Duty Quotes

“Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

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

“Non nobis solum nati sumus.

(Not for ourselves alone are we born.)”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
― John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867

“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

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

“If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity.”
― Albert Einstein

“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

“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, The Satanic Verses

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

“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.”
― Audre Lorde

“Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.”
― Abraham Lincoln

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

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

“We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Do something everyday that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.”
― Mark Twain

“Ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross. Know what the first rule of flying is? Well I s'pose you do, since you already know what I'm 'bout to say.

I do. But I like to hear you say it.

Love. Can know all the math in the 'verse but take a boat in the air that you don't love? She'll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home.”
― Joss Whedon

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

“One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“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, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Nagumo was suddenly on his own. At this crucial time, the cost of his failure to learn the complicated factors that played into carrier operations suddenly exploded. Now, when every minute counted, it was too late to learn the complexities involved in loading different munitions on different types of planes on the hangar deck, too late to learn how the planes were organized and spotted on the flight decks, too late to learn the flight capabilities of his different types of planes, and far too late to know how to integrate all those factors into a fast-moving and efficient operation with the planes and ordnance available at that moment. Commander Genda, his brilliant operations officer, couldn’t make the decisions for him now. It was all up to Nagumo. At 0730 on June 4, 1942, years of shipbuilding, training, and strategic planning had all come to this moment. Teams of highly trained pilots, flight deck personnel, mechanics, and hundreds of other sailors were ready and awaiting his command. The entire course of the battle, of the Combined Fleet, and even perhaps of Japan were going to bear the results of his decisions, then and there.”
― Dale A. Jenkins, Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway

“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, Marriage and Morals

“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

“Rise above the deceptions and temptations of the mind. This is your duty. You are born for this only; all other duties are self-created and self-imposed owing to ignorance.”
― Sivananda

“Always seek justice, but love only mercy. To love justice and hate mercy is but a doorway to more injustice.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Islam expect every Muslim to do this duty, and if we realise our responsibility time will come soon when we shall justify ourselves worthy of a glorious past.”
― Muhammad Ali Jinnah

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

“It is my duty as a free man to read so I'm not blind being lead around by my nose”
― Pierce Brown, Iron Gold

“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, القرآن الكريم

“The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter—for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.”
― Nikola Tesla, Problem of Increasing Human Energy