Quotes About Accountability

I always wondered why somebody didn't do something about that. And then I realized I was somebody.

It strikes me there is some difference between holding a man responsible for an act which he has not done, and holding him responsible for an act that he has done.

With a stranger's hands, you can tie a string around a cat's neck." In other words: If you care about the results, do it yourself.

Once an excuse has been deployed, brutal honesty is no longer an option.

One must meet in the middle of the village green for all to attest to one's lack of guile or conceal it absolutely.

I'm not a self-destructive person. I learned that lesson at a relatively young age. But at some point during the drive from the police station to the bar, I stopped thinking. I stopped being reasonable. I stopped being so goddamn responsible. Sometimes none of those things make a damn bit of difference.

One of the most important things to learn in life and love is that I can be responsible only for what I can control. While I can't control my husband (or anyone else), I can control me.

Because school administrators are beholden to both taxpayers and the "keepers of the purse," they do their best to be all things to all people, and they do it with political correctness to boot. After the process of sorting and sifting, we're left with education's white bread equivalent: something that will fill little heads but that is void of almost all useful nourishment.

Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

In both London and Washington, and at the UN in New York, there were politicians and civil servants who took decisions that cost the lives of an incalculable number of people. They should bear full responsibility for those decisions.

Feelings will come and go, but you are always responsible for your actions.

I would rather see Rome ruled by a man who once had to ask his accountant tricky questions before his steward could pay the butcher's bill than by some mad limb like Nero, who was brought up believing himself the son and the grandson of gods, and who thought wearing the purple gave him free rein to indulge his personal vanities, execute real talent, bankrupt the Treasury, burn half of Rome – and bore the living daylights out of paying customers in theatres!

President Obama chose politics over leadership. 'Hope' and 'Change' have become bait-and-switch.

We are all guilty of using the present to create a future that justifies the past.

You can do almost anything, but you can undo absolutely nothing.

God doesn't do anything to us. He doesn't have to. We're too busy doing it to each other.

There are only two ways to deal with the media: either elect to take the Buddha's vow of eternal silence, or make one's voice known as responsibly as one humanly can, and take the consequences.

Everything people do that doesn't work has to be somebody else's fault. Next time you know, geezers'll be suing the government for getting old and kids'll be taking their mommies to court because they came out ugly.

You can blame your mother, and she can blame hers. Leastways sooner or later it's the fault of somebody who's dead.

It is never persuasive to argue that you are not the kind of person who does what you are actually doing.

Il ragazzo è cattivo perché sua mamma è una ubriacona o un rottame. Gli lascia fare quello che vuole. Non gli insegna la differenza tra ciò che è giusto e ciò che è sbagliato. Non è a casa quando torna da scuola. Nessuno dice mai che suo padre è un ubriacone, o che non è a casa quando lui torna da scuola. E nessuno dice che alcuni di questi ragazzi sono solo maledettamente cattivi.

is, it seems to be the same folks who are inclined to sue builders who did not perfectly protect them from the depredations of an earthquake who will be the first to claim that their son failed his math test because of attention deficit disorder, and not because he spent the night before at a video arcade instead of studying complex fractions.

Blame confers an awesome power. And it's simplifying, not only to onlookers and victims, but to culprits most of all.

A los profesores se les culpaba de cualquier cosa que funcionara mal con los muchachos y a la vez se recurría a ellos como si fueran los únicos capaces de salvarlos. Ese doble papel de chivo expiatorio y salvador era a todas luces mesiánico, con la única diferencia de que, probablemente, Jesús estaba mejor pagado.