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“When you decide to accept help, you (at the same time) incurred an obligation.”
― Meir Ezra

“Life â€� for me â€� is neither good nor bad, neither a theory nor an idea. Life is a reality, and the reality of life is war. For one who is a born warrior, life is a fountain of joy, for others it is only a fountain of humiliation and sorrow. I no longer demand carefree joy from life. It couldn’t give it to me, and I would no longer know what to do with it now that my adolescence is past...”
― Renzo Novatore, I Am Also a Nihilist

“Many young people are morally at sea. They resent the ethical demands of "society" as infringements of their personal freedom. They believe that their rights as individuals include the right to "create their own values," but they cannot explain what that means, aside from the right to do as they please. They cannot seem to grasp the idea that "values" imply some principle of moral obligation. They insist that they owe nothing to "society"--an abstraction that dominates their attempts to think about social and moral issues. If they con-form to social expectations, it is only because conformity offers the line of least resistance.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“The tissues of society become cancerous when the duties of some are transformed into the rights of others.”
― Nicolás Gómez Dávila

“The only thing you should feel entitled to is gratitude.”
― J.S. Mason, The Stork Ate My Brother...And Other Totally Believable Stories

“And she had to admit to herself that part of what kept her next to him was not just the promise of freeing herself of the bone splinter or a sense of obligation, but the lure of change, of becoming someone else, someone other than a girl who starched shirts and shone shoes and had to make do with a quick glimpse of the stars at night.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Gods of Jade and Shadow

“The last time the "best and brightest" got control of the country, they dragged it into a protracted, demoralizing war in Southeast Asia, from which the country has still not fully recovered. Yet Reich seems to believe that a new generation of Whiz Kids can do for the faltering American economy what Robert McNamara's generation failed to do for American diplomacy: to restore, through sheer brainpower, the world leadership briefly enjoyed by the United States after World War II and subsequently lost not, of course, through stupidity so much as through the very arrogance the "arrogance of power," as Senator William Fulbright used to call it to which the "best and brightest" are congenitally addicted.
This arrogance should not be confused with the pride characteristic of aristocratic classes, which rests on the inheritance of an ancient lineage and on the obligation to defend its honor. Neither valor and chivalry nor the code of courtly, romantic love, with which these values are closely associated, has any place in the world view of the best and brightest. A meritocracy has no more use for chivalry and valor than a hereditary aristocracy has for brains. Although hereditary advantages play an important part in the attainment of professional or managerial status, the new class has to maintain the fiction that its power rests on intelligence alone. Hence it has little sense of ancestral gratitude or of an obligation to live up to responsibilities inherited from the past. It thinks of itself as a self-made elite owing its privileges exclusively to its own efforts. Even the concept of a republic of letters, which might be expected to appeal to elites with such a large stake in higher education, is almost entirely absent from their frame of reference.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“I wonder if what you’re seeing as a cage is obligation instead of love. They can look the same, especially when it comes to family. It’s hard to break free from that, and some people never do.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“The voting system is not just political; it is economic and social and educational. It is omnipresent and omniscient. And it is fallible. Yet, when a structure is broken, we are fools if we simply ignore the defect in favor of pretending that our democracy isn’t cracking at the seams. Our obligation is to understand where the problem is, find a solution, and make the broken whole again.”
― Stacey Abrams, Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America

“To refer everything to a "plurality of ethical commitments" means that we make no demands on anyone and acknowledge no one's right to make any demands on ourselves. The suspension of judgment logically condemns us to solitude. Unless
we are prepared to make demands on one another, we can enjoy only the most rudimentary kind of common life.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“I think people have an obligation to show to the world things that are...not great, most people aren't capable of that--but better than most things people show to the world. Now people show everything. Every single thing.

There's nothing wrong with it morally, but I wonder how--the people who have always done this who are young, who have always lived in this world--I wonder how they would judge anything.

And since basically making distinctions is my profession, and judging is my profession, I don't think there's any people like me in a young generation, because they wouldn't be allowed to be like me [...] They're either incredibly critical in a kind of crazy way--"I hate your hairstyle, you should die"-- or they're incredibly overpraising -- "Oh, that's great. You're great. Keep going, you're great." I would basically say, "Your hairstyle, no one should be killed for your hairstyle, but your writing, stop. Don't keep going.”
― Fran Lebowitz

“Be more receptive of your responsibility than you are of your rights.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Keep things simple and practical so that an activity that fuels you doesn’t become this massive, daunting obligation. Your self-care activity doesn’t need to be yet another thing that lingers on your to-do list.”
― Melissa Steginus, Self Care at Work: How to Reduce Stress, Boost Productivity, and Do More of What Matters

