The full text:
Plenty of people wish well to any good cause, but very few care to exert themselves to help it, and still fewer will risk anything in its support.
“Some one ought to do it, but why should I?” is the ever reëchoed phrase of weak-kneed amiability.
“Some one ought to do it, so why not I?” is the cry of some earnest servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilous duty.
Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.
Written by social reformer, women’s rights advocate and Badass Woman of History Annie Besant, who died in 1933. The quote has been sticking in my head all week.
It’s depressing that we’re not there yet, not even close. What’s it going to take?
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