Quotes & Sayings About Social Obligation

The obligation to earn one's bread by the sweat of one's brow also presumes the right to do so. A society in which this right is systematically denied, in which economic policies do not allow workers to reach satisfactory levels of employment, cannot be justified from an ethical point of view, nor can that society attain social peace. — Pope John Paul II

The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny. — Che Guevara

Social obligation is much bigger than supporting worthy causes. It includes anything that impacts people and the quality of their lives . — Bill Ford

I lived in a world where social arrangements were taken for granted and assumed to be timeless. A child's obligation was to learn these usages, not to question them. The complexities of racial deportment were of a piece with learning manners and etiquette more generally. — Drew Gilpin Faust

The child tends to be stripped of all social influences but those of the market place, all sense of place, function and class is weakened, the characteristics of region and clan, neighborhood or kindred are attenuated. The individual is denuded of everything but appetities, desires and tastes, wrenched from any context of human obligation or commitment. It is a process of mutilation; and once this has been achieved, we are offered the consolation of reconstituting the abbreviated humanity out of the things and the goods around us, and the fantasies and vapors which they emit. A culture becomes the main determinant upon morality, beliefs and purposes, usurping more and more territory that formerly belonged to parents, teachers, community, priests and politics alike. — Jeremy Seabrook

Consciously or subconsciously, we become slaves to debt and social obligation. As a result, we end up more committed to the minutia and less in tune with the bigger picture: our deepest sense of purpose. — Romany Malco

While the feds ... leave Social Security off their books, the government's obligation to make benefit payments to current and near-term Social Security recipients is certainly no less real than its obligation to pay interest on its Treasury bonds. — Laurence Kotlikoff

If Jesus regarded it as important the blessing that comes to one who voluntarily renders help, then the churches have been right in presenting the claims of philanthropy as on of the most important of religious obligations. For one thing, this obligation keeps us sensitive and aware toward an important aspect of our environment --- other peoples needs. Secondly, this is a rightful stewardship of ones own property, and it is the antithesis of the practice whereby one man volunteers another mans property for use in alleviating some real of imagined distress --- as in various schemes of social security. — Edmund A. Opitz

I don't mind expressing my opinions and speaking out against injustice. I would be doing this even if I wasn't a writer. I grew up in a household that believed in social justice. I have always understood myself as having an obligation to stand on the side of the silenced, the oppressed, and the mistreated. — Tayari Jones

Christians can disagree about public policy in good faith, and a libertarian and a social democrat can both claim to be living out the gospel. But the Christian libertarian has a particular obligation to recognize those places where libertarianism's emphasis on freedom can shade into an un-Christian worship of the individual. Likewise the Christian liberal: even as he supports government interventions to assist the poor and dispossessed, he should be constantly on guard against the tendency to deify Leviathan and wary of the ways that government power can easily be turned to inhuman and immoral ends.
In the contemporary United States, a host of factors - from the salience of issues like abortion to the anti-Christian biases of our largely left-wing intelligentsia - ensure that many orthodox Christians feel more comfortable affiliating with the Republican Party than with the Democrats. But this comfort should not blind Christians to the GOP's flaws. — Ross Douthat

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

The second paragraph of the Declaration that is very much an expression of Jefferson's imagination. It envisions a perfect world, at last bereft of kings, priests, and even government itself. In this never-never land, free individuals interact harmoniously, all forms of political coercion are unnecessary because they have been voluntarily internalized, people pursue their own different versions of happiness without colliding, and some semblance of social equality reigns supreme. As Lincoln recognized, it is an ideal world that can never be reached on this earth, only approached. And each generation had an obligation to move America an increment closer to the full promise, as Lincoln most famously did. The American Dream, then, is the Jeffersonian Dream writ large, embedded in language composed during one of the most crowded and congested moments in American history by an idealistic young man who desperately wished to be somewhere else. — Joseph J. Ellis

People of good character are not all going to come down on the same side of difficult political and social issues. Good people-people of character and moral literacy-can be conservative, and good people can be liberal. We must not permit our disputes over thorny political questions to obscure the obligation we have to offer instruction to all our young people in the area in which we have, as a society, reached a consensus: namely, on the importance of good character, and some of its pervasive particulars. — William Bennett

