Accept Responsibility Quotes & Sayings

It would have been easier to fight alone with inadequate forces than to have to accept ... responsibility for our ally's lack of fighting qualities and dubious loyalty. — Albert Kesselring

As long as you are free, you are free to select and choose alternatives, provided that you are willing to accept the responsibility for being free. And after you've tried your alternatives, and they don't work as you would wish, don't blame me. Blame your choice. Try another alternative. — Leo Buscaglia

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms. — Neal Boortz

Those who broadcast your messy failures are the same people who will telecast your mass fortunes. But this can only happen when you accept your responsibility to turn your life around! — Israelmore Ayivor

There is a kind of dictatorship that can come about through a creeping paralysis of thought, readiness to accept paternalistic measures by government, and along with those measures comes a surrender of our own responsibilities and therefore a surrender of our own thought over our own lives and our own right to exercise the vote. The free system gives the right to every citizen to do something for himself. Because he has the right, the opportunity is always there. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

If you accept full responsibility for yourself, you will be released forever from expectation, resentment, blame and guilt. — Leonard Jacobson

I can't accept collective responsibility for the decision to commit Britain now to military action in Iraq without international agreement or domestic support. — Robin Cook

Yet it's no wonder forgiveness is such a challenge in the world today: people believe the illusions are real and circumstances can randomly render you damaged goods. They can't. Nothing can. Not even yourself. The dead would have you skip the whole quandary from the git-go and accept responsibility for everything. Then, with evolving clarity and more confidence in your power, you can also realize deep down that everyone is your friend, everything makes you more, and the sky is the limit for all you can still achieve. — Mike Dooley

When we decide to be happy we accept the responsibility to bring happiness to someone else. — Maya Angelou

Mma Ramotswe had been understanding. Men who sired children and then failed to accept responsibility for them were anathema to her, and she reserved particular disapproval for those who then completely disappeared. She — Alexander McCall Smith

Our contribution purely depends on our consciousness and our willingness to support those in need, to show vulnerability and accept the support of others, to share without expecting the credit, to give it our all and allow our hard work to decide the outcome, to understand that control can only be achieved with a shared responsibility. — Yehuda Berg

I think if we are actually going to accept our generation's responsibility, that's going to mean that we give our children no less retirement security than we inherited from our parents. — Carol Moseley Braun

Because democratic institutions do not renew themselves as effortlessly as flowering trees, they demand the ceaseless tinkering of people who possess both the courage and the honesty to admit their mistakes and accept responsibility for even the most inglorious acts. — Bill Vaughan

But because we accept the sanctity of life, the responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ expressed so well in the hymn: 'When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died. My richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride.' — Margaret Thatcher

We accept the responsibility to preach the gospel to every person on earth. And if the question is asked, you mean you are out to convert the entire world? The answer is, 'yes'. We will try to reach every living soul. — Boyd K. Packer

The ability to try to understand existence, the ability to try to recognize the wonder and responsibility of one's own existence, the ability to know even fractionally the almost annihilating beauty, ambiguity, darkness, and horror which swarm every instant of every consciousness, the ability to try to accept it, or the ability to try to defend one's self, or the ability to dare to try to assist others; all such as these, of which most human beings are cheated of their potentials, are, in most of those who even begin to discern or wish for them, the gifts or thefts of economic privilege, and are available to members of these leanest classes only by the rare and irrelevant miracle of born and surviving 'talent. — James Agee

They must accept responsibility, recognizing that responsibility is not the same as culpability. — Stephen King

And, if there was any responsibility in refusing to obey, he was willing to accept it. — John Bigelow

When we wake up and see reality as it is, a lot of people blame feminism. They twist everything around and claim that the feminist vision creates demands which are too high and contradictory, demands that break overworked women down with stress. They claim that everything was so much easier when women were housewives without the demands of work and career. Motherhood and a clean home were a woman's self-realization. Today most women work two jobs, one outside and one inside the home. Yet if we lived equally and men took just as much responsibility for the children and the home, women would not be broken down by the stress. Perhaps it is only possible to accept the difficulties if you see feminism as a resistance movement, and the only path to possible freedom. Because resistance almost always involves pain. — Maria Sveland

