Quotes About Accountability

But you know the old saying: If you got nothing to hide, why not talk?" "Shit," I said, shaking my head because she knew better and every cop worth a damn knew better. A lot of people went to jail for crimes they didn't commit because they talked when they should have shut up. The

I may have overmothered you and screwed you up in ways large and small, but I think it's time you took some measure of responsibility for where you choose to put your own penis.

I play with a fear of letting people down. That's what motivates me.

You cannot maintain trust in yourself if you lie. You cannot maintain trust in yourself, likewise, if you act in a manner that would require a lie if it was discovered.

You're going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don't do. You don't get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you're going to take. That's it.

To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.

It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world—a handyman's dream, if ever there was one—is to fix yourself,

Don't ever underestimate the destructive power of sins of omission.

Did what I want happen? No. Then my aim or my methods were wrong. I still have something to learn." That is the voice of authenticity. "Did what I want happen? No. Then the world is unfair. People are jealous, and too stupid to understand. It is the fault of something or someone else." That is the voice of inauthenticity.

It's easier to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today, and drown the upcoming months and years in today's cheap pleasures. As the infamous father of the Simpson clan puts it, immediately prior to downing a jar of mayonnaise and vodka, "That's a problem for Future Homer. Man, I don't envy that guy!"66

Human beings have a great capacity for wrongdoing. It's an attribute that is unique in the world of life. We can and do make things worse, voluntarily, with full knowledge of what we are doing (as well as accidentally, and carelessly, and in a manner that is willfully blind). Given that terrible capacity, that proclivity for malevolent actions, is it any wonder we have a hard time taking care of ourselves, or others—or even that we doubt the value of the entire human enterprise?

begin by treating yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping.

You've all decided to sacrifice the future to the present. You don't talk about it. You don't all get together and say, "Let's take the easier path. Let's indulge in whatever the moment might bring. And let's agree, further, not to call each other on it.

The way that you set the world straight is by constraining the malevolence in your own heart. (From "Identity politics and the Marxist lie of white privilege" on YouTube)

Don't blame capitalism, the radical left, or the iniquity of your enemies. Don't reorganize the state until you have ordered your own experience. Have some humility. If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city?

To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause? That is hell. And once in hell it is very easy to curse being itself and no wonder. But it's not justifiable and that's why the king of the damned is a poor judge of being.

each individual has ultimate responsibility to bear; that if one wants to live a full life, one first sets one's own house in order; and only then can one sensibly aim to take on bigger responsibilities.

Osiris stopped paying attention to how his kingdom was being run. That was willful blindness, and there is no blaming that on mere age.

People motivated to make things better usually aren't concerned with changing other people—or, if they are, they take responsibility for making the same changes to themselves (and first).

the foremost rule is that you must take responsibility for your own life. Period.

Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don't waste time questioning how you know that what you're doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is.

To treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is, instead, to consider what would be truly good for you. This is not "what you want." It is also not "what would make you happy.

Opportunity lies where responsibility has been advocated

So, I must take the complexity of the world, reduce it to a single point so that I can act, and take everyone else and their future selves into consideration while I am doing so.