The idea of any social obligation [ ... ] just the idea of it embarasses my thoughts for a day, and sometimes it's since the day before that I worry, and don't sleep well, and the real affair, when it happens, is absolutely insignificant and justifies nothing; and the case repeats itself and I never learn to learn. — Fernando Pessoa

7. The Law of Balance in Life. It is also the case with human affairs. Social positions high or low, occupations spiritual or temporal, work rough or gentle, education perfect or imperfect, circumstances needy or opulent, each has its own advantage as well as disadvantage. The higher the position the graver the responsibilities, the lower the rank the lighter the obligation. The director of a large bank can never be so careless as his errand-boy who may stop on the street to throw a stone at a sparrow; nor can the manager of a large plantation have as good a time on a rainy day as his day-labourers who spend it in gambling. The accumulation of wealth is always accompanied by its evils; no Rothschild nor Rockefeller can be happier than a poor pedlar. A mother of many children may be troubled by her noisy little ones and envy her sterile friend, who in turn may complain of her loneliness; but if they balance what they gain with what they lose, they will find the both sides are equal. — Kaiten Nukariya

If you walk around proudly when someone greets you with respect or says, 'welcome, welcome', you will suffer a loss, right? Here, it was the other person's duty [social obligation] to welcome you, but you shouldn't fall short. So you should immediately check your balance-sheet (of karma) to find out where you sustained a loss! — Dada Bhagwan

After Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the belief in decent housing as a political right or social obligation was supplanted in the U.S. by the notion that suitable shelter should be an act of charity. — Martin Filler

All critics have the responsibility to tease out the social ideas and social problems in a movie. I don't feel an obligation to do that because I'm black. — Wesley Morris

I have a strong aversion to Twitter, and yet there is a social obligation that forces me to pop in and spy on celebrities now and then. I don't get Twitter. It's impossible to follow conversation threads, and it's too easy to spend hours and hours clicking on random names, and the next thing you know, you've become infatuated with Tweet photos from the Kardashians. — Jessica Park

The obligation to earn one's bread presumes the right to do so. A society that denies this right cannot be justified, nor can it attain social peace. — Pope John Paul II

The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved, it's the citizen who changes things. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. — Jose Saramago

I feel we all have the obligation, myself. I want to live in a more humane, civilized society, and I feel like the only way we're going to achieve that is if we all take it upon ourselves. I just wish we could be a more caring society. I feel like we're social Darwinists who believe that everyone has to make it on their own. But the reality is that we all don't start out on the same footing. — Natalie Merchant

I don't feel in any way obligated to remain current with the culture. I feel no social obligation whatsoever. I trust my morality in the narrow path I trek through the world as I work. — James Ellroy

I think we'll build a consensus for action on Social Security reform which will reduce that long-term unfunded obligation and put the system on a sustainable basis. — John W. Snow

But these gains in freedom for both men and women often seem like a triumph of subtraction rather than addition. Over time, writes Coontz, Americans have come to define liberty "negatively, as lack of dependence, the right not to be obligated to others. Independence came to mean immunity from social claims on one's wealth or time." If this is how you conceive of liberty - as freedom from obligation - then the transition to parenthood is a dizzying shock. Most Americans are free to choose or change spouses, and the middle class has at least a modicum of freedom to choose or change careers. But we can never choose or change our children. They are the last binding obligation in a culture that asks for almost no other permanent commitments at all. — Jennifer Senior

Bills of attainder, ex-post facto laws and laws impairing the obligation of contracts are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. — James Madison

I just don't see why having these powers makes it necessary for all of us to become politicians, warriors, social workers, whatever. We would have tried it before if we really wanted to do it. None of us chose to spend our lives helping people before we got our powers - why should we do it now? Because comics say we should? — Samit Basu

We were against the war in Vietnam and for voter registration and social issues. Everybody has their choices, and the obligation of a comedian is first to entertain. And if you're so inclined, and you have some bigger thought, make sure you express it, because that's a gift. — Tom Smothers

What distinguishes exemplary boards is that they are robust, effective social systems ... The highest performing companies have extremely contentious boards that regard dissent as an obligation and that treat no subject as undiscussable. — Jeffrey Sonnenfeld