AFTER BEING IN LOVE, THE NEXT RESPONSIBILITY
Turn me like a waterwheel turning a millstone.
Plenty of water, a Living River.
Keep me in one place and scatter the love.
Leaf-moves in wind, straw drawn toward amber,
all parts of the world are in love,
but they do not tell their secrets. Cows grazing
on a sacramental table, ants whispering in Solomon's ear.
Mountains mumbling an echo. Sky, calm.
If the sun were not in love, he would have no brightness,
the side of the hill no grass on it.
The ocean would come to rest somewhere.
Be a lover as they are, that you come to know
you Beloved. Be faithful that you may know
Faith. The other parts of the universe did not accept
the next responsibility of love as you can.
They were afraid they might make a mistake
with it, the inspired knowing
that springs from being in love — Rumi

[ ... ] the responsibility for their wellbeing and for the fundamental meaning they give to their own life must, in adulthood, be theirs. To accept the burden that someone 'can't live without you' is unrealistic. It infantilises that person and overburdens you. p.226 — Stephanie Dowrick

Would it perturb you to see things as they are? To gaze at the world tranquilly and accept responsibility for your gaze, whatever it might see? — Jean Genet

If you're passionate, be passionate enough to fail. Fail small, accept responsibility, repeat. The people who make change are the survivors of serial failure. — Seth Godin

When one has come to accept a certain course as duty he has a pleasant sense of relief and of lifted responsibility, even if the course involves pain and renunciation. It is like obedience to some external authority; any clear way, though it lead to death, is mentally preferable to the tangle of uncertainty. — Charles Horton Cooley

[W]omen will never be taken seriously until they accept full responsibility for their sexuality. — Camille Paglia

If humankind would accept and acknowledge this responsibility and become creatively engaged in the process of evolution, consciously as well as unconsciously, a new reality would emerge, and a new age could be born. — Jonas Salk

But no matter how much parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reckoned with. Only a fool is interested in other people's guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart. — C. G. Jung

The bond of family blesses us with an immeasurable power. But we also must accept what comes with it. It gives us a responsibility to love without condition, without apology. We can never waver from the power of that bond, even if it's tested. The bond nourishes us, gives us strength. Without that power, we are nothing. — Elijah

We must see the new Nigeria The Nigeria We Want we must accept personal responsibility to build it — Fela Durotoye

When you accept a leadership role, you take on extra responsibility for your actions toward others. — Kelley Armstrong

I take a backseat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans. And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did. — John McCain

I not only could not stifle controversy among your readers.. I welcome it. This Administration intends to be candid about its errors; for as a wise man once said: "An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it." We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors; and we expect you to point them out when we miss them. — John F. Kennedy

What people need to accept is that it is there responsibility to communicate what they need and what they feel, and to realize that they cannot expect someone else magically to make them happy. People want to be made happy, instead of making themselves happy — Richard Madsen

You always have a choice. Don't ever imagine you don't. Whatever you do, it's a decision and you have to accept responsibility for it. That's when honor becomes more than empty words. — Lynn Flewelling

Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else. — Les Brown

Until you are willing to accept total and complete responsibility for every aspect of your life, your life will keep sending you experiences designed to get your attention. — Iyanla Vanzant

Until you accept responsibility for your life, someone else runs your life. — Orrin Woodward

When I talk about responsibility, I am really talking about having power. Blame is about giving away one's power. Responsibility gives us the power to make changes in our lives. If we play the victim role, then we are using our personal power to be helpless. If we decide to accept responsibility, then we don't waste time blaming somebody or something out there. Some people feel guilty for creating illness, or poverty, or problems. They choose to interpret responsibility as guilt. (Some members of the media like to refer to it as New Age Guilt.) These people feel guilty because they believe that they have failed in some way. — Louise L. Hay

Now, if King Crimson accepts responsibility for innovating its own tradition, you can't accept responsibility for the audience. And there is an enormous tangible weight of expectation, which comes from an audience attending a King Crimson concert. — Robert Fripp

1. Live now. Be concerned with the present rather than with past or future.
2. Live here. Deal with what is present rather than with what is absent.
3. Stop imagining. Experience the real.
4. Stop unnecessary thinking. Rather, taste and see.
5. Express rather than manipulate, explain, justify, or judge.
6. Give in to unpleasantness and pain just as to pleasure. Do not restrict your awareness.
7. Accept no should or ought other than your own. Adore no graven image.
8. Take full responsibility for your actions, feelings, and thoughts.
9. Surrender to being as you are. — Claudio Naranjo

When you accept a position of responsibility, be responsible to the position. — Karen Larson-Reuter

History will look back, and I'm fully prepared to accept any mistakes that history judges to my administration, because the president makes the decisions, the president has to take the responsibility. — George W. Bush

