29 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Responsibility

Orson Scott Card quotes on responsibility

38. Think what we're going to do to him We're going to make him the best military commander in history. And then put the fate of the world on his shoulders.

62. Oh well it's only the fate of the world.

81. It was me You were a tool It was me We forgive you

82. [This] isn't my home [she] felt his words like an accusation: you rooted yourself here without thought of whether I could live in this soil. But it's not my fault, she wanted to answer - you're the one who's leaving, not me.

106. You're a fool. If people only react to the way that others treat them, then nobody is responsible for anything. If your sins are not your own to choose, then how can you repent?

152. That was how human beings satisfied their sense of responsibility - checking again even when they knew it was unnecessary

172. I blame on you only what you did. You started a fire on a hot, dry, windy day, despite all the warnings. I blame you for that, and if you hold yourself responsible for all the consequences of your own acts, then you are truly unworthy of human society and I hope you lose your freedom forever.

191. I saw that he came in and listened and watched and understood who we were, each individual one of us. He tried to discover our need and then supply it. He took responsibility for other people and it didn't seem to matter to him how much it cost him.

192. That means you, more than any of the others, stand to lose something truly beautiful and fine if we don't succeed in our endeavors.

196. Failing to try and stop a murder that you might easily stop - how is that not murder?

204. When you don't understand the consequences of your acts, how can you be blamed for them? You don't take the blame. But you still take the responsibility. For healing the wounds you caused.

265. Somebody has to roll the dice. Mine are the hands that hold those dice. I'm not a bureaucrat, placing my career above the larger purposes I was put here to serve. I will not put the dice in someone else's hands, or pretend that I don't have the choice I have.

334. No place is comfortable, when you are waiting for someone else to do a job you think of as your own.

352. [He] was young, too young to see the consequences of his actions, too young to contain his feelings.

378. Could she help it that she has been given a combination of genes that gave her an extraordinary memory, an enormous capacity for grasping and understanding ideas, and a mind that was able to make connections that no one else could see?

380. You take responsibility for us all. Without ever waiting to be told. So do all good people. That's what it means to be a good person. And I am a good person.

386. Such children. So young, so playful. I'm glad they can still be that way. Someday, when the real adult responsibilities settle on them, they'll lose that. It will be replaces by a slower, quieter kind of play. But for now, they can cast away care and remember how good it is to be alive.... That's what happiness means, isn't it?

398. I see that you are a person who refuses to revise his view of the would. You can only bear to live in a world where all the bad things happen to you are someone else's fault, where everyone must have conspired against you to deprive you of your due. Unfortunately, that world happens not to be the real world

423. You'd think, from the way you talk, that people were responsible for their own behavior And they're not? Haven't you ever seen a 3 year old when he makes a foolish blunder? He looks at whatever child or adult is nearby and screams at him 'look at what you made me do!' that's the moral universe that [they] always lived in

424. Sometimes those who care for the whole community must act in a way that harms the individual. For a good man it never becomes easy and he avoids it when he can; but when people need him to be harsh, he will be harsh indeed, and he won't shrink from it, he'll do it with his own hand and let it be known what he does.

684. This is what love is, he thought. Doing what you don't want to do, because she needs it so much. And it isn't that bad. And it isn't that hard

776. The only perspective that matters is the human one, Tagiri knew. We are the only ones who care; we are the actors and the audience as well, all of us. And the critics. We are also the critics

816. Ansset watched, keeping his promise but wishing with all his heart that somewhere in his mind there was a wall he could hide behind. Unfortunately, he was too sane.

823. He was growing up. Soon he would be a man. He wondered what that would mean. Surely he could not have more required of him as an adult that had been required of him as a child. There could not be more

895. I wondered for a frightening moment how I dared to make such a decision for the whole world, without consulting anyone else. Then I laughed at myself. It was a little too late to wonder if I ought to play god. The game was already over

907. We haven't the power to change men's hearts. We're not responsible. It isn't our fault. Your hands are clean aren't they? Out here where the sun keeps everything pure. But you're not pure! Because if you could stop the suffering and dying, and didn't stop it, the you are guilty. It is your fault. We kill no one. We do not let them kill us. We have nothing to do with them

912. I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions.

916. Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you. It was especially important for [him], because he was living for two

1011. To be without Doon, that was what frightened Jason the most. Doon was the foundation for his life, for good or ill; ever since Doon had found him, Jason had known nothing could go wrong in his life - Doon was watching. Now when he stumbled, who would lift him up? This was freedom after all, Jason realized, because from now on no one would save him from the consequences of his own acts. It wasn't freedom that I yearned for, was it? It was childhood that I wanted, and Doon is barring me from my refuge; he has been my father all these years, and now he's thrusting me away. 'Ill never forgive you for this'