"Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin"

This quote by Henri Frederic Amiel recommends that our systems, such as laws, rules, and policies, are a way of masking our own faults and sins. It implies that we use these systems as a way of preventing obligation for our own actions. We develop these systems to conceal our own drawbacks and to make ourselves feel much better. The quote also recommends that these systems are a type of scaffolding, offering us with a complacency and defense from our own mistakes. Eventually, Amiel is suggesting that these systems are a method of avoiding accountability for our own actions and that they are a form of self-deception. We use them to conceal our own faults and sins, instead of facing them head-on.