There are weak men; men who run and hide when life slaps them in the ass. Then there are men; men who have a backbone yet occasionally, when life slaps them in the ass, will rely on others. And then there are real men; men who don't cry or complain, who don't just have a backbone, they are the backbone. Men who make their own decisions and live with the consequences, who accept responsibility for their actions or words. Men who, when life slaps them in the ass, slap back and move on. Men who live hard and die even harder.
Men like my father and my uncles. Men I loved with all my heart.
Men like Deuce. — Madeline Sheehan

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship. — Barack Obama

Your zeal to face life's rough and tumble, your ardor to accept the responsibilities of adulthood is hardly congruent with the aspirations of most graduate students ... ' He shook his head of disagreeable hair. 'I need not tell you,' he deplored, sinking to paralipsis, 'that there resides in almost every one of 'em the unconscious desire not to grow up. For once the academic goal is attained and the doctorate irradicably abbreviated after the name, the problem of facing the world is confronted. The subtlest, most unremitting drive of the student is his unconscious proclivity to postpone the acceptance of responsibility as long as possible. — Millard Kaufman

On the other hand, no man is saved mechanically or by force, but through faith, freely, by accepting the gift of God. This implies the contrary power of rejecting the gift. To accept is no merit, to reject is ingratitude and guilt. All Calvinistic preachers appeal to man's responsibility. They pray as if everything depended on God; and yet they preach and work as if everything depended on man. — Philip Schaff

Yoga means we accept responsibility for the tasks in our life, and we know that being a king, being an enlightened teacher, being someone who sweeps the streets, we know that nothing is a greater yoga than anything else. — Frederick Lenz

Show me someone who is humble enough to accept and take responsibility for his or her circumstances and courageous enough to take whatever initiative is necessary to creatively work his or her through or around these challenges, and I'll show you supreme power of choice. — Stephen R. Covey

Being a good father to our children requires a few goals:
1. Be an example of personal responsibility
2. Display self-respect
3. Be an example of personal growth, passion, and perseverance
4. Recognize and accept your child's particular gifts and nurture them, not wish they had others
5. Love and respect your wife — Charles F. Glassman

One of the most serious human defects in all ages is procrastination, an unwillingness to accept personal responsibilities now. — Spencer W. Kimball

The routine requires balancing a number of virtues: freedom and discipline, craft and protocol, specialized ability and group collaboration. And for checklists to help achieve that balance, they have to take two almost opposing forms. They supple a set of checks to ensure the stupid but critical stuff is not overlooked, and they supply another set of checks to ensure people talk and coordinate and accept responsibility while nonetheless being left the power to manage the nuances and unpredictabilities the best they know how. — Atul Gawande

You are 100 percent responsible for all you experience. What happens in your life is not your fault, but it is your responsibility. The concept of personal responsibility goes beyond what you say, do, and think. It includes what others say, do, and think that shows up in your life. If you take complete responsibility for all that appears in your life, then when someone surfaces with a problem, then it is your problem, too.This ties in to principle three, which states you can heal whatever comes your way. In short, you can't blame anyone or anything for your current reality.All you can do is take responsibility for it, which means accept it, own it, and love it.The more you heal what comes up, the more you get in tune with the source.5. — Anonymous

Only when we accept full responsibility for our lives will we have the confidence and courage to risk. — Stacy Allison

I would never dream of telling people how to dress. but I do say to them, however you are dressing, accept responsibility for it. And also, unless asked, I don't judge. And if asked to judge - I would approach it socratically, I would approach it with questions. — Tim Gunn

Success on any level begins when you accept responsibility for creating life what you want. You are the only person who can truly make it happen. Not your boss, your business partner, your financial planner, your spouse of life-partner. Just you. — Paul Clitheroe

In recent decades we have emphasized the value of teaching people 'tolerance.' Tolerance is not only inadequate, it is a negative concept which only alienates society further. Learning to tolerate absolves people of the responsibility of learning to understand different people, accept and appreciate their differences, and progress towards respecting them for who and what they are. It is only when we build acceptance between people that we will rid ourselves of the scourge of prejudice and liberate ourselves from violence. — Arun Gandhi

Freedom & Duty always go hand in hand and if the free do not accept the duty of social responsibility, they will not long remain free. — John Foster Dulles

The knowledge that change can be frightening, that responsibility can, but that the answer to that is not refusing to change or to accept responsibility. — Jo Walton

Solve the problem yourself or accept a fate you may not like ... from this perspective, the ethic of personal responsibility gains appeal. — Noel Tichy

