Quotations on Accountability

God gave burdens, also shoulders.

~ Unknown

- Yiddish Proverb

Everyone, in the final analysis, is in business for himself.

~ Unknown

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

~ Benjamin Franklin

A person may cause evil to others not only by his action but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

~ John Stuart Mill

The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit of doing them.

~ Benjamin Jowett

If you can't stand the heat, you'd better get out of the kitchen.
(attrib.)

~ Harry S. Truman

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.

~ Bill Vaughan

When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself.

~ Louis Nizer

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

~ Stanislaw Lec

There can be no true response without responsibility; there can be no responsibility without response.

~ Arthur Vogel

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.

~ Dean Acheson

If you let other people do it for you, they will do it to you.

~ Robert Anthony

The irony of the matter is that the future generations do not have a vote. In effect, we hold their proxy.

~ Charles J. Hitch

- regarding the environment

...if a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.

~ Claude McKay

I gave her life, I can take life away.

~ Mary Beth Whitehead

- on her role as surrogate mother to Baby M

People think responsibility is hard to bear. It's not. I think that sometimes it is the absence of responsibility that is harder to bear. You have a great feeling of impotence.

~ Henry Kissinger