Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

The quote frames responsibility as both empowering and frightening. “Take your life in your own hands” signals agency—choosing, acting, and owning one’s direction. The “terrible thing” is not the burden of work itself but the loss of scapegoats: when outcomes follow from one’s choices, blame can no longer be comfortably outsourced. Jong’s irony suggests that many people prefer the emotional safety of victimhood or determinism to the vulnerability of freedom. The line thus critiques self-deception and invites a mature ethics of accountability, where autonomy includes accepting consequences without the consolations of excuse.