly painted, decorated with her mother, then sleeping in her oversized, oversoft white bed, eating breakfast in her light-filled nook, then maybe to the beach for a few hours with the Sunday paper, then wandering home whenever, never-Fuck. We don't even have a baby-sitter.” - Dave Eggers

56. “Delirium: You use that word so much. Responsibilities. Do you ever think about what that means? I mean, what does it mean to you? In your head? Dream: Well, I use it to refer that area of existence over which I exert a certain amount of control or influence. In my case, the realm and action of dreaming. Delirium: Hump. It's more than that. The things we do make echoes. S'pose, f'rinstance, you stop on a street corner and admire a brilliant fork of lightning--ZAP! Well for ages after people and things will stop on that very same corner, stare up at the sky. They wouldn't even know what they were looking for. Some of them might see a ghost bolt of lightning in the street. Some of them might even be killed by it. Our existence deforms the universe. THAT'S responsibility.” - Neil Gaiman

57. “Enttäuschung und Frustration werden [...] alle erleben, die sich wie im Märchen danach sehnen, Glück in einem Schlaraffenland zu finden ... Nur, dass unser Schlaraffenland nicht ein großer Berg von süßem Brei ist ... wir haben andere Fantasien und Bilder von Fülle und Erfülltheit in einem imaginären Schlaraffenland, das nur eben unglücklicherweise niemals dort ist, wo wir tatsächlich leben. Vielmehr leben wir mit der Hoffnung auf ein Glück, das uns das Schicksal irgenwann einmal gewähren müsse. [...] So können wir das Schlaraffenland je nach unserer eigenen Fasson ausgestalten - und wir tun es. Privat und auch gesellschaftlich.Doch sobald wir anfangen, uns mit diesem Glücksmodell anzufreunden, und gespannt darauf warten, wie im Lotto das große Los zu ziehen, werden wir auf einem Weg sein, wo das Glück ganz bestimmt nicht zu uns findet! Wir bleiben hungrig und ungesättigt. Denn geheimnisvollerweise ist das Glück dort, wo wir Bezogenheit leben - selbst in dem unspektatulärsten Tun des Alltags.” - Joachim Gauck

58. “Ich wünsche mir, dass sich unsere Gesellschaft tolerant, wertbewusst und vor allen Dingen in Liebe zur Freiheit entwickelt und nicht vergisst, dass die Freiheit der Erwachsenen Verantwortung heißt.” - Joachim Gauck

59. “Every social ethic is doomed to failure if it is blind to personal responsibility" (The Ten Commandments, 10).” - J. Douma

60. “In bad times, a king or a queen can be a rock for the waters to crash against, so those less strong are not washed away. I will be such a rock. Only give me a chance, sweet Zoria, and I will be a rock for my people.” - Tad Williams

61. “A moment of brilliance is not good enough to pay for your mistakes, it's taking responsibility” - Mohamed Mohamed Adel

62. “Freedom is not the same as lack of accountability.” - Kevin Powers

63. “Let us liberate ourselves from any form of control. Let us focus at the inner drum, where the rhythm aligns with that of our heart. The measure of responsibility, equals to the need for evolution. Just listen, the inner child, let it whisper in your ear.” - Grigoris Deoudis

64. “The people of jewel," said Olga Ciavolga,"treat their children like delicate flowers. They think they will not survive without constant protection. But there are parts of the world where young boys and girls spend weeks at a time with no company except a herd of goats. They chase away wolves. They take care of themselves, and they take care of the herd. And so, when hard times come - as they always do in the end - those children are resourceful and brave. If they have to walk from one end of the county to the other, carrying their baby brother and sisters, they will do it. If they have to hide during the day and travel at night to avoid soldiers, they will do it. They do not give up easily." The tunnel took a sharp right-hand turn and, for a moment, the old woman s voice was lost. Something dropped onto Goldie's arm, and she opened her mouth to yelp - and thought of those children carrying their baby brothers and sisters through the night - and closed her mouth and kept going. She rounded the corner in time to hear Olga Ciavolga murmur,"Of course, I am not saying that it is a good thing to give children such heavy responsibility's. They must be allowed to have a childhood. But they must also be allowed to find their courage and their wisdom, and learn when to stand and when to run away. After all, if they are not permitted to climb the trees, how will they ever see the great and wonderful world that lies before them?” - Lian Tanner

65. “Our shoes carry our body, so we polish them; our body carries our soul, so we clean the body, but, what about our soul”?” - Rahul Rampal

66. “Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.” - Iris Murdoch

67. “On s'empresse de les décharger de toute tâche pénible et de tout souci: c'est les délivrer du même coup de toute responsabilité. On espère qu'ainsi dupées, séduites par la facilité de leur condition, elles accepteront le rôle de mère et de ménagére dans lequel on veut les confiner.” - Simone de Beauvoir

68. “As a leader it is your job to protect the missional integrity of the Jesus gathering to which you have been called. It is your responsibility to see to it that the church under your care continues as a gathering of people in process; a place where the curious,the unconvinced, the sceptical, the used-to-believe and the broken, as well as the committed, informed and sold-out come together around Peter's declaration that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.” - Andy Stanley

69. “As believers, we all have the responsibility to leverage our wealth for kingdom purposes.” - Andy Stanley

70. “The only way we can change our world is to take responsibility for our part in it.” - Rachael Bermingham

71. “Resolution, like responsibility, is a product of ownership, and kids can't resolve a conflict until they figure out how they contributed to it.” - Richard Eyre

72. “It’s every man’s business to see justice done.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

73. “It is a noble responsibility to not back down when you know that you know that you know that you are right.” - Criss Jami

74. “Desert heat or not, the idea that my younger self was facing her last moments was a bucket of cold water in the face. I didn’t like her, but she appeared to have her shit together in a way I hadn’t for a long time, and she had, frankly, deserved better than me. I tried to wet my lips, had nothing to do it with and croaked, “Sorry.” “Don’t be sorry. Be good. Be right. Be a hero.” - C.E. Murphy

75. “The author, then in the final stage as a candidate for Delta Force, was asked by the unit's foreboding colonel what he thought of the evaluation's Stress Week. He responded that he was waiting for it to begin, reasoning that, used to responsibility for others while leading a platoon, he only had himself to worry about. However hard the trial, he got four meals a day, nobody shot at, him, and the weather was pleasant.” - Eric Haney

76. “The earth will support anything that supports life. What I have found after a soul retrieval is that one cannot "numb out" anymore. Each and every one of us must make personal and planetary decisions to stop abusing life. Whether a person a has to give up an abusive relationship, take a more active political role, or increase awareness of how we continue to abuse our environment, we all now have to be responsible. Being responsible means responding to what is needed. We find a need to wake up and change our reality to a stance of power...” - Sandra Ingerman

77. “Literature for me… tries to heal the harm done by stories. (How much harm? Most of the atrocities of history have been created by stories, e.g., the Jews killed Jesus.) I follow Sartre that the freedom the author claims for herself must be shared with the reader. So that would mean that literature is stories that put themselves at the disposal of readers who want to heal themselves. Their healing power lies in their honesty, the freshness of their vision, the new and unexpected things they show, the increase in power and responsibility they give the reader.” - Geoff Ryman