Quotes about accountability

How can I blame the wind for the mess it made, if it was me who opened the window.

If you are pained by anything external, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgement of it.

Some things are within our control and some things are not. Within our control are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and our actions. Not within our control are our body, property, reputation, and office.

If you wish to improve, be content to appear foolish and stupid regarding externals.

It is not things themselves that trouble us, but our judgements about those things.

When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world—and never will.

The desert grows: woe to him in whom deserts hide.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.

It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself.

When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shun the being seen to do it, even though the world should make a wrong supposition about it.

Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader, are your own nature reflected in them.

If you dig a pit for others to fall into, you will fall into it yourself.

If you wish mercy, show mercy to the weak.

To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage.

Any one can get angry — that is easy — but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy.

What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

If you can’t be kind, be quiet.

To avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

Your silence will not protect you.

Love is as love does.

When they go low, we go high.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

Nobody has the right to obey.

Integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one of hypocrisy.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Man is condemned to be free.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

A man's character is his fate.