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Duty Quotes

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Duty Quotes

“The most beautiful things in the universe are inside the human mind.”

Mind Humans Beautiful Universe Duty Human Mind Beautiful Things

Author:Terence McKenna

“But I must work on in full calmness and serenity... The world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it, because I have walked on the earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures, not made to please a certain tendency in art, but to express a sincere human feeling. So this work is the aim-and through concentration upon that one idea, everything one does is simplified. Now the work goes slowly-a reason the more to lose no time.”

“...in the acquisition of this blessing human nature can find no better helper than Love. I declare that it is the duty of every man to honour Love, and I honour and practice the mysteries of Love in an especial degree myself, and recommend the same to others, and I praise the power and valour of Love to the best of my ability both now and always.”

Men Humans Ability Practice Mystery Human Nature Duty Blessing Degrees Praise Every Man Honour Acquisition Helpers Valour Mystery Of Love

Author:Socrates

“Our first duty to liberty is to keep our own. But it is also our duty - as Europeans - to keep alive in the Eastern as well as the Western half of our continent those ideas of human dignity which Europe gave to the world. Let us therefore resolve to keep the lamps of freedom burning bright so that all who look to the West from the shadows of the East need not doubt that we remain true to those human and spiritual values that lie at the heart of European civilization.”

Source: In defence of freedom: speeches on Britain's relations with the world 1976-1986

“We have not only the right, but a specific duty, to honestly and unflinchingly look at all aspects of our world, both the one we create as humans and the one we are lucky enough to inhabit as a species.”

World Humans Looks Enough Duty Lucky Aspect Species Honestly Our World

Author:Michael Light

“As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only 'doing their duty'”

Feels Writing Trying Humans Individual Human Beings Duty Flying Civilized Kill Me Enmity Overhead

Book:Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays

Source: Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays

“The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth. I'm not contending in a dogmatic way that there is not a God. What I'm contending is that we don't know that there is. I don't like the word "absolute." I don't think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.”

Thinking Knows Men Way Humans Facts Law Belief Race Moral Effects Example Duty Development Periods Evidence Absolutes Favors Human Race Dogmatic Moral Law Cannibalism Contending Good Moral

Author:Bertrand Russell

“We all have a responsibility, and as Rabbi Heschel, one of my prophets, has put it: "Those who condone, or are silent, in the face of injustice, are more guilty than the perpetrators." And so, to the degree we pretend to be a democracy, we have a corresponding duty to be activist enough to prevent our human rights form being infringed upon.”

Humans Enough Faces Form Responsibility Democracy Rights Duty Degrees Silent Injustice Human Rights Guilty Prophet Activist Corresponding Rabbi Perpetrators

Author:Ray McGovern

“Rules are what governs us as humans, but it was wonderful to meet a man who said "There are no rules. You gotta be what you gotta be and you gotta believe in it." I know that's a feeling I used to feel a lot at a younger age, and through the sense of responsibility and working with so many and taking on so many duties and actions, you lose if you don't stay on top of it. So that's what I love about this man, that there are no rules.”

Ifs Knows Men Feels Believe Humans Said Feelings Age Action Used Loses Responsibility Wonderful Duty Sense Of Responsibility

Author:Kevin Drew

“Kantian ethical theory distinguishes three levels: First, that of a fundamental principle (the categorical imperative, formulated in three main ways in Kant's Groundwork); second, a set of duties, not deduced from but derived from this principle, by way of its interpretation or specification, its application to the general conditions of human life - which Kant does in the Doctrine of virtue, the second main part of the Metaphysics of Morals; and then finally an act of judgment, through which these duties are applied to particular cases.”

“Kant regards the universalizability test for maxims as focused on a very special sort of situation: one where the agent is tempted to make an exception to a recognized duty out of self-preference. The universalizability test is supposed help the agent to see, in a particular case of moral judgment, that self-preference is not a satisfactory reason for exempting yourself from a duty you recognize. Kant thinks, as a matter of human nature, that this situation arises often enough and that we need a canon of judgment to guard against it.”

“I do not believe that it is necessarily the duty of the writer to give a voice to his community. If a writer is true to his vocation, to his or her vocation, the very process of creativity enlarges these human horizons. It provides insights, even when you're not writing, when your writing's not dealing with a concrete political situation.”

Ifs Giving Writing Believe Humans Political Process Voice Community Situation Creativity Duty Insight Horizon Concrete Vocation

Author:Wole Soyinka

“It is our duty to select the best and most dependable theory that human intelligence can supply, and use it as a raft to ride the seas of life.”

Humans Use Sea Duty Theory Select Human Intelligence Dependable

Author:Plato

“Our innate, built-in human value is the reason we have binding duties or obligations towards each other that we don't have towards any other kind of thing. It's also the reason we have unalienable human rights. If man's God-given, special value falls, then unalienable human rights fall, too.”

Ifs Men Humans Kind Reason Values Fall Given Rights Special Duty Built Human Rights Obligation Innate Binding Human Values

Author:Greg Koukl

“As Muslims, our interests are our values. In any society, be it in Western or Muslim-majority countries, our duty is that of critical loyalty: Staying loyal to our countries by always being critically engaged in the name of the principles of justice, equality and human brotherhood. We should be the ethical and moral voice wherever we are by saying that, even though we understand economic and geo-strategic interests, we cannot accept a violation of these principles by any society.”

“Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential.”

“Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.”

Men Humans Fear Human Beings Duty Battle Essence Overcoming Competition Civil War Remove Coward Magnificent Manhood Indulge Indulge In

Author:George S. Patton

“Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made.”

Men Humans Wells Made States Natural Rights Duty Protect Consequence Crisis Human Rights Population Humanitarian Graves Primaries Violation Violation Of Human Rights

Author:Pope Benedict XVI

“Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species. --speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962”

Source: A Life in Letters

“No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.”

“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.”

Life Humans Matter Helping Use Realizing Duty Highest Helping Others

Author:Ben Stein

“You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.”

Source: Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

“Because they claim to be concerned with the welfare of whole societies, governments arrogate to themselves the right to pass off as mere abstract profit or loss the human unhappiness that their decisions provoke or their negligence permits. It is a duty of an international citizenship to always bring the testimony of people's suffering to the eyes and ears of governments, sufferings for which it's untrue that they are not responsible. The suffering of men must never be a mere silent residue of policy. It grounds an absolute right to stand up and speak to those who hold power.”

“What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”

Feels Humans Memories Son Brother Wind Duty Arms Honor Glory Tragedy Newborn Great Tragedy

Book:George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons

Source: George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.”

Life Believe Humans Happiness I Believe Religious Justice Principles Duty Creatures Mercy Fellows I Believe In This Life Age Of Reason

Author:Thomas Paine

“No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol - cross or crescent or whatever - that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race.”

Ifs Men Want Humans Mean Individual Human Beings Race Christianity Duty Behavior Crosses Agree Symbols Code Human Race Reminders Crescent

Author:William Faulkner

“It is your duty to be exceedingly kind to every human being...until ye change the world of man into the world of God.”

Men World Humans Kind Human Beings Duty Changing The World Baha

Author:Abdu'l-Bahá