Quotes About Accountability

Real professionals aren't compliant; real professionals are committed.

Those who can really do what they promise don't first pause to promise what they can do.

Isn't there a statute of limitation on playing the poor abused victim?

If you look at your class as anything less than life or death, you do not deserve to be a teacher. If you walk into the classroom ten minutes late, week after week, you need to resign. You wouldn't come in late on your job all the time, but I venture to guess that some of you do it on Sunday.

Real faith is sharing responsibility with God.

With fame comes the responsibility of what you say. If the country is watching you, there ought to be substance, something worthwhile to speak about.

Perpetrators absolve their harmful behavior as serving worthy causes.

When all Americans believe that the people we elect deserve to be in power, that their conduct in office is worthy of respect, and that they can be held accountable for their decisions, our politics will finally be worthy of our great people.

Each is under the most sacred obligation not to squander the material committed to him, not to sap his strength in folly and vice, and to see at the least that he delivers a product worthy the labor and cost which have been expended on him.

We have the incredible privilege of serving in the highest offices in the state. We must prove ourselves worthy of our fellow citizens' faith. We must be trusted to always place the public's good above our own and to always choose fairness over favoritism.

The CARFA Act is about accountability in the federal government: making sure that taxpayers are getting their money's worth and not being defrauded. This is a bipartisan concept, and it is worthy of broad support across the Congress.

We pride ourselves on our democracy, but when you see the way it actually works, I think it is worthy of contempt.

A gentleman would be ashamed should his deeds not match his words.

Do what you say you're going to do. And try to do it a little better than you said you would.

Freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that 'Oh, I don't get involved in politics,' as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.

The true measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught.

Yes, we have the judiciary, the Constitution, we're fighting racism on a daily basis, but these are all state efforts and are not the efforts of the individual. The individual has to commit to change, the individual has to look at the past and take accountability of the past; for the wound to heal we have to dress it together.

Someone earlier made a remark about losing 500 soldiers and 2,200 wounded in Iraq. Those soldiers were sent there by the vote of Sen. Lieberman, Sen. Edwards and Sen. Kerry. I think that is a serious matter.

He that wounds himself, even though he has not the right, is not culpable; but if others have wounded him, they are culpable.

One of my favorite stories is from Obama's first campaign: Michelle Obama was out there every day, collecting signatures and supervising the other people who did. If you were supposed to get 300 signatures and you only got 299, you had to face the wrath of Michelle.

Our democracy cannot be left in the hands of those who would rather watch or participate in a train wreck than stop it.

I think we have to face right in the center of the hurricane, if you will, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s foibles and faults. I think that we do no good to ourselves and do no honor to him by pretending that he did not fail, that he did not wrestle greatly and, at times, surrender to his own sins and his own faults and failures.

Wrestling pushes me, makes me accountable. It makes me who I am. I never felt I was just a normal person. Then I felt too normal, lazy, sedentary.