Quotes About Accountability

Judge people less on their mistakes than on how they handle their mistakes

If every kid who said he was going to the library, when he was really off doing something else, actually went to the library, they'd have to send out for more books.

As creatures, you and I are responsible to obey the Creator.

To sit back hoping that someday, someway, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last - but eat you he will.

Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state, and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you're liable to be given more money to do it with. Well, we've discovered that money alone isn't the answer.

The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

If freedom, democracy, and the rights of man are to be preserved through the ages, free men and women must accept the responsibilities that go with their freedoms.

I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.

I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.

We think it's okay to talk to others about the problem we're having with so-and-so, but we never go straight to the source. We're guilty of slander or gossip. Even if what we say is true, it's still gossip.

Man's inhumanity to man, unleashed, was an obscenity, and that obscenity was each person's own private responsibility.

We may avoid shame if we choose, for shame seldom takes us unawares but has its warning cry, and we can hear that cry as clearly as we can hear the coming of the north wind... The man lying in the mud hadn't heard the coming of the north wind.

In the CPS model, holding a kid accountable means that the kid is participating in a process in which he's identifying and articulating his own concerns or perspectives, taking yours into account, and working toward a realistic and mutually satisfactory solution

a community of the forgiven is about love, accountability, and nurture of one's new life in Christ.

we are not humans from the start; we need to become human. Toward this end, we need the insight "that only we are responsible for ourselves, that accusations that we have missed our life's calling can be directed only at us, not some higher powers". We are in no need of the delusion of a supernatural world, because the very task of becoming human is the truly colossal achievement.

A DEAD STATESMAN I could not dig: I dared not rob: Therefore I lied to please the mob. Now all my lies are proved untrue And I must face the men I slew. What tale shall serve me here among Mine angry and defrauded young? from EPITAPHS OF THE WAR 1914-18

He who rebukes the World is rebuked by the World

If there be good in that I wrought Thy Hand compelled it, Master, Thine – Where I have failed to meet Thy Thought I know, through Thee, the blame was mine.... The depth and dream of my desire, The bitter paths wherein I stray – Thou knowest who hast made the Fire, Thou knowest who hast made the Clay.

By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you.

She could not take the words back—words never will come back—and she looked round for something she could do.

Anyone can be a cause of his or her own destruction, but no one can claim individual responsibility for having created a great good.

Fixing motives is like fixing blame-the further away from the act you get, the harder it is to single out one thing as having caused it.

How much easier the task will be to review your past life, if you live each day as if that was the sole recording of your entire lifetime. Keep that page so neat and tidy, so filled with loving care, that if your life ended at midnight the page would be spotless and blameless, for surely even the worst of us can live one day in nearly blameless harmony with all about us.