Quote

That's a central part of philosophy, of ethics. What do I owe to strangers? What do I owe to my family? What is it to live a good life? Those are questions which we face as individuals.

Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

We owe each other a debt and we owe each other an obligation, and because of these fundamental American imperatives, there are things that we own in common with each other, and that we are obliged to protect for our posterity. The water. The trees. The wild places in the land. We lose sight of these truths sometimes.

We owe it to our service men and women and their families, who sacrificed so much for our country, to find out the answers they deserve and make care and treatment for them, their children, and their grandchildren a priority.

I owe my solitude to other people.

We shelter children for a time; we live side by side with men; and that is all. We owe them nothing, and are owed nothing. I think we owe our friends more, especially our female friends.

I owe my mother who I am, and my father my drive.

You have to ask these questions: who pays the piper, and what is valuable in this life?

We have responsibilities for others, not just across space but across time. We have responsibilities to people who came before us. They left us a world of institutions, ideas or possibilities for which we, in turn, owe them something. One of the things we owe them is not to squander them.