The time had finally come when she would have to accept the full power of the Starwife. No longer could she be just Ysabelle. Now she had a land to govern and all the daunting responsibilities that that entailed. The liberty she had experienced since the night she had escaped from the Ring of Banbha seemed to vanish. She was left stripped of her freedom, and only long years of a lonely reign stretched out before her. — Robin Jarvis

Of course, it made no sense. The goat couldn't object or agree. The goat couldn't forgive. The goat didn't even know what was happening. Only humans could accept responsibility, and only humans could take on a debt. Only humans could stand in for one another...A goat would always be a goat, but humans can change how they define one another and how they define themselves. That was civilization. — Alex London

It is our responsibility to discover our talents, to accept them as from God, to develop them through education and training, and to use them for His glory. — J. Grant Howard

On my recent trip to Israel, I had the opportunity to visit Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial, and reaffirm our collective responsibility to confront anti-Semitism, prejudice, and intolerance across the world. On this Yom Hashoah, we must accept the full responsibility of remembrance, as nations and as individuals-not simply to pledge "never again," but to commit ourselves to the understanding, empathy and compassion that is the foundation of peace and human dignity. — Barack Obama

Accept complete responsibility both for understanding and for being understood. — Brian Tracy

We begin by accepting that we have problems, that we're miles away from perfect. But some people take this too far: they turn acceptance of the world into an excuse for passivity in the face of their own failings, and even in the face of evil. Yes, you have to accept some unpleasant, upsetting, tragic facts about life. But you also have to accept your responsibility to act in the world. — Eric Greitens

Your first step in taking responsibility is to quit blaming others and quit blaming the world. You must accept that opportunity is everywhere. Opportunity is all the time. It does not disappear in the difficult times, in fact it's even greater. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future. — John F. Kennedy

If one is to use public funds he must accept a responsibility to the public. — Thomas Francis Jr.

I've learned something: What many of us cal destiny is really our own instinct. We know what is right, but we don't
want to admit it, especially if what is right will lead to our own death. We call it destiny so we don't have to accept responsibility for making those decisions. Human instinct is stronger than anyone will admit. — Carrie Vaughn

When you take a position, you have to accept responsibilities. — Radhanath Swami

I grow spiritually when I accept responsibility for my life. — Louise Hay

It would be dangerous territory if I wasn't practising what I preach which is to always accept responsibility, always accept the consequences of your actions. — David Blunkett

Leaders inspire accountability through their ability to accept responsibility before they place blame. — Courtney Lynch

I am here to accept responsibility for that which I did. I will not accept responsibility for that which I did not do. — Oliver North

Accepting that you can't control the outcome is not the end of action - it is the opening for the boldest and most daring action. You can accept total responsibility for your choices and actions. You are free to play full-out in creating and implementing an extraordinary future for yourself and your organization. — Tracy Goss

If I find here and Now unacceptable, I have three choices:
1-Totally accept it.
2- Change it.
3-Remove myself from the situation.
That is taking responsibility for my life. — Eckhart Tolle

Think of managing change as an adventure. It tests your skills and abilities. It brings forth talent that may have been dormant. Change is also a training ground for leadership. When we think of leaders, we remember times of change, innovation, and conflict. Leadership is often about shaping a new way of life. To do that, you must advance change, take risks, and accept responsibility for making change happen. — Charles E. Rice

Sometimes, she wondered if what she craved even existed. A man who was strong inside and out. A man who knew the world wasn't fair, and knew he had to take responsibility for his part in it. A man who knew there was more to sex than simply the act and that there was more to a woman than breasts and thighs and what lay beyond. A man who accepted the fact that a woman might need adventure as well. That was what she craved. A man she could trust enough not just to give in to her desires with, but to accept her need to live. A man who, even if he wasn't there forever, was at least there long enough to care about fulfilling not just the physical desires, but the adventurous ones as well. — Lora Leigh

So I had to be careful. I recognized the responsibility that, whether I liked it or not, I had to accept whatever the obligation was. That was to behave in a manner, to carry myself in such a professional way, as if there ever is a reflection, it's a positive one. — Sidney Poitier

Luther urged Christians to accept civic responsibility (so long as it did not violate the claims of Christ) for the sake of the neighbor. This mandate extended even to those manifestly violent offices of the sword: "If you see that there is a lack of hangmen, constables, judges, lords, princes, and you find that you are qualified, you should offer your services and seek the position. — Timothy George

