Accountability Quotes

In order to learn how to do something well, you have to fail sometimes. In order to fail, there has to be a measurement system. And that's the problem with most philanthropy - there's no measurement system. You give somebody some money to do something and most of the time you can really never measure whether you failed or succeeded in your judgment of that person or his ideas or their implementation.

Those who cry out that the government should 'do something' never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

Success requires no explanations. Failure permits no alibis.

I've fought against transnational gangs. I took on the biggest banks and helped take down one of the biggest for-profit colleges. I know a predator when I see one.

Our government shouldn't make promises we cannot keep, but we must keep the promises we've already made.

A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.

An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises.

Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.

I do have an obligation to make sure that I am following some of the rules. I can't simply ignore laws that are out there.

To forget all about your mistakes adds to them perhaps.

Stand up, be bold, and take the blame on your own shoulders. Do not go about throwing mud at others; for all the faults you suffer from, you are the sole and only cause.

There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole.

The government is us; WE are the government, you and I."- Theodore Roosevelt

To take responsibility for one's own actions, good and bad, is something else.

In Europe public men do resign. But here it's a lost art. You have to impeach 'em.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

A martial artist has to take responsibility for himself and accept the consequences of his own doing.

Every time you do something that is important, write down what you expect will happen.

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.

Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will be judged by only one thing-the result.

Y’all dropped the ball and you should be shamed.

I think Donald Trump is going to try as best he can to make sure that he delivers not only to the people who voted for him but for the people at large and the good thing is that there are going to be elections coming up so there's a built-in incentive for him to try to do that.

The ultimate step in taking responsibility is making sure our actions line up with our words.

You can have results or excuses. Not both.

If [politician] is not fulfilling his function, they then can set up the machinery to remove him from that position by whatever means necessary.

Many a politician wishes there was a law to burn old records.

He who is not master of his own thoughts is not accountable for his own deeds.

The most important decisions in organizations are people decisions, and yet only the military, and only recently, has begun to ask, "If we assign this general to lead this base, what do we expect him to accomplish?"

There are two types of people in the business community: those who produce results and those who give you reasons why they didn't.

Nobody's madder than me about the website not working as well as it should, which means it's going to get fixed.

I think right now, the focus has got to be on how we hold [Donald] Trump accountable.

Who are you to judge the life I live? I know I'm not perfect -and I don't live to be- but before you start pointing fingers... make sure you hands are clean!

When BP was not moving fast enough on claims, we told BP to set aside $20 billion in a fund - managed by an independent third party - to help all those whose lives have been turned upside down by the spill.

I don't like to see a president who is just out campaigning all year long or for the last four years. I'd like to see somebody who's going in the office. In fact, I'd like to not see them because that way you'd be sure that they'd be working.

We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by the record which we have made and are making.

The right is more precious than peace.

I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.

It is with pleasure I receive reproof, when reproof is due, because no person can be readier to accuse me, than I am to acknowledge an error, when I am guilty of one; nor more desirous of atoning for a crime, when I am sensible of having committed it.

One thing you learn in this job [being US President] is that even if something's not your fault, you're still responsible. And that's how it should be.

History will never accept difficulties as an excuse.

All the past is here, present to be tried; let it approve itself if it can.

I make 50 cents for showing up... and the other 50 cents is based on my performance.

I will stand on, and continue to use, the figures I have used, because I believe they are correct. Now, I'm not going to deny that you don't now and then slip up on something; no one bats a thousand.

I have nothing in common with lazy people who blame others for their lack of success.

Don't make excuses, make good.

Call Loretta Lynch for a vote. Get her confirmed. Put her in place. Let her do her job.

Everything a politician promises at election time has to be paid for either by higher taxation or by borrowing.

Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.

I'm not one of these guys who sits around saying, 'Gee, I mean, the person had a strange childhood and that's why he's doing this horrible thing. Poor Jeffrey Dahmer. He's just had a bad childhood and that's why he's eating people.' Wait a second! This person should be removed from the planet.

My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.

It's my job as President and Congress’s job to maker sure that there’s some rules of the road that people are going to abide by and that we’ve got transparency and accountability that this stuff is being posted and one of the things that we are going to do is put together an independent board on the recovery package…

The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken.

Not to mend one's ways when one has erred is to err indeed.

I believe - we all pay taxes. I'm happy to pay it, but I hate to have it abused, money wasted, no accountability. That's going to bother you.

He who requires much from himself and little from others, will keep himself from being the object of resentment.

Blame is a neat little device that you can use whenever you don't want to take responsibility for something in your life. Use it and you will avoid all risks and impede your own growth.

We can't in any way criticize or at least indict or impeach administration [of Democratic presidents] for doing what they did.

I felt Holyfield was using his head illegally. I told the referee I wasn't getting any help, so I went back to the streets. I cannot defend it, but it happened.

When you're a candidate and you say something that is inaccurate or controversial, it has less impact than it does when you're president of the United States. Everybody around the world's paying attention. Markets move. National security issues require a level of precision in order to make sure that you don't make mistakes.