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There is no act which more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong sense of individual responsibility than the nomination to employments.
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“There is no act which more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong sense of individual responsibility than the nomination to employments.”

John Stuart Mill

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Source
Considerations on Representative Government
Date
1861
Meaning

Meaning of “There is no act which more imperatively requires…”

Mill treats appointments to public office as decisions requiring unusually strong personal accountability because poor nominations can substitute influence or convenience for actual qualification.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Considerations on Representative Government (1861), Chapter V, “Of the Proper Functions of Representative Bodies,” Project Gutenberg #5669. This is historical constitutional and administrative theory rather than a current hiring standard.

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DecisionIntegrityLeadershipResponsibilityCharacterDemocracy
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stand by principle at all hazards.
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“stand by principle at all hazards.”

Booker T. Washington · The Future of the American Negro · 1899
Meaning & context

Washington distinguishes tactical cooperation from questions of right and wrong, where he advises maintaining principle despite possible cost.

Source details

The Future of the American Negro, Chapter VIII; Project Gutenberg #26507. This short excerpt appears in Washington’s closing policy discussion, where he distinguishes ordinary political cooperation from cases involving a question of right or wrong and advises standing by principle in those cases.

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Let us have faith that right makes might.
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“Let us have faith that right makes might.”

Abraham Lincoln · Cooper Union Address · 1860
Meaning & context

Lincoln reverses the idea that power establishes right, arguing that moral judgment should guide sustained political action rather than treating strength or intimidation as proof of justice.

Source details

Cooper Union Address, February 27, 1860, closing passage. Lincoln is defending Republican opposition to the extension of slavery into federal territories; the line retains that antislavery political context.

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If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
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“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”

Abraham Lincoln · Lyceum Address · 1838
Meaning & context

Lincoln warns that republican institutions can be destroyed from within through citizens’ own choices and conduct, making preservation a responsibility rather than assuming external enemies are the only danger.

Source details

Lyceum Address, January 27, 1838. Lincoln is discussing mob violence, disregard for law and the preservation of republican institutions; the sentence is not a generic prediction about national collapse.

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It does not pay an individual to do anything except what his conscience will approve of every day, and every hour and minute in the day.
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“It does not pay an individual to do anything except what his conscience will approve of every day, and every hour and minute in the day.”

Booker T. Washington · Character Building · 1902
Meaning & context

Washington makes conscience a recurring test of conduct, asking whether ordinary choices can withstand one’s own moral approval rather than merely outside scrutiny.

Source details

Character Building, “What Will Pay?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington reports a discussion of honesty in business and uses conscience as a practical test of conduct; the sentence belongs to that address’s argument that dishonest dealing does not pay.

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Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.
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“Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.”

Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · 1792
Meaning & context

Different roles do not require different moral standards; Wollstonecraft argues for common principles of responsibility and virtue.

Source details

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; the passage rejects a separate moral standard built around sex rather than shared human duties.

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