“Comes a day you’re gonna have to decide whether it’s about you or about the work.”

Cedric Daniels, The Wire

Context
Lieutenant Daniels finds out that Sergeant Carver is the officer that’s been leaking information to the police commissioner (in exchange for a promotion). Daniels has two ways to go about this, get angry and chew him out or this:

Daniels:
Couple weeks from now, you’re gonna be in some district somewhere with 11 to12 uniforms looking to you for everything. And some of them are gonna be good police. Some of them are gonna be young and stupid. A few are gonna be pieces of shit. But all of them will take their cue from you.

You show loyalty, they learn loyalty. You show them it’s about the work, it’ll be about the work. You show them some other kinda game, then that’s the game they’ll play. I came on in the Eastern, and there was a piece-of-shit lieutenant hoping to be a captain, piece-of-shit sergeants hoping to be lieutenants. Pretty soon we had piece-of-shit patrolmen trying to figure the job for themselves. And some of what happens then is hard as hell to live down.

Comes a day you’re gonna have to decide whether it’s about you or about the work.