#Accountability Quotes

“I stand for judgment: answer: shall I have it?”

“Omittance is no quittance.”

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

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

“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.”

“For 24 years of my adult life, by choice I weighed well over 200 lbs. I say by choice because you see I have never accidentally eaten anything.”

“Everything you do is based on the choices you make. It's not your parents, your past relationships, your job, the economy, the weather, an argument or your age that is to blame. You and only you are responsible for every decision and choice you make. Period.”

“When you abandon making choices, you enter the vast world of excuses.”

“Statesmen have to bend to the collective will of their peoples or be broken.”

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect, because it can always be pretended.”

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

“Responsibility and commitment are key elements in meeting obligations.”

“A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.”

“The right is more precious than peace.”

“The Government of the United States would be constrained to hold the Imperial German government to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities.”

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

“I am your servant. You have the right to dismiss me when you please. What you have no right to do is ask me to bear responsibility without the power of action.”

“For with primacy in power is also joined an awe inspiring accountability to the future.”

“Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made.”

“When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.”

“The crime of taxation is not in the taking it, it's in the way that it's spent.”

“I certainly do believe anyone engaged in the management of money should have a standard of measurement, and that both he and the party whose money is managed should have a clear understanding why it is the appropriate standard, what time period should be utilized, etc.”

“If a bank fails in China, they behead the men at the top of it that was responsible... If we beheaded all of ours that were responsible for bank failures, we wouldn't have enough people left to bury the heads.”

“I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means I do only the things I completely understand.”

“The government you elect is the government you deserve.”

“The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.”

“On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.”

“The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back”

“As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.”

“No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.”

“The best (remedy) I can devise would be to give future commissions to (federal) judges for six years with a re-appointability by the President with the approbation of both houses. If this would not be independence enough, I know not what would be.”

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

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

“If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected; if not, they will be despised.”

“Now stand in the corner, and think about what you've done!”

“Benedict Arnold was a war hero, wounded in battle--before he turned against his country. Hitler was likewise a decorated and wounded veteran of the First World War. Being a war hero is not a lifetime...exempt[ion]...from responsibility for what you do thereafter.”

“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.”

“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.”

“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”

“...to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”

“The federal government is our servant, not our master.”

“The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country.”

“The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they are of course advantageous, but if they require an apology, the apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself?”

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.”

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”

“Performance should be made square with promise.”

“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.”

“No government should be without critics. If its intentions are good then it has nothing to fear from criticism.”

“Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.”

“It is so easy to be wrong-and to persist in being wrong-when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.”