Irresponsibility Quotes - page 2

The big bankers of the world, who practise the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings and field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no-one: they limit themselves to applauding the show. Their officials, international technocrats, rule our countries: they are neither presidents nor ministers, they have not been elected, but they decide the level of salaries and public expenditure, investments and divestments, prices, taxes, interest rates, subsidies, when the sun rises and how frequently it rains. However, they don't concern themselves with the prisons or torture chambers or concentration camps or extermination centers, although these house the inevitable consequences of their acts. The technocrats claim the privilege of irresponsibility: 'We're neutral' they say. (Eduardo Galeano)
Okay, time for me to rain on this parade. I didn't know he had kids. Young kids. This alters the mix considerably. This makes him an asshole. Cops and firemen, to name but two, place their lives on the line every day to protect others. There was nothing Steve Irwin was doing that he could not have done-as did, say, David Attenborough-without putting his life at risk. This takes this from tragedy to stupidity, and, worse, irresponsibility. View quote
John Byrne
In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence, and corruption. View quote
Anthony Zinni
I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. View quote
Henry Kissinger
Our immediate task, however, is the critical work of confronting the economic crisis. As I've said, we've passed through an era of profound irresponsibility; now we cannot afford half-measures, and we cannot go back to the kind of risk-taking that leads to bubbles that inevitably bust. So we have a choice. We can shape our future, or let events shape it for us. And if we want to succeed, we can't fall back on the stale debates and old divides that won't move us forward. View quote
Barack Obama
The American model – democracy – must be regarded as a historical error, economically as well as morally. Democracy promotes shortsightedness, capital waste, irresponsibility, and moral relativism. It leads to permanent compulsory income and wealth redistribution and legal uncertainty. It is counterproductive. It promotes demagoguery and egalitarianism. It is aggressive and potentially totalitarian internally, vis-à-vis its own population, as well as externally. In sum, it leads to a dramatic growth of state power, as manifested by the amount of parasitically – by means of taxation and expropriation – appropriated government income and wealth in relation to the amount of productively – through market exchange – acquired private income and wealth, and by the range and invasiveness of state legislation. Democracy is doomed to collapse, just as Soviet communism was doomed to collapse. View quote
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
This is a painful bit of truth: Fascism, in the form of irresponsibility, is present in the masses of all countries, nations and races. Fascism is the result of thousands of years of warping of the human structure. It could have developed in any nation. It is not a specific German or Italian character trait. It works in every mortal. View quote
Wilhelm Reich
In short, I suggest that the programmer should continue to understand what he is doing, that his growing product remains firmly within his intellectual grip. It is my sad experience that this suggestion is repulsive to the average experienced programmer, who clearly derives a major part of his professional excitement from not quite understanding what he is doing. In this streamlined age, one of our most undernourished psychological needs is the craving for Black Magic and apparently the automatic computer can satisfy this need for the professional software engineer, who is secretly enthralled by the gigantic risks he takes in his daring irresponsibility. For his frustrations I have no remedy...... View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
As Adolf Berle, a fellow cold warrior, once remarked, 'Being vindicated by history is cold comfort.' For one thing, the political scars of those with whom one has polemicized seem more long-lasting and painful than their memories of the political issues that gave rise to them. And yet indifference to the political life of one's times I deem a flagrant expression of moral irresponsibility. Those who profess such indifference owe the intellectual and cultural freedoms in which they luxuriate to the commitment and sacrifices of others. View quote
Sidney Hook
There's a kind of a fundamental irresponsibility in playwriting, and the strength of playwriting comes from that irresponsibility. View quote
Tony Kushner
... often, stepping outside your comfort zone is not careless irresponsibility, but a necessary act of obedience. (Andy Stanley)
The traits the word 'childish' addresses are seen so often in adults that we should abolish this age-discriminatory word when it comes to criticizing behavior associated with irresponsibility and irrational thinking. View quote
Adora Svitak
If we refuse to accept as inevitable the irresponsibility and educational unconcern of the adolescent culture, then this poses a serious challenge. View quote
James S. Coleman
Adolescence is society's permission slip for combining physical maturity with psychological irresponsibility. View quote
Terri Apter
TABLE D'HOTE, n. A caterer's thrifty concession to the universal passion for irresponsibility. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
You certainly know that We consider war to be the shame of mankind, but one situation that can be considered as worse is the decay of humanity. Armageddon should not be understood as only a physical battle. It is full of incalculable dangers, among which will be epidemics, but the most ruinous consequence will be psychic perversions. People will lose trust in one another, and will compete in doing evil. They will develop a persistent hatred of all except their own kind, and will sink into irresponsibility and depravity. View quote
Helena Roerich
We now see that the gang of sleazy racketeers headed by John Dewey has attained its goal. We realize that the public schools have been for many years a vast brainwashing and brain-contaminating machine that has worked, on the whole, with great efficiency. It's a machine to which we send our children to have their minds filled with grotesque and debasing superstitions; to have their instincts of integrity and honor leached from their souls; to be incited to premature debauchery and perversion; to be imbued with thoughtless irresponsibility; and to be prepared for addiction to mind-destroying drugs and an existence below the animal level. The public schools have indeed been the most powerful single engine of subversion that our enemies have used upon us. View quote
Revilo P. Oliver
My principles are, as I believe, the Whig principles of the revolution. The main foundation of them is the irresponsibility of the crown, the consequent responsibility of ministers, and the preservation of the power and dignity of parliament as constituted by law and custom. With a heap of modern additions, interpolations, facts and fictions, I have nothing to do. View quote
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne
What now strikes us as remarkable about the new moneyed class of the nineteenth century is their complete irresponsibility; they see everything in terms of individual success, with hardly any consciousness that the community exists. View quote
George Orwell
This writer, who is horribly perspicacious and vigorous, demonstrates the certainty of a great European war, and regards it with the peculiar satisfaction excited by such things in a certain order of mind. His phrases about "dire calamity" and so on mean nothing; the whole tenor of his writing proves that he represents, and consciously, one of the forces which go to bring war about; his part in the business is a fluent irresponsibility, which casts scorn on all who reluct at the "inevitable." Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event. View quote
George Gissing
It is a strange feeling - no hopelessness is in it, no despair. Content - that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling. (Herman Melville)
After the first International Days of Protest in October, 1965, Senator Mansfield criticized the 'sense of utter irresponsibility' shown by the demonstrators. View quote
Noam Chomsky
The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow. View quote
Friedrich Nietzsche
We sometimes chafe at the burden of our obligations, the complexity of our decisions, the agony of our choices. But there is no comfort or security for us in evasion, no solution in abdication, no relief in irresponsibility. View quote
John F. Kennedy
Man has long talked somewhat arrogantly about the conquest of nature; now he has the power to achieve his boast. It is our misfortune-it may well be our final tragedy-that this power has not been tempered with wisdom, but has been marked by irresponsibility; that there is all too little awareness that man is part of nature, and that the price of conquest may well be the destruction of man himself. View quote
Rachel Carson