Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.
Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it's time to try something new. Let's invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt. Let's meet our responsibility to the citizens who sent us here. Let's try common sense.
I believe that to meet the challenge of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. We must all learn to work not just for our own self, family, or nation but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace, the equitable use of natural resources, and through concern for future generations, the proper care of the environment.
Every man among us is more fit to meet the duties and responsibilities of citizenship because of the perils over which, in the past, the nation has triumphed; because of the blood and sweat and tears, the labor and the anguish, through which, in the days that have gone, our forefathers moved on to triumph.
The intelligent have a right over the ignorant, namely, the right of instructing them. The right punishment of one out of tune, isto make him play in tune; the fine which the good, refusing to govern, ought to pay, is, to be governed by a worse man; that his guards shall not handle gold and silver, but shall be instructed that there is gold and silver in their souls, which will make men willing to give them every thing which they need.
In the interests of everyone the artist had a responsibility to use his medium well. In the Tibetan culture, most of the paintings are of deities or Buddhas, and they try to send a message of the value of the spiritual.
The situation with Tibet has to change. China is one of the last huge dictatorships, holding on to these colonies, provinces. That has to collapse. It's the responsibility of heads of business who are going to do business in China to lay down the law.
If you look at Earth from space you see a dot, that's here. That's home. That's us. It underscores the responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Among other things, I'm thinking "I'm a child of God." That's amazing. And "I'm not only a child of God, but God loves me." The hardest part for me is to realize that while God loves me, and I am a child of God, I have to see the bigot and the brute and the rapist, and whether he or she knows it or not, I have to know that that person is a child of God. That is part of the responsibility - and it's hard.
Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that any old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to govern his national comrades, but that, by the very greatness of the responsibility to be assumed, incompetents and weaklings are frightened of.
I haven't had an easy life, but at some point ,you have to take responsibility for yourself and shape who it is that you want to be. I have no time for moaners. I like to chase my dreams and surround myself with other people who are chasing their dreams, too.