87 Duty-Inspired Quotes

In every aspect of life, duty often serves as a guiding principle, influencing our actions, decisions, and interactions with others. Whether it’s our sense of responsibility toward family, work, or society, understanding and embracing the concept of duty can provide profound motivation and a deeper sense of purpose. In this collection, we've gathered 87 of the most impactful duty-inspired quotes to inspire and remind you of the power and significance of fulfilling your obligations with integrity and unwavering commitment. Dive in and let these timeless words of wisdom resonate with your own journey of duty and dedication.

1. “A poet's work . . . to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.” - Salman Rushdie

2. “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill

3. “Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” - Abraham Lincoln

4. “The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.” - Theodore Roosevelt

5. “On my honor, I will do my bestTo do my duty To God and my country” - Boy Scouts of America

6. “Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.” - George Washington

7. “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” - Benjamin Franklin

8. “Do your duty as you see it, and damn the consequences.” - George S. Patton Jr.

9. “I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it sis my duty ... This is my highest and best use as a human.” - Ben Stein

10. “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.[Inaugural Address, January 20 1961]” - John F. Kennedy

11. “There is but one path of safety to the Latter-day Saints, and that is the path of duty. It is not testimony, it is not marvelous manifestations, it is not knowing that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true, . . . it is not actually knowing that the Savior is the Redeemer, and that Joseph Smith was His prophet, that will save you and me, but it is the keeping of the commandments of God, the living the life of a Latter-day Saint. [Heber J. Grant, Improvement Era, November 1936, p. 659] Quoted in “Waiting Upon the Lord” By Henry B. Eyring, BYU Speeches, 30 Sept 1990” - Heber J. Grant

12. “Character is doing what you don't want to do but know you should do.” - Joyce Meyer

13. “Non nobis solum nati sumus.(Not for ourselves alone are we born.)” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

14. “There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. - Mr. Knightley” - Jane Austen

15. “The way I see it, when you put the uniform on, in effect you sign a contract. And you don't back out of a contract merely because you've changed your mind. You can still speak up for your principles, you can still argue against the ones you're being made to fight for, but in the end you do the job.” - Pat Barker

16. “I don’t believe him,” said Hermione in a very unsteady voice, the moment they were out of earshot of Hagrid. “I don’t believe him. I really don’t believe him. . . .”“Calm down,” said Harry.“Calm down!” she said feverishly. “A giant! A giant in the forest! And we’re supposed to give him English lessons! Always assuming, of course, we can get past the herd of murderous centaurs on the way in and out! I — don’t — believe — him!” - J.K. Rowling

17. “You know I have duties──we both have duties──before which feeling must be sacrificed.” - George Eliot

18. “You know, that man has a spirit, that each man and woman is unique, that we have duty to promote our unalienable rights and to protect them, that we have a duty to our families and ourselves, to take care of ourselves, to contribute to charity, that we have a duty to support a just and righteous law that is stable and predictable.” - Mark R. Levin

19. “His face set in grim determination, Richard slogged ahead, his fingers reaching up to touch the tooth under his shirt. Loneliness, deeper than he had never known, sagged his shoulders. All his friends were lost to him. He knew now that his life was not his own. It belonged to his duty, to his task. He was the Seeker. Nothing more. Nothing less. Not his own man, but a pawn to be used by others. A tool, same as his sword, to help others, that they might have the life he had only glimpsed for a twinkling.He was no different from the dark things in the boundary. A bringer of death.” - Terry Goodkind

20. “A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people) like a crutch which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc.) can do the journey on their own.” - C. S. Lewis

21. “A person less fortunate than yourself deserves the best you can give. Because of duty, and honor, and service. You understand those words? You should do your job right, and you should do it well, simply because you can, without looking for notice or reward.” - Lee Child

22. “If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.” - George Eliot

23. “Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection.” - Jane Austen

24. “An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.” - Immanuel Kant

25. “We are meant to be.” He pressed his lips to mine again; against myself, against my worry, I once again succumbed to the power of his kiss. “I know that now. Our love is stronger than magic, stronger than the laws of all Feyland. It will survive this...whatever the future brings.” - Prince Kian, Silver Frost.” - Kailin Gow

