Quotes About Blame

So we push the boundaries: we stay up far longer than is natural. We try to do too many tasks at the same time. We drive faster than is safe. Most of the time we manage okay. We might even be rewarded and praised for our heroic efforts. But when things go wrong and we fail, then this same behavior is blamed and punished.

When a bridge collapses, we analyze the incident to find the causes of the collapse and reformulate the design rules to ensure that form of accident will never happen again. When we discover that electronic equipment is malfunctioning because it is responding to unavoidable electrical noise, we redesign the circuits to be more tolerant of the noise. But when an accident is thought to be caused by people, we blame them and then continue to do things just as we have always done.

It seems natural for people to blame their own misfortunes on the environment. It seems equally natural to blame other people's misfortunes on their personalities. Just the opposite attribution, by the way, is made when things go well. When things go right, people credit their own abilities and intelligence. The onlookers do the reverse. When they see things go well for someone else, they sometimes credit the environment, or luck.

but all that you will have now, and for the rest of your lives, is loss and pain and the terrible sense that you somehow failed this boy. And no matter how deep your knowledge that you were not responsible for it, your certainty that you were will always be deeper and more absolute.

I wanted her to know just how much I loved her while also letting her know that she bore not one particle of blame for not loving me back. But I wouldn't say that. It was rosepetals I wanted to throw, not a poison dart.

A poor Negro has at least the excuse of his birth," Edie said. "The poor white has nothing to blame for his station but his own character. Well, of course, that won't do. That would mean having to assume some responsibility for his own laziness and sorry behavior. No, he'd much rather stomp around burning crosses and blaming the Negro for everything than go out and try to get an education or improve himself in any way.

Things would have turned out better is she had lived. As it was, she died when I was kid;and thought everything that happened to me since then is thoroughly my own fault, still when I lost her I lost sight of any landmark that might have led me someplace happier, to some more populated or congenial life.

Her death was my fault. Other people have always been a little too quick to assure me that it wasn't; and yes, only a kid, who could have known, terrible accident, rotten luck, could have happened to anyone, it's all perfectly true and I don't believe a word of it.

I wanted her to know just how much I loved her while also letting her know that she bore not one particle of blame for not loving me back.

This is your fault. I'm going to kill you. And all the cake is gone. You don't even care, do you?

Tertullian thunders at women in the manner of the God of the Old Testament who once threatened to make their hair fall out. But his tone and his words are altogether more menacing. Not only are women held responsible fot the Fall of Man, but it is they, not the Jews, not the Roman authorities--who are blamed for the suffering and death of Jesus, man's Redeemer. It is through their flesh that the devil comes into the world.

Anger, blame, conflict, and resentment arise from our fear. When we are afraid, our body tightens, our heart is constricted, our mind is possessed. We cannot live wisely.

deep regret, "none of this would ever have happened.

That was the trouble with smart men. They thought they had all the answers, and then when life knocked them aside, they thought it was all their faults.

It wasn't her fault. It wasn't my fault. But nothing could change the fact that where she saw beautiful flowers I saw sorrow and bitterness.

Don't ascribe to evil what can be attributed to well-intentioned stupidity.

If I could find someone to blame, perhaps I could get angry. Anything would be better than this sadness, this sense of regret for events that were never mine.

In my right-wing politics of the time, I held that unemployment was usually the fault of the unemployed.

Nobody can be forced to commit an act of villainy. You can't push anybody into the mud; people always step into it themselves.

The central attitudes driving the Demand Man are: It's your job to do things for me, including taking care of my responsibilities if I drop the ball on them. If I'm unhappy about any aspect of my life, whether it has to do with our relationship or not, it's your fault. You should not place demands on me at all. You should be grateful for whatever I choose to give. I am above criticism. I am a very loving and giving partner. You're lucky to have me.

Sometimes the more educated an abuser, the more knots he knows how to tie in a woman's brain, the better he is at getting her to blame herself, and the slicker is his ability to persuade other people that she is crazy. The more socially powerful an abuser, the more powerful his abuse can be—and the more difficult it can be to escape.

Abusive men are masters of excuse making. In this respect they are like substance abusers, who believe that everyone and everything except them is responsible for their actions.

you cannot make things better by changing your own behavior or by attempting to manage your partner better. Abuse is a problem that lies entirely within the abuser.

Abuse of women by men is so rampant that, unless people can somehow make it women's own fault, they are forced to take on a number of uncomfortable questions about men and about much of male thinking.