Accountability

Accountability is the characteristic of answering for one's actions. In terms of ethics and governance, it is equated with answerability, culpability, liability, and the expectation of account-giving.

ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

Moral conduct includes every thing in which men are active and for which they are accountable. They are active in their desires, their affections, their designs, their intentions, and in every thing they say and do of choice; and for all these things they are accountable to God.
- Nathaniel Emmons, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 1.

Think of three Things, whence you came, where you are going, and to whom you must account.
- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1755), based on Pirkei Avot, 3:1.

When illusions are over, when the distractions of sense, the vagaries of fancy, and the tumults of passion have dissolved even before the body is cold, which once they so thronged and agitated, the soul merges into intellect, intellect into conscience, conscience into the unbroken, awful solitude of its own personal accountability; and though the inhabitants of the universe were within the spirit's ken, this personal accountability is as strictly alone and unshared, as if no being were throughout immensity but the spirit and its God.
- Henry Giles, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 2.

Political freedom is neither easy nor automatic, neither pleasant nor secure. It is the responsibility of the individual for the decisions of society as if they were his own decisions--as in moral truth and accountability they are.
- Peter Drucker, The Future of Industrial Man (1942).

I tell you that men will render an account on Judgment Day for every unprofitable saying that they speak; for by your words you will be declared righteous, and by your words you will be condemned.
- Jesus Christ, Matthew 12:36, 37

Addiction may be something to which some of us are predisposed, like diabetes, rather than a voluntary behavior — but it’s also reversible. A "disease model" of alcoholism and other addictions in no way diminishes our personal accountability once we know the facts. It simply suggests how hard recovery will be, and how much help we need.
- John Leonard, "Can't Get Enough," New York Magazine (1998-05-23).

But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you also look down on your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written: “‘As surely as I live,’ says Jehovah, ‘to me every knee will bend, and every tongue will make open acknowledgment to God.’” So, then, each of us will render an account for himself to God.
- Apostle Paul, Romans 14:10-12.

And there is not a creation that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and openly exposed to the eyes of the one to whom we must give an account.
- Apostle Paul, Hebrews 4:13.

He says in his heart: “God has forgotten. He has turned away his face. He never notices. Why has the wicked one disrespected God? He says in his heart: “You will not hold me accountable.”
- Psalm 10:11, 13.

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