26. “His outflung hands traced over the threads of his rug, passed loop by loop through some patient woman's hands. Or maybe she hadn't been patient. Maybe she'd been tired, or irritated, or distracted, or hungry, or angry. Maybe she had been dying. But her hands had kept moving, all the same.” - Lois McMaster Bujold

27. “Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.” - G.K. Chesterton

28. “Full moon is falling through the sky.Cranes fly through clouds.Wolves howl. I cannot find restBecause I am powerlessTo amend a broken world.Sima Zian added, "I love the man who wrote that, I told you before, but there is so much burden in Chan Du. Duty, assuming all tasks, can betray arrogance. The idea we can know what must be done, and do it properly. We cannot know the future, my friend. It claims so much to imagine we can. And the world is not broken any more than it always, always is.” - Guy Gavriel Kay

29. “If we wish to be happy, monsieur, we must never comprehend duty; for, as soon as we comprehend it, it is implacable. One would say that it punishes you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you for it; for it puts you into a hell where you feel God at your side.” - Victor Hugo

30. “Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him of her.” - Bertrand Russell

31. “An enlightened man had but one duty - to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.” - Hermann Hesse

32. “So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man,When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

33. “Duty performed gives clearness and firmness to faith, and faith thus strengthened through duty becomes the more assured and satisfying to the soul.” - Tryon Edwards

34. “Every duty that is bidden to wait comes back with seven fresh duties at its back.” - Charles Kingsley

35. “One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.” - Helen Keller

36. “It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.” - George Eliot

37. “Each position has its corresponding duties.” - George Eliot

38. “A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.” - Winston S. Churchill

39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright” - Blaise Pascal

40. “She had a fierce pleasure in the idea of telling Margaret unwelcome truths, in the shape of performance of duty.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

41. “And whosoever fears Allah and keeps his duty to Him, He will make a way for him to get out (from every difficulty).And He will provide him from (sources) he never could imagine.” - Anonymous

42. “We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” - George Orwell

43. “Honor is no phantom. Duty doesn't melt away, no matter how much we might wish it to.” - Claudia J. Edwards

44. “God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right, even though I think it is hopeless.” - Chester Nimitz

45. “These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing, I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant,Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting To the purpose of One Above who is experimentingWith various mixtures of human character which goes best, All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us. There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to doThen you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.” - Stevie Smith

46. “True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

47. “Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.” - Henri Frédéric Amiel

48. “To exact revenge for yourself or your friends is not only a right, it's an absolute duty.” - Stieg Larsson

49. “The most difficult challenge an honest man will ever face is having to choose between duty and love.One creates a man of honorable character―a life worth dying for.The other creates a vulnerable soul that madly yearns for either death or immortality.” - Richelle Goodrich

50. “Takamasa Saegusa: 'Seigen, a mere member of the Toudouza, had the effrontery to sully the sacred dueling ground. For that reason, our lord had already decided to subject him to tu-uchi before long. Cut off his head immediately, and stick it on a pike!'Gennosuke could hardly believe his ears. Such an insult to Irako Seigen was unwarranted. It was pride. For Gennosuke, Irako Seigen was pride itself.Takamasa Saegusa: 'Fujiki Gennosuke! It is the way of the samurai to take the head of the defeated enemy on the battleground. Do not hesitate! If you are a samurai, you must carry out the duty of a samurai!'Samurai...Saegusa, Lord of Izu, continued shouting, but Gennosuke did not attend. That word 'samurai' alone reverberated through his body.If one aims at the juncture between the base of the skull and the spine, decapitation is not that difficult, but Gennosuke could muster no more strength than a baby. He grew pale and trembled with the strain. He could only hack with his sword as if he were sawing wood. He felt nauseated, as if his own cells one after another were being annihilated. But this...Lord Tokugawa Tadanaga: 'I approve.'Takamasa Saegusa: 'Fujiki Gennosuke, for this splendid action you have received words of thanks from our lord. As a sign of his exceptional approval, you shall be given employment at Sunpu Castle. This great debt will by no means be forgotten. From this day forward you must offer your life to our lord!'Prostrating himself, Gennosuke vomited.” - Takayuki Yamaguchi

