Noblesse Oblige Quotes

“If you’re in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”
― Warren Buffett

“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Great power involves great responsibility”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

“The Sikh gave him the money. When Menon asked for his address so that he could repay the man, the Sikh said that Menon owed the debt to any stranger who came to him in need, as long as he lived. The help came from a stranger and was to be repaid to a stranger.”
― Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

“[I]f you don't feel or look rich, you don't necessarily feel the same sense of obligation that a traditional rich person does or should: Noblesse oblige is, after all, dependent on a classical idea of who is and is not the nobility. As that starts to fall away, obligation--to culture, to the future, to each other--begins to disappear too.”
― Ellen Cushing

“As they say, with great power comes great responsibility.”
“Are you screwin’ with me, man?” Taylor asked bluntly.”
― David Estes, Angel Evolution

“If you happened to be born on third base, you didn't rub it in the face of the guy who wasn't even born in the stadium. Self-interest was generally checked at the door with your coat and hat.”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“Where the establishment emphasized humility, prudence, lineage, meritocracy celebrates ambition, achievement, brains&self-betterment”
― Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy

“The Global Financial Crisis (2008-?); it is not a matter of noblesse oblige as of vitesse oblige.”
― sir kristian goldmund aumann

“The greatest enemy of enlightenment is “common sense”. In day-today life, common sense “works”, which is why ordinary people revere it. Most managers in the workplace are good at common sense i.e. knowing how to play the system, to obey the rules, to pander to higher managers, to avoid radical ideas, to highlight their modest successes and blame others for their failures, and to stick firmly within the domain of the conventional, acceptable and uncontroversial. Unfortunately, they’re hopeless at everything else. All geniuses, on the other hand, can “see” far beyond the realm of common sense. They use imagination, intuition and visionary ideas as their guides, not the trivialities of common sense. What would you rather be – a middle manager with a comfortable common sense life, or a genius who has unlocked the door to the mysteries of existence? Tragically for humanity, most people aspire to be middle managers. That’s the extent of their ambition, that’s as far as their horizons stretch. These are the sort of people that Nietzsche scornfully branded as “Last Men.”
― Adam Weishaupt, The Illuminati's Six Dimensional Universe

“Why should I do this for you?" asked Oz.

"Because you are strong and I am weak; because you are a Great Wizard and I am only a helpless little girl," she answered.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz

“Believe me, although it’s vexing to remember it, I am the King of my enemies as well as my friends. There’s a certain noblesse oblige, see. It’s a bad king who kills his subjects. I would rather see them humiliated than dead.”
― Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam

“Requiem For A Bee…

I do not know
the cause of death,
nor do I know
the hour…

That brought you here
to garden’s rest,
your noble life
expired…

Were battles done
both lost and won,
for distant winged
power?

Unknown to me
your sovereign be,
the queen of all
my flowers…”
― M P Ceran