Obligation Quotations

In all the debate about Afghanistan, we don't hear much about our obligation to the wretched lives of Afghan women. They are being treated as collateral damage as the big boys discuss geopolitical goals.

We lived in the shadow of our rich relations. Mother was intent on keeping up with the people she was raised with, which was impossible. My father was a physician who wanted to be a rabbi but was weighed down by a great sense of obligation to support his family in style.

Scripture makes it clear to me that there is an obligation to speak out on behalf of those being persecuted.

I think we have a real obligation when we do have animals in captivity to understand their needs and to care for them as well as we can.

The people of the North owe to the colored race a deep obligation that is no easy matter to fulfill.

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.

I have always that there ought to be some kind of mandatory national service, not necessarily in the military but to show everybody that freedom isn't free, that everybody has an obligation to the nation as a community.

As legislators and as Members of Congress, it is our obligation to speak up for those who are being ignored in our society. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) does just that.

One of the symptoms of an absence of innovation is the fact that you lose your jobs. Everyone else catches up with you. They can do what you do better than you or cheaper than you. And in a multinational corporate-free market enterprise, it is the company's obligation to take the factory to a place where they can make it more cheaply.

My role and my obligation was to conduct criminal investigations.

We as a Congress have a moral obligation to bring justice to the families of these victims. Furthermore, as a society based on laws, we have a responsibility to ensure that criminals don't go unpunished.

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

I would consider myself to be a moderate Republican, but more important than that, I believe our system of government is the best system there is... and while I have no illusions of changing the world, I've had good opportunities in life, and I believe there's an obligation to give something back by participating.

I have been blessed to realize my dream of becoming an underwater photojournalist, but with that, I feel an obligation and sense of urgency to share what I have seen with others.

My only description for me is that there's no throwaway people. That's the creed that I live by. It doesn't matter if I'm singing or not. That's the kind of person that my father and mother wanted me to be. The end obligation is to make people feel good about who they are.

If an individual is born with the obligation to obey, who is born with the right to command?

Today and always, there will be an obligation to pass on to the new generation the tradition of liberal scholarship - scientific or in the humanities - and to bring the understanding of things and human actions to everyone.

I will give a proof to demonstrate with facts that there are no rules in painting and that oppression or servile obligation of making all study or follow the same path is a great impediment for the young who profess this very difficult art.

We not only have a legal obligation to honor our commitments, we have a moral obligation to provide the coverage we promised to provide to these people.

I think, when you are writing non-fiction, you feel there's an obligation to get it absolutely right, so all your factual details have to be, have, you know, to go through a long list of them and tick them. I'm not saying that's not important in fiction, but I think you have a bit more leeway; you can suit yourself.

I always felt a weird obligation to be adventurous.

And so I believe that God plays this enormous role in my life. And I believe that it's my obligation to give back and to follow the rules that were set. And it also gives me an enormous sense of my own place and an enormous sense of stability.

I could have had someone else take care of my child but I did it because that was my moral obligation and also it was a joy and I felt it was in the best interests of the child.

When writing about historical characters I try to be as accurate as possible, and in particular not to misrepresent the view they held. With a real historical figure you have to be fair, and this is not an obligation you have in dealing with your own creations, so it is quite different.

Those who have won the ovarian lottery by being born in an advanced society to loving parents have a special obligation to help restore the American Dream.

We have, unlike many of our competitors, continued to meet our various financial obligations.

You cheat yourself when you don't do what it is you're supposed to do. You have an obligation to learn everything that you can.

You don't only have the need to do it well because leading a country is something quite important, but also because I am the first woman I have the obligation to do it the best possible way so my country can continue voting for women in the future. It is a big responsibility.

I think the problems with comedians that are political, and there are some brilliant ones, are the ones that offer no solutions. Not that there's a moral obligation for a comic to fix things, but I like to see a comic that's upset about something and offer a solution. It can be a funny solution. I like to see the thought process.

