Quotes About Accountability

One of the most amazing things Jesus said is that at the judgment seat, preachers are going to say 'I cast out devils, and Jesus will say 'I never knew you.

The worst-tempered people I've ever met were people who knew they were wrong.

Compassion is fierce and strong, and it holds people accountable. But it doesn't do it with anger or judgment.

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action.

Every stroke our fury strikes is sure to hit ourselves at last.

Real integrity means an answer. It doesn't just mean - it doesn't mean riding the anger. And this is very difficult to do.

There is, in practice, no such thing as autonomy. Practically, there is only a distinction between responsible and irresponsible dependence.

But the only possible guarantee of the future is responsible behavior in the present.

Why should anybody wait to do what is right until everybody does it? It is not 'significant' to love your own children or to eat your own dinner, either. But normal humans will not wait to love or eat until it is mandated by an act of Congress.

She thought the human condition was a calculated insult to her personally, the fault of certain people in particular. If she wasn't the president of the United States, or Mrs. Rockefeller, or at least happy, it was somebody else's fault, not hers. Her stinger was always out.

As the skills of production decline, the skills of responsibility perish.

And I told him that a man's life is always dealing with permanence—that the most dangerous kind of irresponsibility is to think of your doings as temporary.

Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.

trouble with this is that a proper concern for nature and our use of nature must be practiced, not by our proxy-holders, but by ourselves

A police force is like a lake. When you get out, you don't leave a hole.

You have a responsibility to act for others when you're the only person in a position to do so. It's how you handle it that separates the great from the mediocre.

pillory raised up on a wooden pole, so that all the

When a woman wants me to do anything (my daughter, or not, it doesn't matter), I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life. It isn't their fault (poor wretches!) that they act first and think afterwards; it's the fault of the fools who humour them.

the long luxury of your own freedom has made you incapable of doing us justice now.

But, as to Mr. Franklin's bedroom (if THAT is to be put back to what it was before), I want to know who is responsible for keeping it in a perpetual state of litter, no matter how often it may be set right--his trousers here, his towel there, and his French novels everywhere. I say, who is responsible for untidying the tidiness of Mr. Franklin's room, him or me?

How can I thank you?" "I will tell you how. Don't blame me for what happens afterwards!

What right had I to decide, in my poor mortal ignorance of the future, that this man, too, must escape with impunity because he escaped ME?

when everything belongs to everybody nobody will take care of anything.

Lawyers never forget. - Christine McCall