Quotes About Accountability

If we are willing to take responsibility for that which is within our power, I think that frees us to see clearly that which is not, and to understand, therefore, the limits of our accountability. But if we too often fail to take such responsibility and feel vaguely guilty over our avoidance, the paradox is that in our confusion we often end up blaming ourselves for events beyond our control.

take responsibility for finding it. It is only by grace of the second type

The protection of self-esteem requires a clear understanding of the limits of personal responsibility.

when we look for solutions, we grow in self-esteem; when we blame (or alibi), we weaken self-esteem.

If capitalism offered a broader arena for self-esteem to operate in than had ever existed before, it also offered challenges that had no precedent in earlier, tribal societies—challenges to self-reliance, self-assertiveness, self-responsibility, and personal accountability. Capitalism created a market for the independent mind.

Where there is no power, there can be no responsibility, and where there is no responsibility, there can be no reasonable self-reproach. Regret, yes; guilt, no.

It expresses itself in an ease in talking of accomplishments or short-comings with directness and honesty, since one is in friendly relationship to facts.

To practice self-responsibility is to think for oneself.

Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits often made me sad. She seemed to me like a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine, and mistaking it for broad and eternal summer. We sometimes hold mirth to stricter accountability than sorrow; it must show good cause, or the echo of its laughter comes back drearily.

But, to tell you my private mind, Signor Giovanni, he should receive little credit for such instances of success - they being probably the work of chance - but should be held strictly accountable for his failures, which may justly be considered his own work.

the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief;

So something that never should have happened did, all because of my thoughts and actions. A clear-cut cause-and-effect relationship. I was the one who caused it, and I should probably get the death penalty. Or maybe what I should say is I'm the one who pronounced the death sentence on myself

Everybody has to die. I prefer to die for a crime I have committed rather than to die for one of the crimes which you have committed.

To deny humanity the lesson of consequences would be a mistake. And I do not make mistakes.

Everyone needs someone to blame.

The worst part about doing something inexcusable is that you can never take it back. It's like breaking a glass. It can't unbreak. The best you can do it sweep it up, and hope you don't step on the slivers you left behind.

Have I not expressed sufficient remorse?' 'You have. But there are still consequences. Even for necessary things.' 'I broke none of my laws...' 'No, but you broke mine. [...] Therefore, I can no longer speak to you. You are... Unsavory to me.

shouldn't the punishment for failure be the awful knowledge of that failure?

There's a lot written about killers from the mortal age –monsters like Jack the Ripper, or Charlie Manson, or Cyber Sally –and the only difference between them and Goddard is that people let Goddard get away with it. The mortals knew how wrong it was, but somehow we've forgotten.

I always take credit for my acts of cruelty. To do otherwise is cowardice.

I am what you made me

He had set out to be judge and jury – the consequence for those who knew no consequences.

Correction must be about lifting one up from one's poor choices and prior deeds. As long as remorse is sincere, and one is willing to make recompense, there is no purpose to suffering.

The worst part about doing something inexcusable is that you can never take it back. It's like breaking a glass. It can't unbreak. The best you can do is sweep it up, and hope you don't step on the slivers you left behind.