Quotes About Accountability

To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.

My old man says when it's time to be counted, the important thing is to be man enough to stand up.

In terms of morals there is no such thing as 'state.' Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.

A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it—it keeps him upright.

My point is that one person is responsible, Always. If H-bombs exist--and they do--some man controls them. In terms of morals there is no such thing as 'state'. Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.

To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy.

If it has to be done, a man—a real man—shoots his own dog himself; he doesn't hire a proxy who may bungle it.

The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government – sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive – and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby?

But I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

the government'—that's too sweeping a term. 'The government' is several million people, nearly a million in Washington alone. We have to ask ourselves: Whose toes were being stepped on? What person or persons? Not 'the government'—but what individuals?

See here, son, if a deputy sheriff beats a prisoner to death, it's sweepstakes odds that the county commissioners didn't order it, didn't know it, and wouldn't have permitted it had they known. At worst they shut their eyes to it—afterwards—rather than upset their own applecarts. But assassination has never been an accepted policy in this country.

Nope. Gadflies such as yourself are utterly necessary. Nor am I opposed to 'turning the rascals out'—it's usually the soundest rule of politics. But it's well to take a look at what new rascals you are going to get before you jump at any chance to turn your present rascals out.

Hendrick, I have explained these matters to you because it is useless to punish a man unless he knows why he is being punished.

Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal—else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy.

More depended on the student than on the school.

adult delinquents—people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail.

To be court-martialed—for any reason—is eight times as bad for an officer as for an enlisted man. Offenses which will get privates kicked out (maybe with lashes, possibly without) rate death in an officer. Better never to have been born!

Harshaw held that certain feet were made for stepping on, in order to improve the breed, promote the general welfare, and minimize the ancient insolence of office; he had seen at once that Heinrich had such feet.

If you got good elective officials in your day, it was a happy accident, better than you deserved.

It is by no means enough that an officer should be capable. . . . He should be as well a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor. . . . No meritorious act of a subordinate should escape his attention, even if the reward be only one word of approval. Conversely, he should not be blind to a single fault in any subordinate.

There was a lot to be said for the job of assistant section leader—when you come right to it, it's a lot easier to die than it is to use your head.

every choice must be paid for.

Çaban?n kendilerinden gelmesi gerektiÄŸi fikri... ve yaÅŸad?klar? tüm sorunlar?n kendilerinden kaynakland??? gerçeÄŸi... kabul etmedikleri ya da edemeyecekleri bir ÅŸeydi.

The wicked flee when no man pursueth.