Quotes & Sayings About Social Obligations

One great thing about getting old is that you can get out of all sorts of social obligations just by saying you're too tired. — George Carlin

If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. — Theodore Roosevelt

At the heart of my politics has always been the value of community, the belief that we are not merely individuals struggling in isolation from each other, but members of a community who depend on each other, who benefit from each other's help, who owe obligations to each other. From that everything stems: solidarity, social justice, equality, freedom. — Tony Blair

Wealthy societies, for reasons largely well-intentioned but now producing unintended consequences, are making it easier for their teens to avoid the rigors and responsibilities of becoming a grown-up. Arnett calls those years the "self-focused age," when there are few real responsibilities, few "daily obligations," limited "commitments to others." In a stage when young people were once supposed to learn to "stand alone as a self-sufficient person," they find themselves increasingly paralyzed by over-choice. There are nearly unlimited personal-social options yet too few concrete work-related accomplishments. A — Ben Sasse

There is a particular view, still popular among left-wing intellectuals in the West, that the Soviet system was "socialism gone wrong." This thought expresses precisely the major political danger of our times, which is the belief that politics involves a choice of systems, as a means to an end, so that one system may "go wrong" while another "goes right." The truth is that socialism is wrong, precisely because it believes that it can go right - precisely because it sees politics asa means to an end. Politics is a manner of social existence, whose bedrock is the given obligations from which our social identities are formed. Politics is a form of association which is not a means to an end, but an end in itself. It is founded on legitimacy, and legitimacy resides in our sense that we are made by our inheritance. — Roger Scruton

Simple people with less education, sophistication, social ties, and professional obligations seem in general to have somewhat less difficulty in facing this final crisis than people of affluence who lose a great deal more in terms of material luxuries, comfort, and number of interpersonal relationships. It appears that people who have gone through a life of suffering, hard work, and labor, who have raised their children and been gratified in their work, have shown greater ease in accepting death with peace and dignity compared to those who have been ambitiously controlling their environment, accumulating material goods, and a great number of social relationships but few meaningful interpersonal relationships which would have been available at the end of life. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We often get into work situations, social commitments, volunteer obligations, sports routines, and other types of activities that complicate our lives. We stay in them far longer than we need to because it looks good on paper, or because it sounds good when we have the opportunity to drop it into conversations, or because in some way it meets our own or someone else's expectations of the kinds of things we think we should be doing. — Elaine St. James

What captivated me about you was that you opened the door to another world for me. The values that dominated my childhood had no place there. That world enchanted me. I could leave the real world behind and be someone else, without any ties or obligations. With you, I was elsewhere, in a foreign place, foreign to myself. You gave me access to another dimension when I'd always rejected any fixed identity and just worn different identities on top of each other, though none of them were mine.
By speaking to you in English, I made your language mine. I've continued to talk to you in English right up to this day, even when you answered me in French. For me, English, which I knew mainly through you and through books, was from the start like a private language that preserved our intimacy against the intrusion of the real world, and its prevailing social normals. I felt like I was building a protected and protective world with you. — Andre Gorz

Human beings exercise responsibilities within a social setting and a framework of obligations which transcend the principle of intelligence. — Michael Polanyi

Nothing in science has any value to society if it is not communicated, and scientists are beginning to learn their social obligations. — Anne Roe

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

It is a great and beautiful spectacle to see a man somehow emerging from oblivion by his own efforts, dispelling with the light of his reason the shadows in which nature had enveloped him, rising above himself, soaring in his mind right up to the celestial regions, moving, like the sun, with giant strides through the vast extent of the universe, and, what is even greater and more difficult, returning to himself in order to study man there and learn of his nature, his obligations, and his end. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. — Mary Oliver

There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to "feed upon opinion" when her own soul had invited her. — Kate Chopin

I have no regrets about my political activity, only that I sometimes got carried away with it and didn't find the right balance between obligations to my family and my need to be involved in social movements. — Howard Zinn

Sharing our meals should be a joyful and a trustful act, rather than the cursory fulfillment of our social obligations. — M.F.K. Fisher

Do not permit social, public or human obligations to rob you of your prayer life. — Sunday Adelaja

We have created a democracy that links us all, and with it come not only opportunities but obligations. There are no gates or walls high enough. There are no bank accounts large enough to buy you and your family and your friends protection from the fear and hunger of those left behind or to isolate you from the consequences of growing social inequities. We are all in this boat together. And the fact that there isn't a hole at your end of the boat doesn't mean you are safe. — Arianna Huffington

Large cocktail parties are an infamous technique for ridding yourself of social obligations to people you usually don't know well or like much, which is such an unpromising beginning that I've rarely known one that recovered and turned into a great party. — Barbara Walters

Shame is the work of memory against forgetting. Shame is what we feel when we almost entirely - yet not entirely - forget social expectations and our obligations to others in favor of our immediate gratification. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Counting obligations under Medicare and Social Security, the real debt of the United States is more than 10 times the reported national debt. — Addison Wiggin

