6 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Accountability

Orson Scott Card quotes on accountability

5. Even if there's no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. Because otherwise, every time somebody does something terrible, you can't punish him, because he can't help it, because his genes or his environment or god made him do it, and every time somebody does something good, you can't honor him because he was a puppet, too. If you think that everybody around you is a puppet why bother talking to them at all? Why even try to plan anything or create anything, since everything you plan or create or desire or dream of is just acting out the script your puppeteer built into you.

172. I blame on you only what you did. You started a fire on a hot, dry, windy day, despite all the warnings. I blame you for that, and if you hold yourself responsible for all the consequences of your own acts, then you are truly unworthy of human society and I hope you lose your freedom forever.

204. When you don't understand the consequences of your acts, how can you be blamed for them? You don't take the blame. But you still take the responsibility. For healing the wounds you caused.

369. You're so certain that you can hold people to their commitments. No ones ever made them do that before. Can you now?

398. I see that you are a person who refuses to revise his view of the would. You can only bear to live in a world where all the bad things happen to you are someone else's fault, where everyone must have conspired against you to deprive you of your due. Unfortunately, that world happens not to be the real world

853. The man who has an intelligent child is doomed to spend his life justifying every decision he makes