Top 100 Duty First Quotes
#1. Ill-luck is, in nine cases out of ten, the result of taking pleasure first and duty second, instead of duty first and pleasure second.
Theodore T. Munger
#2. The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
Theodore Roosevelt
#3. The old women only stuck around this long out of a sense of duty. Your mom was the same way. That's why I loved her. She put her duty first, ahead of evverything.
Rick Riordan
#4. My first professional job was to sell heavy-duty waterless cookware.
Zig Ziglar
#5. The first duty of a man is to love himself. When someone loves himself, he is loving the universe. This universe is existing because of you.
Debasish Mridha
#6. I've found my line- from now on this comes first. This is my immediate duty- without this I am nothing.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#7. Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.
Norman Douglas
#8. Presidents are always also storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies. And surprisingly enough, Richard Nixon, this awkward man who didn't even really like people, had not been so bad at this duty - at least in the first four years of his presidency.
Rick Perlstein
#9. If the function of the artist is to see, the first duty of the critic is to understand what the artist saw.
J. E. H. MacDonald
#10. The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.
George Bernard Shaw
#11. The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thought,words, and deeds likely to render your command most pleasing to the gods and bring yourself, your friends, and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage
Xenophon
#12. The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself.
Andre Malraux
#13. To endure life remains, when all is said, the first duty of all living being Illusion can have no value if it makes this more difficult for us.
Sigmund Freud
#14. You might say that I was the first and caused others to awaken to the sense of their duty in helping deserving causes for the benefit of the race.
Madam C. J. Walker
#15. Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth; and second, to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive.
Leland Stanford
#16. We have a duty to look after each other. If we lose control of our government, then we lose our ability to dispense justice and human kindness. Our first priority today, then, is to defeat utterly those forces of greed and corruption that have come between us and our self-governance.
Doris "Granny D" Haddock
#17. 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.
Storm Jameson
#18. In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother's first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air.
Charlotte Mason
#19. It is the first duty of a gentleman to remember in the morning who he went to bed with the night before.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#20. A man who is a good lover to his wife is his children's best friend. ... Child care is play to a woman who is happy. And only a man can make a woman happy. In deepest truth, a father's first duty to his children is to make their mother feel fulfilled as a woman.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#21. The first duty of a government is to give education to the people
Simon Bolivar
#22. Man's rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
Samuel Adams
#23. In a sick world, it is the first duty of the artist to get well.
Jean Toomer
#24. Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.
James Hillman
#25. This is the way to cultivate courage: First, by standing firm on some conscientious principle, some law of duty. Next, by being faithful to truth and right on small occasions and common events. Third, by trusting in God for help and power.
James Freeman Clarke
#26. The best bought-up children are those who have seen thier parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the first duty of a parent.
George Bernard Shaw
#27. The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.
Oscar Wilde
#29. The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.
Donna Tartt
#30. The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
Abbie Hoffman
#31. Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.
Herman Melville
#32. I believe that the Government's first duty is to defend its citizens, to defend them against the harms that come out of hate.
Gordon Smith
#34. Nobody was born nonviolent. No one was born charitable. None of us comes to these things by nature but only by conversion. The first duty of the nonviolent community is helping its members work upon themselves and come to conversion.
Lanza Del Vasto
#35. As a result of all his education, from everything he hears and sees around him, the child absorbs such a lot of lies and foolish nonsense, mixed in with essential truths, that the first duty of the adolescent who wants to be a healthy man is to disgorge it all.
Romain Rolland
#36. The historian's first duties are sacrilege and the mocking of false gods. They are his indispensable instruments for establishing the truth.
Jules Michelet
#37. Combat duty is strenuous and physically demanding, and I'm not the first person to notice that men and women are built differently. And while many will argue that women will only be allowed into combat arms units under the same requirements as their male counterparts, count me as skeptical.
Pete Hegseth
#38. If ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it's your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself - that will be the man who's not after your soul.
Ayn Rand
#39. God, immortality, duty - how inconceivable the first, how unbelievable the second, how peremptory and absolute the third.
George Eliot
#40. The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian-especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the kingdom of God.
Dallas Willard
#41. The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
Thomas Carlyle
#42. A soldier's first duty is to obey, otherwise you might as well do away with soldiering.
Albert Kesselring
#44. The first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not trade; character, not technicalities.
Winston Churchill
#45. To interest is the first duty of art; no other excellences will ever begin to compensate for failure in this.
C.S. Lewis
#46. My mother's studies stopped with the third year of primary school, my father with the first. They taught me a deep sense of duty. But nobody was involved in politics in my family.
Emma Bonino
#47. Woman is learning for herself that not self-sacrifice, but self development, is her first duty in life; and this, not primarily for the sake of others but that she may become fully herself.
Matilda Joslyn Gage
#48. Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. Those who have no faith in themselves can never have faith in God.
Swami Vivekananda
#51. Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free. If we understand our first and sole duty to consist of loving God supremely and loving everyone, even our enemies, for God's dear sake, then we can enjoy spiritual tranquility under every circumstance.
Aiden Wilson Tozer
#52. The first duty of any Christian is to know God and the wisdom of His Word to the utmost
Sunday Adelaja
#53. In all common ordinary cases, we see intuitively at first view what is out duty, what is the honest part. This is the ground of the observation, that the first thought is often the best. In these cases, doubt and deliberation is itself dishonesty; as it was in Balaam upon the second message.
