As global citizens, it is our responsibility to become active participants in our democracy, and to make sure that everyone's civil rights are protected.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

We have forgotten the basic SOCIAL CONTRACT of rights and responsibilities that binds us together as a society. Society expects citizens to follow laws it has instated in order to protect individuals and institutions. Without these laws there would be chaos -- the strong would simply take anything they wanted and the rest would have no recourse. In return the social contract guarantees that if people follow these rules or responsibilities they will be guaranteed basic rights - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A guarantee of life ensures they will have access to basic human needs of water, food and shelter needed to live and to support their family. Liberty involves the ability to engage in activities the individual wishes, as long as it does not violate the law. The pursuit of happiness is a guarantee that the laws are meant to be fair and provide an equal playing field for all members of society, so that through hard work and creative enterprise, all law-abiding citizens are free to strive to attain the wants and desires they believe will bring them happiness.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

It is ironic that in a democracy where all are free and enjoy equal rights, we must also have laws -- equal responsibilities -- so that the rights and freedom of others are protected. However, in a democracy, laws must also be fair, clearly defined, and applied equally to all members of the society -- both citizens and rulers.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

* The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.
-- Oscar Arias Sanchez

* Under your shoulders. Dear young people of the entire world, weigh the responsibility to transform tomorrow's world into a society where peace, harmony and fraternity reign.
-- Bishop Carlos Belo

When you become active in the system and communicate to your representatives, and they don't vote in accordance with your values, your responsibility is to support candidates who will.
-- Joan Blades

"Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man? ... Does man have any responsibility for the preservation of a decent balance in nature, for the preservation of rare species, or even for the indefinite continuance of his race?
~ Kenneth E. Boulding

* Times of upheaval require not just more leadership but more leaders. People at all organizational levels, whether anointed or self-appointed, must be empowered to share leadership responsibilities.
-- Rosalynn Carter

I believe that success brings responsibility. It also does not bring immunity to the consequences of our quickening march towards oblivion. The bottom line is that all of us should be invovled in our own futures to create a world that our children will want to live in.
-- Harry Chapin

Our mission in this new century is clear. For good or ill, we live in an interdependent world. We can't escape each other. Therefore, we have to spend our lives building a global community of shared responsibilities, shared values, shared benefits. ~ Bill Clinton

* Let's create an integrated global community where we have shared benefits and responsibilities, and we don't fight because of our differences. ~ Bill Clinton

We are more connected than ever before, more able to spread our ideas and beliefs, our anger and fears. As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged. ~ Bill Clinton

* "It is our collective and individual responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live."
~ Dalai Lama

The problems we face today, violent conflicts, destruction of nature, poverty, hunger and so on, are human-created problems which can be resolved through human effort, understanding and the development of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. We need to cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and the planet we share.
-- 14th Dalai Lama

"I believe that to meet the challenge of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. We must all learn to work not just for our own self, family, or nation but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace, the equitable use of natural resources, and through concern for future generations, the proper care of the environment."
-- The Dalai Lama

Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.
-- The Dalai Lama

* "...we all have an obligation as citizens of this earth to leave the world a healthier, cleaner, and better place for our children and future generations.”
~ Blythe Danner

We've been given this gift, our planet, and we've found no other place in the universe that we can inhabit. I want to do something to create radical change to help save it. It's our responsibility.
- Leonardo DiCaprio

* A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.
-- Bob Dylan

* We are all together in this, we are all together in this single living ecosystem called planet earth. As we learn how we fit into the greater scheme of things, and begin to understand how the system works, we can plan ahead, we can use the resources responsibly, to show some respect for this inheritance that goes back 4.6 billion years.
~ Sylvia Earle

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.
-- Vaclav Havel

* Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.
-- Vaclav Havel

Instead of trying to be responsible for all the problems in the world, we should take on what we love and care about. Then we honor both our inner world and the outer world at the same time. There’s no separation between the two, and there is no hesitation, no self-doubt. This will help us develop great faith that others are taking care of their piece. People who don’t know the details about climate change may care deeply about the forests, the animals, and the children. It is very important that we share, not only our merit, but also the responsibilities. Somehow we have to relieve ourselves of the enormity, which is so debilitating.
~ Paul Hawken

"A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society."
-- Thomas Jefferson

* "Because the suffering of any human being diminishes all of us, it’s our responsibility to try to ease that suffering. It is not a matter of titles, but of responsibilities.”
-- Khaled

* "I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice ...
-- Coretta Scott King

