Quotes About Accountability

Corruption is one of the high priorities of my agenda.

One of the things I'm trying to get better at is apologizing when I make mistakes. That's been a big priority of mine.

Throughout my career, I have made rooting out public corruption a top priority.

I am calling upon all of you to come out and fight corruption and agree to support the government in fighting corruption as our first priority.

You look around the world in 2013, and you say, 'How many prime ministers or presidents are in prison?' One or two. 'How many generals or bankers?' Two or three. 'But how many writers?' 850 or so.

I think corporations are a whole lot different than people. I mean, I don't know a corporation would be put in prison. I do know people would be put in prison.

Prison is not meant to be comfortable. It's not meant to be somewhere anyone would ever want to go back to.

You can't be sent away to prison for life and feel OK about it.

We can't let somebody rise to the top who will pardon these war criminals. Because they need to go to prison for what they've done in this world. We can't have a pardon. They need to pay for what they've done.

When you're going off to prison for the rest of your life, a lot of people do feel the need to explain themselves to all the people they have known.

I've never been in prison. I've been in jail a lot. But I've never actually been sentenced to anything.

People are calling on me to put corrupt people into prison. Where do you start?

Journalism itself is by no means pristine clean; it has as many corrupt elements as other sections of society.

I always felt that a governor surrenders a certain amount of privacy. And I came to accept that.

Where is the expectation of privacy in the commission of a crime?

We must restrict the anonymity behind which people hide to commit crimes. As citizens, we have a right to privacy. We have no such right to anonymity.

No public servant or legislator can claim any privacy to take money for conducting their official functions.

Fans don't care what's in your private life, what happened in your past, where you come from. If you don't perform, they judge.

We do many things at the federal level that would be considered dishonest and illegal if done in the private sector.

Being government funded does not necessarily mean being biased, just like being privately funded does not necessarily mean being independent.

When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.

People in positions of power and privilege have a duty to perform at a higher level. If not them, then who?

I'm aware of the decisions I make and the responsibility I have as a role model. I wouldn't disregard that. It's a privilege. That's not to say people don't make mistakes - we're all human. No one's perfect. I'm just going to be myself.

Fame... it's been a challenge, let's put it that way. It's a privilege and a responsibility, and I'm not sure I carried the responsibility well at times, which is embarrassing. And I've had to look and be disappointed in myself occasionally for how I behaved in some circumstances.