My only obligation is to keep myself and other people guessing.

The nation's obligation to her defenders is as old as that defense itself.

Somewhere there's a score being kept, so you have an obligation to live life as well as you can, be as engaged as you can.

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.

I think that the press has a duty and an obligation to report on local government, state government, federal government - to be aggressive, to do its job. And its job is to report on whatever it's covering.

Every generation has an obligation to leave its children in a better position than it inherited. Our representatives in Washington are breaking faith with that covenant. America must reduce its federal spending and accumulation of debt for the sake of generations to come.

The thing we should all be looking for are people who want to make a difference. I'm a big believer in the Silicon Valley religion of the power of markets. But I also believe in our obligation to give back, and to give back in the way we do business, to create more value than we capture for ourselves.

I wouldn't say you worry about your health when you run. I would say a quarterback as an obligation to protect yourself as a runner, whether it's getting out of bounds, sliding or getting down, whatever it might be.

The Chancellor also in effect asks us to bargain away whatever obligation or interest we have as regards the neutrality of Belgium. We could not entertain that bargain either.

I think you have an obligation to be an optimist. Because if you're not, nothing will change

Climate change is the central environmental ill of our time. We have an obligation to protect our children from the dangers of this widening scourge, and we aren't yet doing enough about it.

A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.

Children are not a right, they are a privileged obligation.

One of the problems with even suggesting that purpose of a Federal law is for law enforcement officers to assist in protecting the public outside their jurisdictions is that it may give them encouragement or even a sense of obligation to do so.

The first thing I see is the obligation to serve peace.

I came up in a family oriented towards the sick, so I always felt an obligation for doing something.

We have to remind the people: Congress has the constitutional obligation and public responsibility to oversee these issues and the Department of Justice's operations.

The usual test under the Federal Election Campaign Act for whether something counts as a campaign expenditure is whether the obligation would have existed but for the campaign. If so, it is not a campaign expenditure.

When you're making a film, you have an obligation to fill the frame with life.

If anything bad happens, the media will leap on it. We're under a huge obligation to be successful.

The clearest actions come from truth, not obligation.

In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

To repeat, communitarians maintain that we are constituted as persons by our particular obligations, and therefore those obligations cannot be a matter of choice.

An Obama administration truly looking to break with the molds of the past would stop treating Africa as an obligation and start treating it as globalization's next great opportunity, understanding that Chinese - along with Indians and Arab sovereign wealth funds - are natural partners in this process.

There is no time and space limitation for public accountability on the Internet. Creative commonality is standard and does not resemble the authoritarian style of the dead communist experience. It seems that it is no longer society's obligation to understand legislation; it is a duty for governments to be understood by their people.

Form is, in a way, death. A novelist's obligation is to break free from the form, even though he knows that this will also be seen as artificial and distanced from life.

A lot of crime writing suffers from treading water. I feel an obligation to move the character on and not repeat myself. I try to fit him into a different period and a different agenda. That way, you learn slightly more about his personal history in the tradition of the unreliable narrator. It makes it more challenging to write.

When you understand your obligations to God then you can understand your obligations to society.

We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.

If you know something is morally reprehensible, then it is your moral obligation to stop it as soon as possible.

As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things.

Children are free moral agents and have a right to be exposed to a range of beliefs well beyond the rigid doctrinal confines of their parent's faith, and we have an obligation to insist that they be so exposed, at least in public schools, if not elsewhere.

A writer's obligation is to invent: to go beyond what did happen and to look at what could have happened but didn't. Fiction writers are born liars.

I know for certain of only one commandment, one obligation, that God imposes upon us, and that is to be compassionate toward other human beings.

I'm a true believer that you have a moral obligation to keep your employees honest, and that is why you have controls, so I'm never tempted or put in a position where I could do something to defraud my employer.

You're never going to get anywhere in life if you don't live up to your obligations.

I've always sensed for myself an obligation to bear witness to my time.