51. “This is a perfectly good picture. And if I didn't know you, I would be impressed and charmed. But I do know you."He thought some more, wondering whether he dared say precisely what he felt, for he knew he could never explain exactly why the idea came to him. "It's the painting of a dutiful daughter," he said eventually, looking at her cautiously to see her reaction. "You want to please. You are always aware of what the person looking at this picture will think of it. Because of that you've missed something important. Does that make sense?"She thought, then nodded. "All right," she said grudgingly and with just a touch of despair in her voice. "You win."Julien grunted. "Have another go, then. I shall come back and come back until you figure it out.""And you'll know?""You'll know. I will merely get the benefit of it.” - Iain Pears

52. “Tonight he would do anything in the world for her.Tomorrow he would begin to set her free.” - Mary Balogh

53. “Those who believe that liberal democracy and the free market can be defended by the force of law and regulation alone, without an internalised sense of duty and morality, are tragically mistaken.” - Jonathan Sacks

54. “My noble father,I do perceive here a divided duty.To you I am bound for life and education.My life and education both do learn meHow to respect you. You are the lord of my duty,I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband,And so much duty as my mother showedTo you, preferring you before her father,So much I challenge that I may professDue to the Moor my lord.” - Shakespeare; William

55. “We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us.” - Harper Lee

56. “From out of nowhere, Phury felt an overwhelming tide of guilt, like someone had popped the lid off allhis deepest concerns and his fears for the future of the race. He had to respond to it, couldn't bear thepressure. Riding the wave, he found himself saying in a rush, "We live and die for our kind. The species is our firstand only concern. We fight every night and count the jars of thelessers we kill. Stealth is the way weprotect the civilians. The less they know about us, the safer they are. That is why we disappeared.” - J.R. Ward

57. “In the violent scorn of her revolted pride, of her indignant honor, had she forgotten a lowlier yet harder duty left undone?In her contempt and dread of yielding to mere amorous weakness had she stifled and denied the cry of pity, the cry of conscience?To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite. To forgive wrongs darker than death or night. To defy power which seems omnipotent. To love and live to hope till hope creates from it's own wreck the thing it contemplates. Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent.This had been the higher, diviner way which she had missed, this obligation from the passion of the past which she had left unfulfilled, unaccepted.Now the misgiving arose in her whether she had mistaken arrogance for duty; whether, cleaving so closely to honor she had forgotten the obligation of mercy.” - Ouida

58. “She was like a queen who beholds the virgin soil of her kingdom invaded and wasted by a traitor.Any other thing she would have pardoned: infidelity, indifference, cruelty, any sins of manhood's caprice or passion, but who should pardon this? The sin was not alone against herself; it was against every law of decency and truth that ever she had been taught to hold sacred; it was against all those great dead, who lay with the cross on their breasts and their swords by their side, from whom she had received and treasured the traditions of honor and purity of race.It was those dead knights whom he had smote upon the mouth and mocked, crying to them: 'Lo! your place is mine; my sons will reign in your stead. I have tainted your race forever; for every my blood flows with yours!'The greatness of a race is a thing far higher than mere pride. Its instincts are noble and supreme. Its obligations are no less than its privileges; it is a great light which streams backward through the darkness of the ages, and if by that light you guide not your footsteps, then are you thrice accursed, holding as you do that lamp of honor in your hands.So she had always thought, and now he had dashed the lamp in the dust.--"Wanda” - Ouida

59. “And we must still try or we would be leaving our friends to fight without us. I think this is what you have meant by duty, all along; I do understand, at least this much of it.” - Naomi Novik

60. “He had sprung from a rigid Puritan stock, and had been brought up to think much more intently of the duties of this life than of its privileges and pleasures.” - Henry James

61. “...so Leola thought that a modest romance with a hero in embryo could do no harm - might even be a patriotic duty.” - Robertson Davies

