50 Blame Quotes to Help You Own Up to Your Mistakes

No matter our age, blame has been a part of our lives, so if you want to stop this from affecting you, check out this list of our favorite blame quotes!

In a world where it seems like there’s no room for error, people tend to point fingers at each other quickly. Because of this, we become too afraid to admit our mistakes. In the long run, through blame, we become people who are not accountable and responsible for their actions.

Blame has become a defense mechanism that destroys relationships and worsens the situation. Rather than solving the problem, we get too busy assigning blame, making us unproductive. 

We’ve created this list of quotes to remind you that blame doesn’t fix anything. Remember, the only effective and efficient way to go about things is to take accountability and action to solve the problem!

Check out the complete list below.

And make sure to read these negativity quotes and chaos quotes.

Best Blame Quotes

1. “Focus on fixing the problem, never focus on the blame. Problems are only resolved when solutions are sought.” – Catherine Pulsifer 

2. “Blame is just a lazy person’s way of making sense of chaos.” – Douglas Coupland

3. “Blame is the demonstrated lack of self-respect choosing to deposit one’s negative actions onto others to reinforce one’s view of being of good, fair, and approved.” – Byron R. Pulsifer

4. “Blaming is a characteristic of losers. Winners take responsibility for their lives and make their dreams a reality.” – Anonymous

5. “Blame doesn’t empower you. It keeps you stuck in a place you don’t want to be because you don’t want to make the temporary, but painful decision, to be responsible for the outcome of your own life’s happiness.” – Shannon L. Alder

6. “Blaming is a dead-end street that doesn’t help anyone. But until we risk telling the truth to ourselves about how we really feel, nothing in our lives can change or improve.” – Christiane Northrup

7. “Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.” – Pema Chodron

8. “The trouble with blame is this all or nothingness, this black or whiteness. People are drawn to extremes. As soon as we have to study the gray areas, we lean to one side.” – Sharon Lamb

9. “Blame rings in the ears like the crack of a bell long after it has been silenced.” – Don H. Polston

Blame Quotes That Zoom in on What It Entails

10. “All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.” – Wayne Dyer

11. “Blaming is pointing out there, rather than in here, into your own mind, when you find yourself in a painful or uncomfortable experience. Blame means shifting the responsibility for where you are onto someone or something else, rather than accepting responsibility for your role in the experience.” – Iyanla Vanzant

12. “Blame is the granddaddy of the victim’s behaviors. You cannot address problems until you stop blaming others or yourself. Blame is the opposite of problem-solving, even when the content of the blame is justifiable. Blame is the essence of the victim’s experience, and this experience is the basis of immature social behaviors. When you feel like a victim, you pass off responsibility to others for solving your problems, or you attempt to escape.” – James R. Baugh

Short Blame Quotes for Those Who Tend to Point Fingers

13. “When people are lame, they love to blame.” – Robert Kiyosaki 

14. “The superior man blames himself. The inferior man blames others.” – Don Shula

15. “Blame is for God and small children.” – Dustin Hoffman

16. “It’s not how you play the game, it’s how you place the blame.” – Don Simpson

17. “When we blame, we give away our power.” – Greg Anderson

18. “Blame is the lazy man’s wages.” – Danish Proverb

19. “No one is to blame because there is no one other than you.” – Amit Ray

20. “There’s plenty of blame to go around.” – Suzanne Collins

Blame Quotes That’ll Help You Realize That It’s Not Good for You

21. “Blaming does not solve a problem; it usually only makes people defensive.” – Catherine Pulsifer

22. “The blame game is a waste of time. Any time you’re busy fixing blame, you’re wasting energy and not fixing the problem.” – Rick Warren

23. “You have to let it go. You can hold on to the hate and the love and even the bitterness, but you have to go of the blame. The blame is what’s tearing you down, babe.” – Colleen Hoover

24. “As a consequence of what we do wrong or what others do wrong to us, blame and criticism will be attributed. Sometimes this blame might seem just, but other times, it does not. However, no matter how it might appear, blame never undoes what is done.” – Geof Warren

Blame Quotes to Make You More Accountable

25. “Everyone must take responsibility for themselves. Blaming your problems on the world will get you nowhere.” – Claire Shannon

26. “We live in a culture of blame. People will blame anyone or anything for their misery sooner than take the responsibility to own it and make it better.” – Dr. Henry Cloud

27. “It’s always easy to blame someone else or outside forces for our actions. Yet we don’t have the right to blame other people or circumstances for our behavior.” – Joyce Meyer

28. “Stop the blame game. Stop! Stop looking out the window and look in the mirror!” – Eric Thomas

