Quotes About Accountability

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.

Ego is a social fiction for which one person at a time gets all the blame.

It is a central obligation of politicians as well as journalists, researchers, scientists, and academicians to inform the public of the truth, and to identify lies without fear of retribution. It is the civic responsibility of all of us to check the facts we read or hear, to find and depend upon reliable sources, to share the truth with others, and hold accountable those who lie to us or suppress the truth.

Once norms are broken without consequence, further breakage ensues.

As more windows shatter, other aspects of community life also start unraveling. The unspoken norm becomes: Do whatever you want here because everyone else is doing it.

Leadership must entail trusteeship. Leaders are stewards of the unwritten rules we once took for granted, that constituted the common good.

I know it's hard to imagine, but even a president of the United States could act like Shkreli

Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A

Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures.

Àqueles a quem muito se dá, muito se exige.

As an old adage advises, "If you really want to get something done, you've got three options: do it yourself, pay top dollar, or forbid your teenagers to do it.

You do the best you can and you deal with the consequences. It's all there is.

Socialism for the rich means the oligarchy is not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control—such as the closing of factories across the Midwest or a Wall Street financial crisis—and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.

How else can you explain why the Street was bailed out with no strings attached? Or why taxpayers didn't get equity in the banks we bailed out—as Warren Buffett got when he bailed out Goldman Sachs—so when the banks became profitable again, we didn't get any of the upside gains?

leaders need to help people overcome the four "work-avoidance mechanisms" that most of the rest of us carry around in our heads. Those mechanisms are denial that a problem exists, the desire to escape responsibility even when we recognize the problem, the tendency to scapegoat others for causing it, and—worst of all—cynicism about the possibility of ever remedying the problem.

Personal responsibility is completely foreign to the highest echelons of the Street. Citigroup's stock fell 44 percent in 2011, but its CEO, Vikram Pandit, got at least $5.45 million on top of a retention bonus of $16.7 million. The stock of JPMorgan Chase fell 20 percent, but its CEO, Jamie Dimon, was awarded a package worth $22.9 million.

Does he make things happen, or does he make excuses?

The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.

When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water (he cups his hands) and if he opens his fingers then, he needn't hope to find himself again. Some men aren't capable of this, but I'd be loathe to think your father one of them.

When there is hell to pay, it is usually cheaper to pay it than to finance an endless purgatory.

Eventually the person who tries to fix the problem will be blamed for causing it.

There comes a morning in life when you wake up a new person; that is to say, you wake up the same person but you realize it's your own fault.

The trouble with always leaving yourself a way out is that you always take it.

If God had intended me to make excuses for who I am, He would have given me better excuses.