Personal Responsibility Quotes

“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.”
― Anne Frank

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.”
― J.K. Rowling

“Living with integrity means: Not settling for less than what you know you deserve in your relationships. Asking for what you want and need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values. Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe.”
― Barbara De Angelis

“Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others.”
― Confucius

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“I don't want to live in the kind of world where we don't look out for each other. Not just the people that are close to us, but anybody who needs a helping hand. I cant change the way anybody else thinks, or what they choose to do, but I can do my bit.”
― charles de lint

“Whenever I am in a difficult situation where there seems to be no way out, I think about all the times I have been in such situations and say to myself, "I did it before, so I can do it again.”
― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

“...the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword."
"...a ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.”
― idowu koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

“Today is a new day and it brings with it a new set of opportunities for me to act on.
I am attentive to the opportunities and I seize them as they arise.
I have full confidence in myself and my abilities.
I can do all things that I commit myself to.
No obstacle is too big or too difficult for me to handle because what lies inside me is greater than what lies ahead of me.
I am committed to improving myself and I am getting better daily.
I am not held back by regret or mistakes from the past.
I am moving forward daily.
Absolutely nothing is impossible for me.”
― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

“If not us, then who?
If not now, then when?”
― John Lewis

“We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”
― Ronald Reagan

“Before you find your soul mate, you must first discover your soul.”
― Charles F. Glassman, Brain Drain - The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life

“If a tree’s strength is judged while it is still a seed, it is mistaken as weak.”
― Idowu Koyenikan, All You Need Is a Ball: What Soccer Teaches Us about Success in Life and Business

“Manliness consists not in bluff, bravado or loneliness. It consists in daring to do the right thing and facing consequences whether it is in matters social, political or other. It consists in deeds not words.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“The victim mindset dilutes the human potential. By not accepting personal responsibility for our circumstances, we greatly reduce our power to change them.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“If you own this story you get to write the ending.”
― Brené Brown

“This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.”
― Natalie Goldberg

“Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals

“Sometimes, when people have a low opinion of their own worth—or, perhaps, when they refuse responsibility for their lives—they choose a new acquaintance, of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past. Such people don’t believe that they deserve any better—so they don’t go looking for it. Or, perhaps, they don’t want the trouble of better. Freud called this a “repetition compulsion.” He thought of it as an unconscious drive to repeat the horrors of the past—sometimes, perhaps, to formulate those horrors more precisely, sometimes to attempt more active mastery and sometimes, perhaps, because no alternatives beckon. People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results. It is in this manner that those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it. It’s partly fate. It’s partly inability. It’s partly … unwillingness to learn? Refusal to learn? Motivated refusal to learn?”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual you have an obligation to be one.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Self-pity is spiritual suicide. It is an indefensible self-mutilation of the soul.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“... no one can ever save someone else, you know? We can only save ourselves. You know that, don't you?”
― Carrie Jones, Need

“To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society”.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

“I was only following orders," the Mayor mocks. "The refuge of scoundrels since the dawn of time.”
― patrick ness

“As someone very sagely said during the parricide trials of the Menendez Brothers: anytime your kids kill you, you are at least partly to blame.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation