This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"In Hell there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, being a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself, is the paradise of the worthless." - George Bernard Shaw
"Patriotism, public opinion, parental duty, discipline, religion, morality, are only fine names for intimidation." - George Bernard Shaw
"This world, sir, is very clearly a place of torment and penance, a place where the fool flourishes and the good and wise are hated and persecuted, a place where men and women torture one another in the name of love; where children are scourged and enslaved in the name of parental duty and education; where the weak in body are poisoned and mutilated in the name of healing." - George Bernard Shaw
"When a stupid person is doing something they are ashamed of, they always declares that it is their duty." - George Bernard Shaw
"The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, the last duty well done." - George MacDonald
"The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected will always continue to prompt me to promote the progress of the former by inculcating the practice of the latter." - George Washington
"To persevere in one's duty and be silent is the best answer to calumny." - George Washington
"The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government." - George Washington
"Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected." - George Washington
"Perish discretion when it interferes with duty." - Hannah More
"Duty and genuine goodness are mutually exclusive… The sense of “ought” shows me the Good at an infinite impassable distance from my will. Willing obedience is never the fruit of an “ought’ but only of love." - Emil Brunner, fully Heinrich Emil Brunner
"What's a man's first duty? The answer's brief: To be himself." - Henrik Ibsen, aka Henrik Johan Ibsen
"The statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his nation’s experience and his vision." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"The whole duty of life is implied in the question, how to respire and aspire both at once." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Men should soon make up their minds to be forgotten, and look about them, or within them, for some higher motive in what they do than the approbation of men, which is fame, namely, their duty; that they should be constantly and quietly at work, each in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their fame to take care of itself." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all." - Henry Ward Beecher
"True politeness is the spirit of benevolence showing itself in a refined way. It is the expression of good-will and kindness. It promotes both beauty in the man who possesses it, and happiness in those who are about him. It is a religious duty, and should be a part of religious training." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Only a few rare souls in a century, to whose class I make no pretension, count much in the great flow of this Republic. The life stream of this nation is the generations of millions of human particles acting under the impulses of advancing ideas and national ideals gathered from a thousand springs... We are but transitory officials in government whose duty is to keep these channels clear and to strengthen and extend these dikes. What counts toward the honor of public officials is that they sustain the national ideals upon which are patterned the design of these channels of progress and the construction of these dikes of safety." -
"The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality." - Herbert Spencer
"Duty and to-day are ours; results and futurity belong to God." - Horace Greeley
"An action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is to be determined, and therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the actions, but merely on the principle of volition by which the action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire." - Immanuel Kant
"Beneficence is a duty. He who frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions realized, at length, comes really to love him to whom he has done good. When, therefore, it is said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” it is not meant, thou shalt love him first and do him good in consequence of that love, but thou shalt do good to thy neighbor; and this thy beneficence will engender in thee that love to mankind which is the fullness and consummation of the inclination to do good." - Immanuel Kant
"Both love of mankind, and respect for their rights are duties; the former however is only a condition, the latter an unconditional, purely imperative duty, which he must be perfectly certain not to have transgressed who would give himself up to the secret emotions arising from benevolence." - Immanuel Kant
"Conscience is not a thing to be acquired, and it is not a duty to acquire it; but every man, as a moral being, has it originally within him." - Immanuel Kant
"If we attend to the experience of men’s conduct, we meet frequent and, as we ourselves allow, just complaints that one cannot find a single certain example of the disposition to act from pure duty. Although many things are done in conformity with what duty prescribes, it is nevertheless always doubtful whether they are done strictly from duty, so as to have moral worth." - Immanuel Kant
"Love is a matter of feeling, not of will or volition and I cannot love because I will to do so, still less because I ought (I cannot be necessitated to love); hence there is no such thing as a duty to love... What is done from constraint is not done from love." - Immanuel Kant
"To secure one’s own happiness is a duty, at least indirectly; for discontent with one’s condition, under a pressure of many anxieties and amidst unsatisfied wants, might easily become a great temptation to transgression of duty." - Immanuel Kant
