Politics & Power Quote by Paul Harris

“Individuals and nations owe it to themselves and the world to become informed” reads like a civic creed disguised as a simple moral instruction. Paul Harris, a lawyer and the founder of Rotary International, wasn’t tossing off a platitude; he was staking a claim about what modern responsibility looks like when societies are newly networked by industry, newspapers, and international commerce. The line carries the tone of someone trained to see consequences: ignorance isn’t just a private flaw, it’s a public liability.

The word “owe” does the heavy lifting. It turns knowledge from a personal preference into a debt, the kind that accumulates interest. Harris links the private and the geopolitical in the same breath, collapsing the comforting idea that nations can blunder in isolation. In the early 20th century, that was more warning than inspiration. Mass propaganda, rising nationalism, and world war made “being informed” a survival skill for democracies and an ethical requirement for elites who could no longer plead distance from global fallout.

There’s subtext, too, about legitimacy. For individuals, information is the price of citizenship: you don’t get to demand rights and then outsource attention. For nations, it’s an argument against parochial policy-making and for international cooperation - a Rotary-like worldview where service and stability depend on understanding others rather than caricaturing them.

Harris frames knowledge as a form of restraint. An informed public is harder to manipulate; an informed nation is less likely to confuse pride with strategy. The quote works because it makes enlightenment feel less like self-improvement and more like damage control.