62. “[I]t is the writer's duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true. ... It is the writer's duty to hate injustice, to defy the powerful, and to speak for the voiceless. To be ... the severest critics of our own societies.” - Edward Abbey

63. “In Sanskrit, there exists no word for ‘The Individual’ (L’Individu). En Grèce antique, il n’y avait aucun mot pour dire ‘Devoir’ (Duty). In French, the word for ‘Wife’ is the same as the word for ‘Woman.’ En anglais, nous n’avons aucun mot semblable à l’exquise ‘Jouissance!” - Roman Payne

64. “We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to 'like' one another. Love governs the will: 'liking' is a matter of sense and sensibility. Nevertheless, if we really love others it will not be too hard to like them also.If we wait for some people to become agreeable or attractive before we begin to love them, we will never begin. If we are content to give them a cold impersonal 'charity' that is merely a matter of obligation, we will not trouble to understand them or to sympathize with them at all. And in that case we will not really love them, because love implies an efficacious will not only to do good to others exteriorly but also to find some good in them to which we can respond.” - Thomas Merton

65. “there are some some times in life where you have to let your feelings go and do what must be done” - Evan Meekins

66. “Love grows and wanes, but honor, duty, and commitment, those things are constant and stable. They define who you are.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

67. “Most of us don't mind doing what we ought to do when it doesn't interfere with what we want to do, but it takes discipline and maturity to do what we ought to do whether we want to or not.” - Joseph B. Wirthlin

68. “She hated being a nobody and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don't really have any choice.” - Jeanette Winterson

69. “We live in a world that has walls and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns.” - Aaron Sorkin

70. “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.” - Winston Churchill

71. “No man of honor avoided what needed to be done, simply because it might not proceed in his favor.” - Claire Delacroix

72. “Do notforget duty. But choose love when you can.” - Cinda Williams Chima

73. “A father acts on behalf of his children by working, providing, intervening, struggling, and suffering for them. In so doing, he really stands in their place. He is not an isolated individual, but incorporates the selves of several people in his own self. Every attempt to live as if he were alone is a denial of the fact that he is actually responsible. He cannot escape the responsibility, which is his because he is a father. This reality refutes the fictitious notion that the isolated individual is the agent of all ethical behavior. It is not the isolated individual but the responsible person who is the proper agent to be considered in ethical reflection.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

74. “Work done is of more consequence for the future than the foresight of an angel.” - George MacDonald

75. “Major, I do not know why God does the things He does, but I believe you have the same duty to God as you have always had: to follow the right path, to live your life with a clear conscience.” - Jeff Shaara

76. “Thomas looked around and tried not to let his duty turn him bitter. These were good men, and he would not leave them behind. He had chosen this, an unselfish life.” - Jessica Fortunato

77. “There are no saints either. We are immortal, but not so unlike the humans as you think. We have enemies, we have duties, we hate, we struggle, and we love.” - Jessica Fortunato

78. “The voice of love calls to you, my son.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

79. “There is nothing about our duties that necessitates like or dislike. You have your purpose and I have mine. That’s the end of the matter.” - Dawn Jayne

80. “Unity! Duty! And destiny!” - Greg Farshtey

81. “Uniqueness isn't a virtue. It's a responsibility.” - Mark Batterson

82. “No duty is ignoble. What can be ignoble is the sight of people trying not to be ignoble.” - Idries Shah

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

84. “So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.” - Bertrand Russell

85. “The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing our duty. The great thing is to be found at one's post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years.” - C.S. Lewis

86. “You can always tell duty. It's what you don't want to do--it's what you fight against inside you. Duty's when you realize how it'll hurt other people and you choose between that and what would be easiest for you.” - Leslie Ford

87. “Duty comes in many forms; at times duty to country may conflict with duty to family. Yet, with a lucid mind the guises can be torn away and in the end, duty becomes but one, and that duty is to value justice above everything--to do what is right not because someone ordains it, but because the heart which is the seat of truth decrees it so.” - F. Sionil José