For me, the beauty of feminism is that it is a social and political movement that has redefined the power and obligation of the self: self-possession and self-regulation as a tool for social reform. — Vivian Gornick

When trying to explain the violent path of some Islamists, Western commentators sometimes blame harsh economic conditions, dysfunctional family circumstances, confused identity, the generic alienation of young males, a failure to integrate into the larger society, mental illness, and so on. Some on the Left insist that the real fault lies with the mistakes of American foreign policy.
None of this is convincing. Jihad in the twenty-first century is not a problem of poverty, insufficient education, or any other social precondition. (Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was earning more than $90,000 a year working for a drilling company in British Columbia, where he also reportedly proclaimed his support of the Taliban and joked about suicide bombing vests, with no repercussions.) We must move beyond such facile explanations. The imperative for jihad is embedded in Islam itself. It is a religious obligation. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

For Aboriginal leaders, the social and moral obligation that comes with community leadership is life-long. Those who lead, who have authority, must care for and look after those who come behind. — Patrick Dodson

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, "I do enjoy myself", or , "I am horrified," we are insincere. — E. M. Forster

The more the specific feelings of being under obligation range themselves under a supreme principle of human dependence the clearer and more fertile will be the realization of the concept, indispensable to all true culture, of service; from the service of God down to the simple social relationship as between employer and employee. — Johan Huizinga

We have a social responsibility, a constitutional opportunity and a moral obligation to help others. — Janie Lewis

As he got to know her better, he learned more of her childhood; and he came to realize that it was typical of that of most girls of her time and circumstance. She was educated upon the premise that she would be protected from the gross events that life might thrust in her way, and upon the premise that she had no other duty than to be a graceful and accomplished accessory to that protection, since she belonged to a social and economic class to which protection was an almost sacred obligation. She — John Williams

The sexual freedom of today for most people is really only a convention, an obligation, a social duty, a social anxiety, a necessary feature of the consumer's way of life. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

The insistence on truthfulness does not disturb the freedom of the individual. The social obligation implied in Satyagraha turns the freedom of the individual into moral freedom. An atheist is free to say or to do what he likes, provided he does what he says and says what he does. So, in the context of social relations, the freedom of the individual is moral freedom. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

The same ones who brought the children physically in the world have the natural obligation binding in the natural law to provide for the mental, moral and social upbringing of their offspring. — John Hardon

I felt this awful obligation to be charming or at least have something to say, and the pressure of having to be charming (or merely verbal) incapacitates me. — Peter Cameron

Thus, it's important to keep in mind that you should never go vagabonding out of a vague sense of fashion or obligation. Vagabonding is not a social gesture, nor is it a moral high ground. It's not a seamless twelve-step program of travel correctness or a political statement that demands the reinvention of society. Rather, it's a personal act that demands only the realignment of self. If this personal realignment is not something you're willing to confront (or, of course, if world travel isn't your idea of a good time), you have the perfect right to leave vagabonding to those who feel the calling. — Rolf Potts

Satyagraha means insistence on what one knows to be the truth. The insistence implies the exercise of free will as the need of social obligation. If one is content to know the truth himself, he does not become a votary of Satyagraha. A Satyagrahi should not only know the truth but should insist upon it in social relations. So Satyagraha is activation of truthfulness. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Social Security represents an $11 trillion unfunded obligation. And when I say unfunded obligation, I mean we have to come up with $11 trillion at some point to make the system whole. — John W. Snow

Respect for human rights is not social work; it is not merely an act of compassion. It is the first obligation of government and the source of its legitimacy. — Ronald Reagan

Sexuality is a big issue, but there are others - how much you commit to a relationship, to social obligation, to honesty and being honest with yourself. — Ang Lee

In social life, in the family government, in the Church, and in the State this is an acknowledged and invariable law. The debtor would be incapable of appreciating the clemency which cancelled the debt, so long as he denied either the existence or the justice of the claim. Unconscious of the obligation, he would be insensible to the grace that remitted it. — Octavius Winslow

Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility. — Ellen Page

When Franklin D. Roosevelt launched Social Security in 1935, he did not present it as expressing the mutual obligation of citizens to one another ... Rather than offer a communal rationale, FDR argued that such rights were essential to "true individual freedom," adding, "necessitous men are not free men. — Michael J. Sandel