"Virtue... in so far as it is based on internal freedom, contains a positive command for man, namely, that he should bring all his powers and inclinations under his rule (that of reason); and this is a positive precept of command over himself which is additional to the prohibition, namely, that he should not allow himself to be governed by his feelings and inclinations (the duty of apathy); since, unless reason takes the reins of government into its own hands, the feelings and inclinations play the master over the man." - Immanuel Kant
"When the thinking man has conquered the temptations to vice, and is conscious of having done his (often hard) duty, he finds himself in a state of peace and satisfaction which may well be called happiness, in which virtue is her own reward." - Immanuel Kant
"With the sharpest self-examination we can find nothing beside the moral principle of duty which could have been powerful enough to move us to this or that action and to so great a sacrifice; yet we cannot from this infer with certainty; that it was not really some secret impulse of self-love, under the false appearance of duty, that was the actual determining cause of the will. We like them to flatter ourselves by falsely taking credit for a more noble motive; whereas in fact we can never, even with the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action." - Immanuel Kant
"Duty is the necessity of acting out of respect for the law... An action from duty must eliminate entirely the influence of inclinations and thus every object of the will." - Immanuel Kant
"It is surprising how practical duty enriches the fancy and the heart, and action clears and deepens the affections." - James Martineau
"Duty is the grandest of ideas, because it implies the idea of God, of the soul, of liberty, of responsibility, of immortality." - Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, fully Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire
"Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege." - John Davison Rockefeller, Jr.
"It is wonderful what strength and boldness of purpose and energy will come from the feeling that we are in the way of duty." - John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
"Zeal and duty... on occasion’s forelock watchful wait." - John Milton
"Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should have known." - John Ruskin
"Every duty which we omit, obscures some truth which we should have known." - John Ruskin
"The constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts, and to strengthen them for the help of others." - John Ruskin
"Justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than any others; though particular cases may occur in which some other social duty is so important, as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical practitioner. In such cases, as we do not call anything justice which is not a virtue, we usually say, not that justice must give way to some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary case is, by reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case. By this useful accommodation of language, the character of indefeasibility attributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved from the necessity of maintaining that there can be laudable injustice." - John Stuart Mill
"Conscience and self-love, if we understand our true happiness, always lead us the same way. Duty and interest are perfectly coincident; for the most part in this world, but entirely and in every instance if we take in the future, and the whole; this being implied in the notion of a good and perfect administration of things." - Joseph Butler
"One man finds in religion his literature and his science, another finds in it his joy and his duty." - Joseph Joubert
"They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty." - Kahlil Gibran
"My parents never bound us to any church but taught us that the love of goodness was the love of God, the cheerful doing of duty made life happy, and that the love of one’s neighbor in its widest sense was the best help for oneself. Their lives showed us how lovely this simple faith was, how much honor, gratitude and affection it brought them, and what a sweet memory they left behind." - Louisa May Alcott
"Spirituality is best manifested on the ground, not in the air. Rapturous day-dreams, flights of heavenly fancy, longings to see the Invisible, are less expensive and less expressive than the plain doing of duty... Spirituality is seeing God in common things, and showing God in common tasks." - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
"It is not virtue, but a deceptive copy and imitation of virtue, when we are led to the performance of duty by pleasure as its recompense." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"No phase of life can be free from duty." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"The most learned men have told us that only the wise man is free. What is freedom but the ability to live as one will? The man who lives as he wills is none other than the one who strives for the right, who does his duty, who plans his life with forethought, and who obeys the laws because he knows it is good for him, and not out of fear. Everything he says, does, or thinks is spontaneous and free. His tasks and conduct begin and end in himself, because nothing has so much influence over him as his own counsel and decision. Even the supreme power of fortune is submissive to him. The wise poet has reminded us that fortune is molded for each man by the manner of his life. Only the wise man does nothing against his will, or with regret and by compulsion. Thought this truth deserves to be discussed at greater length, it is nevertheless proverbial that no one is free except the wise. Evil men are nothing but slaves." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL