Fosdick is one of our favorite quote-makers.
Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick, On Being a Real Person (1943)
Tag Archives: responsibility
Life Is What You Make of It <- Fosdick
Free Will and Responsibility <- P.J. O'Rourke
One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on.
And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license.
– P. J. O’Rourke, Rolling Stone Magazine, November 1989
Character is the Cure to Government
Hence the less government we have the better–the fewer laws and the less confided power.
The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man; of whom the existing government is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Politics (1844)
Freedom is Responsibility
Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man’s lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one’s self.
— Max Stirner
source unknown, please tell us if you know
Words of the Sentient 