Accountability Quotes

“Peace comes from within.  Do not seek it without.”
― Siddhārtha Gautama

“If you hang out with chickens, you're going to cluck and if you hang out with eagles, you're going to fly.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”
― Bill Bullard

“The right thing to do and the hard thing to do are usually the same.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

“It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one's acts.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“you don't have to worry about burning bridges, if you're building your own”
― Kerry E. Wagner

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

“When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.”
― David Brin

“Never compromise your values.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.”
― Simone Weil

“Just because you're an adult doesn't mean you're grown up. Growing up means being patient, holding your temper, cutting out the self-pity, and quitting with the righteous indignation.'

'Why do so many people seem to love righteous indignation?'

'Because if you can prove you're a victim, all rules are off. You can lash out at people. You don't have to be accountable for anything.”
― Brandon Stanton, Humans of New York

“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.”
― Les Brown

“If you have not confronted true horrors, understood evil, suffered hopelessness and despair, found faith, and made yourself completely accountable for your own choices, actions and outcomes, then I can guarantee that any acceptance you pretend to have will be as brittle and temporary as a snowball in the middle of summer.”
― Graeme Rodaughan, The Crane War

“As for the journey of life; at some point you will realize that YOU are the driver and you will drive!”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“If you think someone or something other than yourself is responsible for your happiness or success, I'd guess you're not that happy or successful.”
― Rob Liano

“The pressure of adversity is the most powerful sustainer of accountability. It's as though everything you do is multiplied by 50 in order to surpass those with a head-start. I was never capable of slacking when at the threshold of failure.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Not in order to justify, but simply in order to explain my lack of consistency, I say: Look at my present life and then at my former life, and you will see that I do attempt to carry them out. It is true that I have not fulfilled one thousandth part of them [Christian precepts], and I am ashamed of this, but I have failed to fulfill them not because I did not wish to, but because I was unable to. Teach me how to escape from the net of temptations that surrounds me, help me and I will fulfill them; even without help I wish and hope to fulfill them.

Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! If it is not the right way, then show me another way; but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not be glad that I have got lost, do not shout out joyfully: “Look at him! He said he was going home, but there he is crawling into a bog!” No, do not gloat, but give me your help and support.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“A president cannot defend a nation if he is not held accountable to its laws.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“Each day you are leading by example. Whether you realize it or not or whether it's positive or negative, you are influencing those around you.”
― Rob Liano

“If every time we choose a turd, society, at a great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all.”
― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

“There are a lot of black-hearted, mean-spirited bastards in the world. It's important that we hold them to acount. But always remember that you might be the most black-hearted and mean-spirited in the lot, so hold yourself the most accountable of all.”
― Darren Shan, Zom-B Underground

“Rationally speaking, blaming one's behavior on alcohol or drugs is like blaming the ladder by which you descended into a pit, or the staircase that took you down to a cellar, for what you found there.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“When I’m at the bottom looking up, the main question may not be ‘how do I get out of this hole?’ In reality, the main question might be ‘how do I get rid of the shovel that I used to dig it?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough, A View From the Front Porch: Encounters With Life and Jesus

“The only people that can ruin a relationship or make that relationship work are the two people in it.”
― Rob Liano

“He had learned that close-held secrets could often be cracked by going all the way to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that such twisting of the tiger's tail was dangerous, for he understood the psychopathology of great power.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Do they desire to join me in thanksgiving when they hear how, by your gift, I have come close to you, and do they pray for me when they hear how I am held back by my own weight? ...A brotherly mind will love in me what you teach to be lovable, and will regret in me what you teach to be regrettable. This is a mark of a Christian brother's mind, not an outsider's--not that of 'the sons of aliens whose mouth speaks vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity' (Ps. 143:7 f.). A brotherly person rejoices on my account when he approves me, but when he disapproves, he is loving me. To such people I will reveal myself. They will take heart from my good traits, and sigh with sadness at my bad ones. My good points are instilled by you and are your gifts. My bad points are my faults and your judgements on them. Let them take heart from the one and regret the other. Let both praise and tears ascend in your sight from brotherly hearts, your censers. ...But you Lord...Make perfect my imperfections”
― St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“[Government] regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa.”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

“When people say "If I only knew then what I know now" makes me wonder why they aren't using that wisdom now.”
― Rob Liano