“An agent is usually held accountable to his principals.”

— Voltairine de Cleyre

The Economic Tendency of Freethought (1890)
Context: An agent is usually held accountable to his principals. If you do not know the individuals who voted for you, then you do not know for whom you are acting, nor to whom you are accountable. If any body of persons has delegated to you any authority, the disposal of any right or part of a right (supposing a right to be transferable), you must have received it from the individuals composing that body; and you must have some means of learning who those individuals are, or you cannot know for whom you act, and you are utterly irresponsible as an agent.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "An agent is usually held accountable to his principals." by Voltairine de Cleyre?

Voltairine de Cleyre78

American anarchist writer and feminist 1866–1912

Michael Jensen (1939) American economist

Source: "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure", 1976, p. 308

“We define agency costs as the sum of:
(1) the monitoring expenditures by the principal,
(2) the bonding expenditures by the agent,
(3) the residual loss.
Note also that agency costs arise in any situation involving cooperative effort… by two or more people even though there is no clear cut principal-agent relationship.”

Michael Jensen (1939) American economist

Source: "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure", 1976, p. 308-9

“The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates book Between the World and Me

Source: Between the World and Me (2015), p. 9.
Context: Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be destroyed.... The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions. And destruction is merely the superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations. All of this is common to black people. And all of this is old for black people. No one is held responsible.

“Religion should never be held to account for inferior scholarship.”

William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796–1877) United States Anglican Episcopal clergyman

"The Development of the School Idea in American Church Life," in Dr. Muhlenberg by William Wilberforce Newton, 1890.

“Von Papen, pious agent of an infidel regime, held the stirrup while Hitler vaulted into the saddle, lubricated the Austrian annexation and devoted his diplomatic cunning to the service of Nazi objectives abroad.”

Franz von Papen (1879–1969) German chancellor

Robert H. Jackson.

“Agent Jones held Sinjin’s face in his hands. “I’m going to make balloon animals. People need balloon animals.”
“How right you are, strange delusional man,” Sinjin said.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

“In the free society envisioned by the founders, schools are held accountable to parents, not federal bureaucrats.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Statement on the Congressional Education Plan, May 23, 2001 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2001/cr052301.htm <br class="br">2000s, 2001-2005