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Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than raising of the next generation.
We create the world in which we live; if that world becomes unfit for human life; it is because we tire of our responsibility.
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
"Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility... in the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have... is the ability to take on responsibility."
“…the domain of the fundamental rights of the human person and respect for his dignity, of the progress of humanity, which cannot be at any price, of justice and equity, as well as the protection of the planet, all domains that concern the future of man and of humanity, and the responsibility of each generation.”
This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century -- solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.
"Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be."
"To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know."
"I was taught very early that I would have to depend entirely upon myself; that my future lay in my own hands."
"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."
If there is any responsibility in the cycle of life it must be that one generation owes to the next that strength by which it can come to face ultimate concerns in its own way.
"The reason people blame things on the previous generations is that there's only one other choice."
"Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him."
“The wisdom of those who drafted our constitution and conceived our nation as functioning with three strong and independent branches have proven truly remarkable. It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the founders' vision of the proper role of the courts in our society. If confirmed, I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to keep our judicial system strong, and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws and the Constitution.”
In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.
"As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility."
These same experiences make of the sequence of life cycles a generational cycle, irrevocably binding each generation to those that gave it life and to those for whose life it is responsible. Thus, reconciling lifelong generativity and stagnation involves the elder in a review of his or her own years of active responsibility for nurturing the next generations, and also in an integration of earlier-life experiences of caring and of self-concern in relation to previous generations.
"The great thought, the great concern, the great anxiety of men is to restrict, as much as possible, the limits of their own responsibility."
It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.
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