The Cylon War is long over, yet we must not forget the reasons why so many sacrificed so much in the cause of freedom. The cost of wearing the uniform can be high, but...
[very long pause]
sometimes it's too high. You know, when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question "Why?" Why are we as a people worth saving? We still commit murder because of greed and spite, jealousy, and we still visit all of our sins upon our children. We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything that we've done, like we did with the Cylons. We decided to play God, create life. And when that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn't our fault, not really. You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore. — Ronald M. Moore

I accept responsibility for U-boat warfare from 1933 onward, and of the entire navy from 1943 on, but to make me responsible for what happened to Jews in Germany, or Russian soldiers on the east front it is so ridiculous all I can do is laugh. — Karl Donitz

The future is up for grabs. It belongs to any and all who will take the risk and accept the responsibility of consciously creating the future they want. — Robert Anton Wilson

Maturity is accepting the responsibility and totally understanding what responsibility means. So when we say, accept the responsibility for your attitude, we mean (1) become aware of how you think and how you feel; and (2) if there is any negativity, or if it is simply not as you want to feel then change it to make it right. — Thomas D

When you forgive somebody else you accept the responsibility for your own future. — Zig Ziglar

Some decide that happiness and glee are the same thing, they are not. When we choose happiness we accept the responsibility to lighten the load of someone else and to be a light on the path of another who may be walking in darkness. — Maya Angelou

Almost no one will accept responsibility for his or her role in precipitating a crisis: not leveraged speculators, not willfully blind leaders of financial institutions, and certainly not regulators, government officials, ratings agencies or politicians. — Seth Klarman

It is undeniably easier to ignore the hardships of those who are too weak to demand their rights than to respond sensitively to their needs. To care is to accept responsibility, to dare to act in accordance with the dictum that the ruler is the strength of the helpless. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Manufacturers must accept responsibility for their customers' safety. — Eric Schneiderman

in the field of ethics, of moral knowledge, it was approached by Kant with his principle of autonomy. This principle expresses his realization that we must not accept the command of an authority, however exalted, as the basis of ethics. For whenever we are faced with a command by an authority, it is for us to judge, critically, whether it is moral or immoral to obey. The authority may have power to enforce its commands, and we may be powerless to resist. But if we have the physical power of choice, then the ultimate responsibility remains with us. It is our own critical decision whether to obey a command; whether to submit to an authority. — Karl R. Popper

Some of us can accept others right where they are a lot more easily than we can accept ourselves. We feel that compassion is reserved for someone else, and it never occurs to us to feel it for ourselves. My experience is that by practicing without 'shoulds,' we gradually discover our wakefulness and our confidence. Gradually, without any agenda except to be honest and kind, we assume responsibility for being here in this unpredictable world, in this unique moment, in this precious human body. — Pema Chodron

To what extent, in other words, we may ask, is the imagining of God as having expelled the humans a misunderstanding of our own failure to keep commandments and accept infinite responsibility for the other individual, an alternative that, if undertaken, changes everything? — Sandor Goodhart

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done. — Peter F. Drucker

The moment you accept responsibility for EVERYTHING in your life, is the moment you gain the power to change ANYTHING in your life. — Hal Elrod

We have a choice: to spend a lot of time fighting for what we know is right, or to just accept what we know is wrong. We must stand up for our rights and for the rights of others, even if most people say we can't win. — Susan Polis Schutz

It is not enough to say you are sorry. You must utterly own the terrible thing you have done. You must cast no blame on the one you have injured. Rather, accept every molecule of the responsibility, even if reason and self-preservation scream against it. Then, and only then, will the words 'I am sorry' have meaning. — Carmen Agra Deedy

Weak leaders of churches blame people and circumstances. Breakout church leaders accept responsibility and see God's possibilities in even difficult situations. — Thom S. Rainer

Forgive others, forgive yourself, forgive yourself for not being perfect, and accept responsibility for your own life. — Leo Buscaglia

We also have a responsibility not to let ourselves be judged. We do not have to accept others' evaluations of our worth, nor are we obligated to believe in their superiority. Whichever role we are assigned, we can stop the game by refusing to play our expected part. When someone suggests that our recent behavior has undone our right to exist, a useful question to ask is, "What do you want? What can I do to make the situation better?" This often reduces the Judge's voice to silence, because what the Judge really wants- but cannot admit- is to make you feel bad, not to get the floor clean. When we feel secure in our inherent value, we do not have to argue about our worth as human beings. Instead, we can attempt to solve the problem. — Starhawk

When you start to accept responsibility for the results you get in life, you also take back the power to change your future outcome. — Kevin Ngo