“Burke rejected the liberal idea of the social contract, as a deal agreed among living people. Society, he argued, does not contain the living only; it is an association between the dead, the living and the unborn. Its binding principle is not contract but something more akin to trusteeship. It is a shared inheritance for the sake of which we learn to circumscribe our demands, to see our own place in things as part of a continuous chain of giving and receiving, and to recognise that the good things we inherit are not ours to spoil but ours to safeguard for our dependents. There is a line of obligation that connects us to those who gave us what we have; and our concern for the future is an extension of that line. We take the future of our community into account not by fictitious cost-benefit calculations, but more concretely, by seeing ourselves as inheriting benefits and passing them on. Concern for future generations is a non-specific outgrowth of gratitude. It does not calculate, because it shouldn't and can't.”
― Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition

“Being able to do whatever we want to do is the most precious natural gift that we possess, but doing only what we ought to do is the only adequate expression of our gratitude for it.”
― Jakub Bożydar WiÅ›niewski

“Meritocratic elites find it difficult to imagine a community, even a community of the intellect, that reaches into both the past and the future and is constituted by an awareness of intergenerational obligation. The "zones" and "networks" admired by Reich bear little resemblance to communities in any traditional sense of the term. Populated by transients, they lack the continuity that derives from a sense of place and from standards of conduct self-consciously cultivated and handed down from generation to generation. The "community" of the best and brightest is a community of contemporaries, in the double sense that its members think of themselves as agelessly youthful and that the mark of this youthfulness is precisely their ability to stay on top of the latest trends.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Don’t think you have to be perfect or even good. You have no obligation to be that.
Don’t waste time feeling guilty and repenting things you cannot change. You only have today, and yourself. Let that self expand and live. Love what you love.
Listen to other people’s hurt and pain, and share yours with them. If they love you, this will be natural.
Meanwhile, the sun rises and sets each day. Flowers bloom and wither, birds migrate and return, trees shed their leaves and wake up again. No matter how lonely and desperate you might feel today, tomorrow is another day to try again. Your imagination is endless, crosses time and dimension, sleeps awhile, and then comes on like fury.
These are the things to remember in your darkest times. You are that flower, that bird, that tree, and you will awaken to beauty when it’s time. And that time is your choice.”
― Riitta Klint

“. . . if we do not continue to choose kindness together, can you imagine how much worse the world will become? The least we can do in response to and in gratitude for all those kindness giants who have paved the way is to do the same for the generations to come.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“Obligation was dangerous because it muddled the mind.”
― Veronica Roth, The End and Other Beginnings: Stories from the Future

“They're not going to bother me tonight. They won't denigrate my efforts, or ridicule anything that's mine, won't roll their eyes, or correct me, or cut me short and leave the room. They won't burden, or overwork me, or heap upon me responsibilities that are theirs. And, no more than they are doing, they won't intrude on my privacy, try to embarrass me or make me uncomfortable.

Plus, they seem pretty far beyond hurting each other.”
― Mary Robison, Why Did I Ever

“If you say something once, it means.
If you say the same thing thrice, it becomes an obligation.”
― Shayana Kaushal

“Vengeance for a father slain, or vengeance for a kinsman in the wider sense, was often enough in those unruly times the means whereby youth showed its right to a seat in the home. But to regard honour as solely and exclusively in the sign of slaughter leads after all to a too restricted estimate of life. More was demanded of a well-born youth than merely to be a slayer of men. He claimed his place, and held his place in the family by his generosity, hospitality, helpfulness or readiness to take up the cause of kinsmen and fugitives, by nobility of manner, and magnificence. And eyes were watching from every side to see that he filled his place in every respect. The place he had to fill was the broad, spacious seat which his fathers had judged necessary for themselves.”
― Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

“Without sensuality, a relationship is merely a matter of duty.”
― Lebo Grand

“Obeying God is a holy obligation.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“The natural rights of which we have so far been speaking are inextricably bound up with as many duties, all applying to one and the same person. These rights and duties derive their origin, their sustenance, and their indestructibility from the natural law, which in conferring the one imposes the other... it follows that in human society one man's natural right gives rise to a corresponding duty in other men; the duty, that is, of recognizing and respecting that right. Every basic human right draws its authoritative force from the natural law, which confers it and attaches to it its respective duty. Hence, to claim one 's rights and ignore one 's duties, or only half fulfill them, is like building a house with one hand and tearing it down with the other.”
― Pope John XXIII

“Ah ain't got tuh do but two things--stay black and die," Sister Berry snapped.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“Your sacred obligation is to obey God.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“There is a big difference between phrases "I must do it" and "I want to do it" when it comes to your own life!”
― Joerg Teichmann

“It doesn’t matter if you’re the spouse, romantic partner, concerned friend, parent, or child, you still bring something precious to the table - something the addict depends on. What do you bring? You bring an “obligation by association.”
― D.C. Hyden, The Sober Addict

“Fuck everyone else, I want to say, for burdening the two of us with all their baggage. Let's go back to minding our own business, anything but this. Who cares about our family? What have they ever done but keep us alive only to make us feel like shit?”
― Anthony Veasna So, Afterparties