Quotes About Accountability

Problems do not queue up outside a statesman's door, waiting to be solved in an orderly fashion, chapter by chapter, as the books would have us believe; instead they crowd in en masse, demanding attention.

and then I shall face the politician's worst nightmare: the requirement to give a straight answer.

It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person's behavior. The most you or any leader can do is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself.

I know that I am free because I alone am responsible for everything that I do.

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible.

If you are a boss, ask yourself: When you look back at how you've treated followers, peers, and superiors, in their eyes, will you have earned the right to be proud of yourself? Or will they believe that you ought to be ashamed of yourself and embarrassed by how you have trampled on others' dignity day after day?

Everyone deserves to be treated fairly. If leaders are the problem, we ask those being served by leaders to let them know or go up the chain of command—without the threat of retaliation." "Store

Third, and finally, if you want people to believe the system is fair and effective, it's essential to be tough on the most powerful, profitable, and well-known jerks. If you enforce the rule only with the weak performers, people who are easily replaceable, or who deliver bad news and have the gumption to disagree with superiors—and you allow powerful assholes to run roughshod over anyone they please—people will smell your hypocritical bullshit from a mile away.

If the world is ending, a woman will want to fix her hair. If the world's ending, a woman will take the time to tell a man something he's done wrong. -Matrim Cauthon

Should and would build no bridges. -Lini

Taking responsibility takes all the joy out of life, and drains a man to dust.

The innocent died along with the guilty. And if you did nothing, then only the innocent died.

It was easier to ask forgiveness, than permission.

He hadn't asked to become a leader, but did that absolve him of responsibility? People needed him. The world needed him. And, with an understanding that cooled in him like molten rock forming into a shape, he realized that he wanted to lead. If someone had to be lord of these people, he wanted to do it himself. Because doing it yourself was the only way to see that it was done right.

Usually when a woman was in the wrong, she could find so many things to blame on the nearest man that he wound up thinking maybe he really was at fault.

how could you possibly look ten women in the face and ask why they had gotten you drunk and made a game of taking your clothes off and putting you to bed?

It's one of the things men are for, taking the blame. They usually deserve it, even if you don't know exactly how.

As far as he was concerned, a man who decided to rob and kill deserved what he got when he lost the game. He did not dwell on them, but neither did he jerk his eyes away if they fell on one of the robbers.

The worst sin a general can commit, worse than blundering, worse than losing, worse than anything, is to desert the men who depend on him.

Once mere excuses are allowed, inevitably lesser and lesser excuses will become acceptable, until law itself is gone.

Do what you must, and pay the price if you're wrong. Sometimes if you are right, too.

If anyone could break any rule they chose, do whatever they chose, and escape punishment merely by doing some good to balance it, the world would be chaos.

Fools deserved whatever their foolishness brought.

It's one of the things men are for, taking the blame, she remembered Lini saying once, and laughing while she did. They usually deserve it, even if you don't know exactly how.