Irresponsible Quotes

“Perhaps this is what Henry James meant when he talked about the “irresponsibility” of characters. Characters are irresponsible, art is irresponsible when compared to life, because it is first and foremost important that a character be real, and as readers or watchers we tend to applaud any effort made towards the construction of that reality. We do not, of course, indulge actual people in the world this way at all. In real life, the fact that something seems real to someone is not enough to interest us, or to convince us that that reality is interesting. But the self-reality of fictional characters is deeply engrossing, which is why villains are lovable in literature in ways that they are not in life.”

“Perhaps this is what Henry James meant when he talked about the “irresponsibility” of characters. Characters are irresponsible, art is irresponsible when compared to life, because it is first and foremost important that a character be real, and as readers or watchers we tend to applaud any effort made towards the construction of that reality. We do not, of course, indulge actual people in the world this way at all. In real life, the fact that something seems real to someone is not enough to interest us, or to convince us that that reality is interesting. But the self-reality of fictional characters is deeply engrossing, which is why villains are lovable in literature in ways that they are not in life.”

“God has no business with irresponsible people.”

“God does not have any business with irresponsible people.”

“There is always a great price to pay for irresponsibility.”

“Irresponsibility is a sin with a high price tag.”

“To dispense knowledge without moral guidance would be grossly irresponsible.”

“When people who remember her better than me talk of her, she is always described as headstrong and irresponsible, which, if you think about it, are just different words for untameable. The wind is untameable, and so are rivers, and there is something poetic in that.”

“When people refuse to pay the price of personal responsibility for the problems of the nation, these same people end up paying the high price of irresponsibility, which is often in tragedy and sorrow.”

“People who don't exercise their freedom of voting (choosing their leaders) are irresponsible. Such people have no right to complain or want more than what they are receiving from the government. Intentional failure to vote is cowardly, irresponsible and a sign of ignorance.”

“The search for liberation is a rejection of the responsibilities of freedom in favor of a release into the irresponsibility of rights. And a right is irresponsible because it is a legally entrenched liberty that does not contain within itself the limitations instinctive in a free society.”