Quotes About Accountability

But what was the point, the purpose, of my salvation if it did not permit me to behave with love toward others, no matter how they behaved toward me? What others did was their responsibility, for which they would answer when the judgment trumpet sounded.

But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

It would help if I were able to feel guilty. But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt.

It doesn't do any good to blame people or the time-- one is oneself all those people. We are the time.

No society can smash the social contract and be exempt from the consequences, and the consequences are chaos for everybody in society.

Most people are not naturally reflective any more than they are naturally malicious, and the white man prefers to keep the black man at a certain human remove because it is easier for him thus to preserve his simplicity and avoid being called to account for crimes committed by his forefathers, or his neighbors.

Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise.

the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.

People always seem to band together in accordance to a principle that has nothing to do with love, a principle that releases them from personal responsibility.

People pay for what they do, and, still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply: by the lives they lead. The crucial thing, here, is that the sum of these individual abdications menaces life all over the world. For, in the generality, as social and moral and political and sexual entities, white Americans are probably the sickest and certainly the most dangerous people, of any color, to be found in the world today.

anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

People always seem to band together in accordance to a principle that has nothing to do with love, a principle that releases them from personal responsibility. (p. 81)

It is not permissible that the authors of devastation should be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

What others did was their responsibility, for which they would answer when the judgment trumpet sounded. But what I did was my responsibility, and I would have to answer too

The moral of the story (and the hope of the world) lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

A liar always knows he is lying, and that is why liars travel in packs: in order to be reassured that the judgment day will never come for them. They need each other for the well-being, the health, the perpetuation of their lie.

Consider this," he said. "I am a French director who has never seen your country. I have never done you any harm, except, perhaps, historically—I mean, because I am white—but I cannot be blamed for that—" "But I can be," I said, "and I am! I've never understood why, if I have to pay for the history written in the color of my skin, you should get off scot-free!

Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly.

When you have disciplined people, you don't

The "yes-men" problem is mentioned here. The author says that even though "yes-people" can be pleasing to a leader, they will be disastrous in the long term because they serve to obscure the real problems. The

Have an open system. People operating autonomously can make good decisions only if they have good information. One of the best ways to achieve this is to make lots of information available to people—even traditionally sensitive information.

Avoid matrix structures. In an attempt to have the best of both worlds, some companies make the mistake of creating matrix organizations. Don't do this. Matrix structures remove the fire of personal ownership, not to mention accountability.