Quotes About Accountability

Teamwork, Koteks snarled, is one word for it, yeah. What it really is is a way to avoid responsibility. It's a symptom of the gutlessness of the whole society.

After the 11 September attack, March editorializes one morning, amid all that chaos and confusion, a hole quietly opened up in American history, a vacuum of accountability, into which assets human and financial begin to vanish. Back in the days of hippie simplicity, people liked to blame 'the CIA' or 'a secret rogue operation.' But this is a new enemy, unnamable, locatable on no organization chart or budget line--who knows, maybe even the CIA's scared of them.

Because everybody on the school board, and the railroad, and the PTA and paper mill had to be somebody's mother or father, whether really or as a member of a category; and there was a point at which the reflex to their covering warmth, protection, effectiveness against bad dreams, bruised heads and simple loneliness took over and made worthwhile anger with them impossible.

Beneath the rubato of the day abided a stern pulse beating on, ineluctable, unforgiving, whereby whatever was evaded or put off now had to be made up for later, and at a higher level of intensity.

Remember, she who keepeth the Books runneth the Business.

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.

Hilary Clinton said you know, it takes a village to raise a child and somebody said it takes a village idiot to believe that … it is part of the whole thing of third parties wanting to make decisions for which they pay no price for when they're wrong.

Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?

The built-in excuse has become as standard in discussions of black crime as it is unsubstantiated, except by peer consensus among the intelligentsia. The phrase "troubled youth" is a common example of the unsubstantiated but built-in excuse, since those who use that phrase usually feel no need to offer any specific evidence about the specific individuals they are talking about, who may be creating big trouble for others, while enjoying themselves in doing so.

You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.

That educators who have repeatedly failed to do what they are hired to do, and trained to do, should take on sweeping roles as amateur psychologists, sociologists, and social philosophers seems almost inexplicable—except that they are doing it with other people's money and experimenting on other people's children. There

It is so easy to be wrong—and to persist in being wrong—when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.

That decades had to pass before a mistake with obvious negative consequences began to be corrected is one sign of the problems of decisions by third parties who pay no price for being wrong.

We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past.

Grab a plate and throw it on the ground. Okay done. Did it break? Yes. Now say sorry to it. Sorry. Did it go back to the way it was before? No. Do you understand?

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet. WINSTON CHURCHILL

Once she saw herself as the source of her disappointing love story, Dianna discovered there was no shortage of evidence that she was the author of her own deep aloneness in life.

If it lasts, then it's real. If it doesn't, then it wasn't. Either that, or someone screwed it up really badly.

assume to be the cause and effect of our actions.

Whenever you are pointing your finger at someone, notice that there are always three fingers pointing back at you. —Anonymous

To love a person or a place is to take responsibility for its well-being.

Tis a fact I've learned all too well that words cast out in the light of day, like doves, oft come home to roost in the darkest hours." -Christopher