Joseph Butler
#54. The first duty of wine is to be red. Don't talk to me of your white wines.
Henri Murger
#55. I despise the kind of book which tells you how to live, how to make yourself happy! Philosophers have no good news for you at this level! I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you are in!
Slavoj Zizek
#56. I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.
E.B. White
#57. Never forgive, never forget. Do it once and do it right. You reap what you sow. Plans go to hell as soon as the first shot is fired. Protect and serve. Never off duty.
Lee Child
#58. [Our] first and foremost duty [is] to seek the Lord until we open the path of communication from God to our own soul.
Brigham Young
#59. A man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first.
Mark Twain
#60. A leader's first duty is to look after his or her people, especially those who are sick, hungry, or thirsty.
Michael Monroe
#61. Civilization is first of all a moral thing. Without truth, respect for duty, love of neighbor, and virtue, everything is destroyed. The morality of a society is alone the basis of civilization.
Henri Frederic Amiel
#62. The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathies with their just feelings.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#63. I should never be able to fulfill what is,I understand, the first duty of a lecturer-to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece forever.
Virginia Woolf
#64. We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. GEORGE ORWELL
J. Budziszewski
#65. soldier's first duty, his reason for being, is not to fight. Fighting is the final recourse for any civilized people. His duty is not even to preserve the peace; that is a police officer's job,
Evan Currie
#66. The first duty of the agriculturalist must always be to understand that he is a part of Nature and cannot escape from his environment. He must therefore obey Nature's rules.
Albert Howard
#67. The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it be accurate, it follows that it is fair.
Herbert Bayard Swope
#68. The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.
John Ruskin
#70. My experiences thus far had me planning to throttle the first Tudor historian I met upon my return for gross dereliction of duty.
Deborah Harkness
#71. Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it will drop them and they will form a pile.
John Hersey
#72. A life of hospitality begins in worship, with a recognition of God's grace and generosity. Hospitality is not first a duty and responsibility; it is first a response of love and gratitude for God's love and welcome to us.
Christine Pohl
#73. 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.
Ariel Sharon
#74. The first duty of a human being is to assume the right relationship to society
more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
#75. Nobody is bound by any obligation unless it has first been freely accepted.
Ugo Betti
#76. A historian has many duties ... the first is not to slander; the second is not to bore
Voltaire
#77. Let your first business be to perform your duties at home. But, inasmuch as you are wise stewards, you will find time for social duties ... By seeking to perform every duty you will find that your capacity will increase, and you will be astonished at what you can accomplish.
Eliza R. Snow
#78. Hades cracked his knuckles on each hand, and the noise was like gunpowder caps exploding in the silence. "First dish duty," he mumbled to himself, "now possessed cowboys. This just isn't my night.
Josh Strnad
#79. The same day I saw my first horror camp, I visited every nook and cranny. I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#80. The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed.
Alexis Carrel
#81. The first duty of a man is to think for himself
Jose Marti
#82. I believe that a country's first duty is to set its own house in order; and having set its own house in order, it can contribute better to the community of the world. Instead of being a weak link, it should be a strong link.
George Cadle Price
#83. When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave
To do the like; our bodies but forerun
The spirit's duty. True hearts spread and heave
Unto their God, as flow'rs do to the sun.
Give him thy first thoughts then; so shalt thou keep
Him company all day, and in him sleep.
Henry Vaughan
#84. The making of one's life into art is, after all, the first duty and privilege of every man.
Arthur Symons
#85. The first duty of man is to support himself - to see to it that he does not become a burden. His next duty is to help others if he has a surplus, and if he really believes they deserve to be helped.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#86. Should we force science down the throats of those that have no taste for it ? Is it our duty to drag them kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century ? I am afraid that it is.
George Porter
#87. I believe my first duty is to survive. And I'm not just talking about criminals coming into my home. I once seriously considered getting a gun to protect myself from the police. If I need a weapon to continue living, I'll get one. And I'll use it.
George Carlin
#88. When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first ... Of course, to observe is not its real duty, we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed ... Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious.
Alan Turing
#89. The teacher's first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. It's influence is indirect, but unless it be well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual.
Maria Montessori
#90. First, let us be Gods, and then help others to be Gods. "Be and make." Let this be our motto. Say not man is a sinner. Tell him that he is a God. Even if there were a devil, it would be our duty to remember God always, and not the devil.
Swami Vivekananda
#91. Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.
George Orwell
#93. The first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.
W. Somerset Maugham
#94. It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.
Benjamin Franklin
#95. Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, and the root of every virtue. And so pride, or the loss of this humility, is the root of every sin and evil.
Andrew Murray
#96. If you simply take the name of Christ upon you and call yourself His servant, yet do not obey Him, but follow your own whim, or your own hereditary prejudice, or the custom of some erroneous church-you are no servant of Christ. If you really are a servant of Christ, your first duty is to obey Him.
Charles Spurgeon
#97. The first duty of the educator, whether he is involved with the newborn infant or the older child, is to recognize the human personality of the young being and respect it.
Maria Montessori
#98. Your first duty to God, to yourself, and to the world is to make yourself as great a personality, in every way, as you possibly can.
Wallace D. Wattles
#99. To be clear is the first duty of a writer; to charm and to please are graces to be acquired later.
Brander Matthews
#100. An author's first duty is to let down his country.
Brendan Behan