29. “Concern yourself more with accepting responsibility than with assigning blame. Let the possibilities inspire you more than the obstacles discourage you.” – Ralph Marston

30. “Live today. Remove all blame from your vocabulary. Catch yourself when you find yourself using your past history as a reason for your failure to act today, and instead say, ‘I am free now to detach myself from what used to be.’” – Wayne Dyer

Blame Quotes That Will Make You Think Twice

31. “Raising fingers at each other will leave everyone without hands.” – Abhijit Naskar

32. “An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.” – Epictetus

33. “Blame is the water in which many dreams and relationships drown.” – Steve Maraboli

34. “Praise loudly, blame softly.” – Russian Proverb

35. “When you gain real insight into the human universe, you lose the capacity to blame.” – Abhijit Naskar

36. “When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look into the reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments.” – Thích Nhất Hạnh

Blame Quotes to Reconsider Your Decisions

37. “Blame is the number one recipe for disaster in your home! You will not heal if you leave that word in your vocabulary.” – Patrick T. Gorman

38. “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 want to change, you’re the one who has got to change.” – Katharine Hepburn 

39. “You become a victim when you blame yourself or others for some problem or error.” – Jay Fiset

Blame Quotes for Better Leadership

40. “If you are looking to inspire people, then blaming is the last thing you want to do. To inspire others, focus your attention on the solution, not the blame. No good comes from blame, good comes from finding a way to correct the situation.” – Kate Summers

41. “If someone is always to blame, if every time something goes wrong someone has to be punished, people quickly stop taking risks. Without risks, there can’t be breakthroughs.” – Peter Diamandis

42. “Blame is not productive. Blame disguises and conceals. Blame alienates and separates. Blame is the killer of community, cooperation, and collaboration.” – Peter Rouse

43. “Going beyond blame enables us to make our systems more resilient, and build more just and humane learning organizations.” – Dave Zwieback

44. “Great leaders don’t rush to blame. They instinctively look for solutions.” – Nina Easton

45. “Blame is fascinating—it shapes our lives. It can be a benign way of positioning ourselves, a gentle joust or banter, or it can be poisonous, hurtful, or devastating for its victims. It can tear apart marriages and fracture work relationships; it can disable major social programs; it can inflict damage on powerful corporations; it can bring down governments; it can start wars and justify genocides.” – Stephen Fineman

More Blame Quotes That’ll Impact Your Thoughts

46. “Accepting blame when it’s not really due sometimes makes the point better.” – Malcolm Forbes

47. “Wherever you find a problem, you will usually find the finger-pointing of blame. Society is addicted to playing the victim.” – Stephen R. Covey

48. “The misattribution of blame is one reason we make the same mistakes over and over again. We learn so little from experience because we often blame the wrong cause.” – Joseph T. Hallinan

49. “Things that are done, it is needless to speak about; things that have had their course, it is needless to remonstrate about; things that are past, it is needless to blame.” – Confucius

50. “Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.” – John Keats

Have You Played the Blame Game Before?

Part of being human is committing mistakes. While we’re made in the image and likeness of God, we’re not as perfect as He is. Thus, we have flaws and imperfections that remind us we have room for improvement.

It’s about time we normalize owning up to our mistakes and setting them right. After all, these are inevitable, and facing them head-on is the only way to rise above them.

Blaming someone or something doesn’t solve anything. It wastes time and energy and destroys our relationship with the people close to our hearts. If we stop blaming others, the world will become a better place to live!

With that, we hope you were able to find the inspiration to embrace your missteps through this list of blame quotes. Without blame, we’ll be able to save our time, energy, and relationships with others. So, instead of playing the blame game, own up to your mistakes and try to be better people!

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Karen Danao

Hi, I’m Karen, a content curator and writer for Quote Ambition; I’m also a marketing and advertising professional. Beyond the keyboard and the screen, I’m someone who’s out to enjoy every bit that life has to offer!

Poetry, philosophy, history, and movies are all topics I love writing about! However, my true passion is in traveling, photography, and finding common ground to which everyone from different cultures can relate.

With the many places I’ve been to, I found that love, inspiration, and happiness are some things that bring people together. No matter how different we are on the outside, I’m a true believer that our emotions don’t lie; if you dig deep into our psyche, we’re all the same inside.

This belief was further amplified when I joined Quote Ambition. Through the quotes I’ve read, collected, organized, and written about, I found that humans are resilient, creative, and compassionate.

We take from each others’ hearts and courage, and it’s through our individual experiences that we learn how to rise above our challenges and pain. In so many ways, Quote Ambition is a platform that allows people from all over the world to gain the inspiration they need anytime, anywhere!

You can find me on MuckRack and LinkedIn.