Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things.

People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

If the people fail to vote, a government will be developed which is not their government… The whole system of American Government rests on the ballot box. Unless citizens perform their duties there, such a system of government is doomed to failure.

Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.

It is humankind’s duty to respect all life, not only animals have feelings but even also trees and plants.

What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws.

We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.

Those who think that a woman detained at home by her little family is doing nothing, think the reverse of what is true. Scarcely can the godly mother quit her home for a place of worship; but dream not that she is lost to the work of the church; far from it, she is doing the best possible service for her Lord. Mothers, the godly training of your offspring is your first and most pressing duty.

My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.

I love my own culture. I love my African-American culture very deeply, and I know it deserves to be honored. You have to be aware that people are suffering unjustly, and given our own history we have a duty to stand for the people who are being treated like our parents and grandparents and children were treated.

Love likes to extend itself. If you receive it in a book – or however you get it – then your duty is to extend it beyond.

You have not fulfilled every duty unless you have fulfilled that of being pleasant.

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what preserve the heart and secure comfort.

No people have risen who thought only of rights. Only those did so who thought of duties.

The honorary duty of a human being is to love.

Duty is whatever opposes inclination.

Self-defense is not only our right; it is our duty.

In practice it is seldom very hard to do one’s duty when one knows what it is, but it is sometimes extremely difficult to find this out.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness.

a writer’s first duty is to be clear. Clarity is an excellent virtue. Like all virtues it can be pursued at ruinous cost. Paid, so far as I am concerned, joyfully.

It is the true duty of every man to promote the happiness of his fellow creatures to the utmost of his power.

I must be informed, that one of my great duties was, to obey the priests in all things; and this I soon learnt, to my utter astonishment and horror, was to live in the practice of criminal intercourse with them.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege, but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for physical immortality and triumph over the fear of death.

It is the soul’s duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.

In the performance of our duty one feeling should direct us; the case we should consider as our own, and we should ask ourselves, whether, placed under similar circumstances, we should choose to submit to the pain and danger we are about to inflict.

One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.

The care of the public health is the first duty of the statesman.

A lawyer’s duty is to read the law well himself, then tell the people what it is, and let them act upon it.

Democracy acknowledges the right to differ as well as the duty to settle differences peacefully. Authoritarian governments see criticism of their actions and doctrines as a challenge to combat.

It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.