Iain Banks - Oscar Levant - Mark Twain - Christopher Hitchens - Katharine Hepburn - Little Murder 2011 - Bertrand Russell - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Friedrich Nietzsche - J Michael Straczynski - Arnold H Glasow - Aeschylus - George Best - John Steinbeck - Homer - Oscar Wilde - Daniel C Dennett - Panorama TV - Chernobyl 2019 - Kate Moss - Marilyn Manson -
I won’t miss waiting for the next financial disaster because we haven’t dealt with the underlying causes of the last one. Nor will I be disappointed not to experience the results of the proto-fascism that’s rearing its grisly head right now. It’s the sheer idiocy, the sheer wrongheadedness of the response that beggars belief. I mean, your society’s broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, let’s blame the people with no power and no money and these immigrants who don’t even have the vote, yeah it must be their fucking fault. Iain Banks, final interview 2013
I envy people who drink – at least they know what to blame everything on. Oscar Levant
... a God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell – mouths mercy, and invented hell – mouths Golden Rules and foregiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him! Mark Twain, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger
It’s childish to blame God for things that are going wrong. It’s idiotic ... We don’t think that God designed us and the universe after all, and if he did, he did it with such cruel ineptitude. Christopher Hitchens v Mark Roberts 2007
We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change. Katharine Hepburn, Me: Stories of My Life
People don’t want the truth, they just want somebody to blame. Little Murder 2011 starring Terrence Howard & Josh Lucas & Lake Bell & Sharon Leal & Peter Jason & Noah Bean & Nick Lashaway & Deborah Ann Woll & Brandon Molale et al, director Predrag Antonijevic, black bloke to hero
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame. Bertrand Russell
I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness. Friedrich Nietzsche
People spend too much time finding other people to blame, too much energy finding excuses for not being what they are capable of being, and not enough energy putting themselves on the line, growing out of the past, and getting on with their lives. J Michael Straczynski
A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit. Arnold H Glasow
Neither blame or praise yourself. Plutarch
Everyone’s quick to blame the alien. Aeschylus
If you make up your own mind, you can only blame yourself. George Best
Don’t you dare take the lazy way. It’s too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don’t let me catch you doing it! Now – look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do. John Steinbeck, East of Eden
What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which destiny allots them. Homer, The Odyssey
There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us. Oscar Wilde
It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you place the blame. Oscar Wilde
In organised religions God gets credit for all the good things and never takes the blame for the bad things. Daniel C Dennett, lecture Venice September 2006, ‘The Domestication of the Wild Memes of Religion’
It’s been almost a year since our worst fire in living memory. The people of Grenfell were failed but nobody has been held to account. One year on a community is still waiting for answers. We asked those involved how it could happen. We tried to find out who’s to blame. And we uncover a scandal – Grenfell was wrapped in a flammable product that should never have been there. Panorama: Grenfell: Who is to Blame? BBC 2018
Of course no-one can blame me for this. How can I be responsible? I was sleeping. Chernobyl I, Bryukhanov, Sky Atlantic 2019
Now I’m being blamed not only for anorexia but for lung cancer. Kate Moss
Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats for its problems. Well here I am. Marilyn Manson, 1996