Every city and town in America would be bankrupt if they kept their books the way private-sector companies keep their books - because of the obligation cities and towns have taken upon themselves to provide health care for their retirees.

That is our first amendment, freedom of speech. But I also believe that we have an obligation to the youth to be somewhat responsible in what we say on records. But I think that comes with age. I think that comes with artists growing up and becoming assured of who they are as people.

I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression.

I used to feel an obligation to invent things. I felt I was a failure because I didn't do massive great novels about Australia or the outback or something. I just don't feel that any more.

Everything about morality and obligations I owe to football.

I wish I'd been better able to resist the sense of obligation to write some of the poems I did. It's in the nature of commissioned work to be written too much from the side of your mind that knows what it's doing, which dries up the poetry.

I don't feel the obligation to have a big explosion in the first 20 seconds so the audience doesn't turn on another channel. We are trying to make something that looks like a feature film that was bought for television and I think we are succeeding.

When Zionism becomes co-extensive with Jewishness, Jewishness is pitted against the diversity that defines democracy, and if I may say so, betrays one of the most important ethical dimensions of the diasporic Jewish tradition: namely, the obligation of co-habitation with those different from ourselves.

Freedom is not the absence of obligation or restraint, but the freedom of movement within healthy, chosen parameters.

Your obligation as a base runner is to try and be safe within the rules. OK?

We take men's obligation to earn money, and when they do it well, we blame them for having power and being oppressors. And when they don't do it all, women just don't marry men who are reading 'I'm Okay, You're Okay' in the unemployment line.

If a person says or does something that we consider offensive, our first obligation is to refuse to take offense and then communicate privately, honestly, and directly with that individual. Such an approach invites inspiration from the Holy Ghost and permits misperceptions to be clarified and true intent to be understood.

A nation has its first obligation to its own workers and its own poor.

The responsibility to seek learning by faith rests upon each of us individually, and this obligation will become increasingly important as the world in which we live grows more confused and troubled.

I've always had an obligation to creation, above all.

In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

I still don't have a publicist. If I'm in a film, you have an obligation to promote it, I'll do as much as I can.

What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to hospitals, that allow them to be, to transfer property between partners, to make certain that they're not discriminated on the job.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

The laws recognize no obligation on the part of the slave to labor for or serve his master. If he refuse to labor, the law will not interfere to compel him. The master must do his own flogging, as in the case of an ox or a horse.

All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.

And if you want a commander in chief who will fulfill the most solemn obligation of the president to keep this nation safe, then support a candidate who has demonstrated the commitment, the judgment, the experience, the clarity of vision, to identify our enemy, to call it by its name, radical islamic terrorism.

I think the man who eats the bread of idleness is under a certain obligation to speak well of labor.

We have a legal and moral obligation to rid our world of nuclear tests and nuclear weapons. When we put an end to nuclear tests, we get closer to eliminating all nuclear weapons. A world free of nuclear weapons will be safer and more prosperous.

I've always felt that the obligation of teachers is to have a huge, broad overview and to provide a foundation course to the students. The long view of history is absolutely crucial.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

There are certain artists who have taken it upon themselves to save the world, and I find that gets tiresome. I think the artist's first obligation is to the art, not to the issues . . . I think if I have something to say the best way to do that is just to tell a damn good story.

There is no presumption here that Mr. Palmeiro committed perjury, but we just have an obligation to determine that,

There is no more fundamental obligation of a government than to protect those who cannot protect themselves -- namely, our children. The failure of government in this instance to safeguard the health and welfare of these children is beyond excuse, it is sickening,

Tom's made it very clear, publicly and privately, that he feels an obligation to fill out his term as the governor of Pennsylvania. He's got kids in school; he doesn't want to move them at this stage,

We're so hung up on this notion that we have some obligation to help the struggling black man, you know. Cut him some slack until he can overcome these historical injustices. It's crap. I mean, Christ, Lincoln freed the slaves, like, what? 130 years ago. How long does it take to get your act together?