I am in favor of increased communication and cooperation between countries, but it is more important that each country becomes responsible for its own actions, its own communities, its own economies, before starting to integrate in large regional or global supranational organizations.
-- David Korten

At a time when corporations are exerting increasing power over people's lives and the environment, it is vital that we work directly with companies to promote greater responsibility.
-- Todd Larsen

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
-- Abraham Lincoln

* "That consciousness is everything and that all things begin with a thought. That we are responsible for our own fate, we reap what we sow, we get what we give, we pull in what we put out. I know these things for sure."
-- Madonna

Pay attention to the hungry, both in this country and around the world. Pay attention to the poor. Pay attention to our responsibilities for world peace. We are our brother’s keeper...
-- George McGovern

You can't talk about the environment, you can't talk about political correctness, affirmative action and all the other innumerable things that freedom is about, unless you have a free society based upon the integrity of the individual. If you have a responsible society, these other issues will not come up in a responsible society, and that is what freedom is all about.
-- Russell Means

We cannot learn freedom and responsibility within the confines of our own species. We cannot understand life and death and what they are for in exclusively human terms. Without that which is wild, the world becomes a cell block.
~ Stephanie Mills

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate his responsibility."
-- Edward R. Murrow

* Our generation has the ability and the responsibility to make our ever-more connected world a more hopeful, stable and peaceful place.
-- Natalie Portman

You go into a community and they will vote 80 percent to 20 percent in favor of a tougher Clean Air Act, but if you ask them to devote 20 minutes a year to having their car emissions inspected, they will vote 80 to 20 against it. We are a long way in this country from taking individual responsibility for the environmental problem.
~ William Ruckelshaus, 1st EPA Administrator

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
-- George Bernard Shaw

"I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no 'brief candle" to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."
-- George Bernard Shaw

The first world is going to have to account for this sort of horrible poverty in our midst. We have to, first of all, become aware of it. We have to take responsibility for it. And then we have to do something about it for our own freedom, for our own salvation, for our own humanity.
-- Martin Sheen

"My life has become about trying to find effective ways to be as responsible with the choices I make -- in food, clothing and everything else. I don't want to be responsible for the harm of any creature, person or animal."
-- Alicia Silverstone

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.
-- Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

* "Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say: This is my community, and it is my responsibility to make it better. Interweave all these communities and you really have an America that is back on its feet again. I really think we are gonna have to reassess what constitutes a 'hero'."
-- Studs Terkel

* The Universal Declaration of Human Rights - This great and inspiring instrument was born of an increased sense of responsibility by the international community for the promotion and protection of man’s basic rights and freedoms. The world has come to a clear realization of the fact that freedom, justice and world peace can only be assured through the international promotion and protection of these rights and freedoms. 
-- U Thant, Third United Nations Secretary-General

* "Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education."
-- Alice Waters

* As free citizens in a political democracy, we have a responsibility to be interested and involved in the affairs of the human community, be it at the local or the global level.
-- Paul Wellstone

* “We must not leave the health of our families and protection of the world ecology to corporations, governments and military organizations preoccupied with profit, power and armed conquest. Rather, we must take that responsibility into our own hands. It’s up to us to come together across cultural and political divides to prevent these military-industrial polluters from degrading the earth and threatening the well-being of our communities for their own selfish interests.”
-- Craig Williams

"A new educational system in which all children born shall have the same advantage of physical, industrial, mental and moral culture, and thus be equally prepared at maturity to enter upon active, responsible and useful lives. . . . In so doing, it strikes a fatal blow at . . . the most demoralizing of all monopolies. . . educational superiority."
-- Victoria Woodhull

If we are to have faith that mankind will survive and thrive on the face of the earth, we must believe that each succeeding generation will be wiser than its progenitors. We transmit to you, the next generation, the total sum of our knowledge. Yours is the responsibility to use it, add to it, and transmit it to your children.
-- Rosalyn Yalow

* Our planet is dying - both spiritually and physically. Fear, aggression and greed, narrow-minded national interests and immature dominance and control over others is a common theme in most countries. However, there are more and more people who define themselves as global citizens, who know that life is intimately interconnected, and that we can never be fully human whilst others continue to suffer, and who know that love, justice and nonviolence is the very essence of life. And what gives me hope is the very many different ways in which ordinary people are taking responsibility. They are creating the changes needed to pass beyond war and injustice, control and dominance and towards a free, just, loving, and diverse world.
-- Angie Zelter