Concern for one?s own welfare and prosperity should not blind one to one?s social obligations or spiritual destiny?.A society in which the individuals are concerned only about material welfare will not be able to achieve harmony and peace. — Sathya Sai Baba

There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they are in another world altogether. — Mary Oliver

The love of individual freedom has stood in the way of the appreciation of social obligations. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Even without reforms, the Social Security fund will be able to meet 100 percent of its obligations until 2042. — Grace Napolitano

Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real. Therefore, atheism shifts the basis of morality from faith in god to obligations of social living. Moral conduct is not a passport to heaven; it is social necessity. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

I simply refuse to deal with idiots ... It has cut my social obligations in half. — Julia Quinn

After a while, meaning and implication detach themselves from everything. One can be a father and assume no obligations, it follows that one can be a boyfriend and do nothing at all. Pretty soon you can add friend, acquaintance, co-worker, and just about anyone else to the long list of people who seem to be part of your life, though there is no code of conduct that they must adhere to. Pretty soon, it seems unreasonable to be bothered or outraged by much of anything because, well, what did you expect? In a world where the core social unit - the family - is so dispensable, how much can anything else mean? — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social conscience from people to the land — Aldo Leopold

How could the prisoner break his chains? I pictured a world, a righteous world, with no sin, no bonds, no social obligations; a world throbbing with creativity, innovation, and thought, nothing else; a world of dedicated solitude, without father, mother, wife, or child; a world where a man could travel lightly, immersed in art alone. — Naguib Mahfouz

For Social Security to be financially sound, the federal government should have $100 trillion - a sum of money six-and-a-half times the size of our entire economy - in the bank and earning interest right now. But it doesn't. And while many believe that Social Security represents our greatest entitlement problem, Medicare is six times larger in terms of unfunded obligations. — John C. Goodman

The cheese and wine party has the form of friendship without the warmth and devotion. It is a device either for getting rid of social obligations hurriedly en mass, or for making overtures towards more serious social relationships, as in the etiquette of whoring. — Brooks Atkinson

He disliked the social obligations of the captaincy. — Erik Larson

A man without debts is a man without anything to live for. Debt is collateral for life. It provides you with obligations to others, gives you duty, gives you purpose: the purpose to protect those possessions which you would not otherwise have without your debt. Debt is the most responsible way to elevate your social position. — Bauvard

Is there any of the usual social occasions which it is not difficult to avoid? But if you decide that you cannot very well ignore your worldly obligations, and that you will therefore carry them out properly, the demands on your time will multiply, bringing physical hardship and mental tension; in the end, you will spend your whole life pointlessly entangled in petty obligations.
'The day is ending, the way is long; my life already begins to stumble on its journey.' The time has come to abandon all ties. I shall not keep promises, nor consider decorum. Let anyone who cannot understand my feelings feel free to call me mad, let him think I am out of my senses, that I am devoid of human warmth. Abuse will not bother me; I shall not listen if praised. — Yoshida Kenko

It was never assumed in the United States that the citizen of a free country has a right to do whatever he pleases; on the contrary, social obligations were there imposed upon him more various than anywhere else. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Corporations are reneging on pension obligations. Social Security is under attack. — Dennis Kucinich

Our fiat currency is under increasing stress with our large and growing trade deficits. We have a federal deficit that is calculated in the trillions when we take into account the net present value of the future Social Security and Medicaid obligations we are creating today. — George Noory

Life has its insidious way of crawling its way back into your sphere and you're dumbed down again by so many distractions including work obligations, social niceties and mountains of clothes washing. — Josh Langley

Student loans have been helpful to many. But they offer neither incentive nor assistance to those students who, by reason of family or other obligations, are unable or unwilling to go deeper into debt ... It is, moreover, only prudent economic and social policy for the public to share part of the costs of the long period of higher education for those whose development is essential to our national economic and social well-being. All of us share in the benefits - all should share in the costs. — John F. Kennedy

My father valued patriotism above all other social obligations, but he had his own particular interpretation of just how true patriotism was meant to function. — Thomas Steinbeck

Your levity is unbecoming, Richard, and not at all the point,' Mrs Lowe said, giving him a stern look.'In another week, the Season will be upon us, and as you have chosen to come to Town for once, I shall expect you to find a little more time for your social and family obligations.'
'Oh, you may expect whatever you like, Aunt.' Mairelon's tone was careless, but there was a set to his shoulders that told Kim he was not pleased.
'People are already arriving, and I fear there are quite a few who are ... confused about your proper standing'
'I can't imagine why. I'm the least confusing person I know. — Patricia C. Wrede

Because he knew that for other people their own social obligations took precedence of the death of a
friend, and could put himself in her place by dint of his instinctive
politeness. — Marcel Proust

It makes no sense to talk of the social obligations of the corporation without reference to its economic obligations. The two are intertwined. — Lee R. Raymond

To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man. — John Updike

America should meet its obligations in the form of Social Security, Medicare, our ability to pay our military, legally binding legislation that allows unemployment compensation, the judiciary, the federal court system, the federal prison system, all those kinds of things have to be paid for. — Bill Johnson

One should not allow untoward events to interfere with one's regular habits or social obligations. — Carola Dunn