Responsibility

Find compelling quotes from renowned African-Americans on the importance of personal and social responsibility.

Everybody wants to do something to help, but nobody wants to be the first.
Pearl Bailey

I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.
Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture

I don't think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good.
Oprah Winfrey

If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.
Marian Wright Edelman

Take responsibility for yourself because no one's going to take responsibility for you. I'm not a victim. I grow from this and I learn.
Tyra Banks

There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the make the first move - and he, in turn, waits for you.
Marian Anderson

We are each responsible for our own life - no other person is or even can be.
Oprah Winfrey, Magazine

We must exchange the philosophy of excuse -- what I am is beyond my control -- for the philosophy of responsibility.
Barbara Jordan

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
Marian Wright Edelman

When I fight about what is going on in the neighborhood, or when I fight about what is happening to other people's children, I'm doing that because I want to leave a community and a world that is better than the one I found.
Marian Wright Edelman