This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
There are many things children accept as “grown-up things” over which they have no control and for which they have no responsibility – for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents’ decision to live apart.
Cause | Children | Control | Decision | Need | Parents | Responsibility |
John Robinson, fully John Arthur Thomas Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich
Prayer is the responsibility to meet others with all I have, to be ready to encounter the unconditional in the conditional, to expect to meet God in the way, not to turn aside from the way.
God | Prayer | Responsibility | God |
Roy L. Smith, aka Mr. Methodist
The ability to accept responsibility is the measure of the person.
Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle
If you can neither enjoy nor bring acceptance to what you do – stop. Otherwise, you are not taking responsibility for the only thing you can really take responsibility for, which also happens to be one thing that really matters: your state of consciousness. And if you are not taking responsibility for your state of consciousness, you are not taking responsibility for life.
Acceptance | Consciousness | Life | Life | Responsibility |
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it.
Contradiction | Responsibility | Work | Leadership |
We believe that humanity stands at the threshold of its next great leap. However, our success in making this transition depends on our willingness to develop a greater vision and a clearer sense of responsibility for one another. Understanding and articulating the nature and dynamics of consciousness is key to achieving this new vision.
Consciousness | Humanity | Nature | Responsibility | Sense | Success | Understanding | Vision |
When you take responsibility for your actions, you give yourself immeasurable power.
Power | Responsibility |
Authority can be delegated. Responsibility cannot.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.
Justice | People | Responsibility | Sense |
Raúl Juliá, aka Raul Rafael Carlos Julia y Arceley
Once you are willing to take responsibility for your life you become a master of it and you expand - you become more alive and healthier, mentally and physically.
Life | Life | Responsibility |
There is but one rule of conduct for a man - to do the right thing. The cost may be dear in money, in friends, in influence, in labor, in a prolonged and painful sacrifice, but the cost not to do right is far more dear: You pay in the integrity of your manhood, in your honor, in strength of character; and, for a timely gain, you barter the infinite.
Character | Conduct | Cost | Honor | Influence | Integrity | Labor | Man | Money | Right | Rule | Sacrifice | Strength |
Adrienne Rich, fully Adrienne Cecil Rich
[Responsibility to yourself] means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and confrontation. And this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”; not to be continuously available to others when we need time for ourselves and our work; to be able to demand of others – parents, friends, roommates, teachers, lovers, husbands, children – that they respect our sense of purpose and our integrity as persons.
Children | Courage | Integrity | Life | Life | Love | Means | Need | Parents | Play | Purpose | Purpose | Respect | Responsibility | Safe | Sense | Society | Time | Work | Friendship | Society | Respect |
The path of purposeful action bears a double blessing for those who walk it: in the blessing of the world is your own. Right action is the key to the re-establishment of God consciousness within your world... Let your deeds speak your message to the world. Your actions have the power to heal. This is a responsibility of great and wonderful magnitude. It is your responsibility, and it is the easiest one, for when you choose the responsibility to heal the world, you instantly allow God to heal the world through you.
Action | Consciousness | Deeds | God | Power | Responsibility | Right | World | Deeds | God |
To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man.
Man | Responsibility | Society | Society |