Quotes About Risk

The question that drives safety work in a just culture is not who is responsible for failure, rather, it asks what is responsible for things going wrong. What is the set of engineered and organized circumstances that is responsible for putting people in a position where they end up doing things that go wrong?

Business is a game, played for fantastic stakes, and you're in competition with experts. If you want to win, you have to learn to be a master of the game.

Sometimes, it is precisely when you discover that you are living very happily that you suddenly find yourself in danger. To be happy means to discover that you are exposed to being hurt.

What we have at present is a system of loss socialism. Whatever goes wrong is shouldered by the general public and anything that works is privatised. Worshippers of market freedom have suspended the most important economic principle: Risk and liability go hand in hand.

Why live on the edge when you can jump off it?

Consider rereading, how risky it is, especially when the book is one that you loved. Always the chance that it won't hold up, that you might, for whatever reason, not love it as much. When this happens, and to me it happens all the time (and more and more as I get older), the effect is so disheartening that I now open old favorites warily.

There is no glory in war, yet from the blackness of its history, there emerge vivid colours of human character and courage. Those who risked their lives to help their friends.

Oh, darling," Niall purred. "You know I'm too shy to wear those little bitty suits." "You would do it for me, though, wouldn't you?" I made my eyes huge and pushed out my lower lip. If I didn't already sleep with a gun under my pillow and a knife under the mattress, I sure as hell would have to now. Niall would try to kill me. I had no doubt.

Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous.

For the canny and the farsighted, vast deficits also create vast opportunities.

You're never so alive as when you're on the verge of death.

Basilevitch persuaded Cruyff to let him invest his hard-earned money in a variety of ventures, the most disastrous of which was a pig farm.70 Looking back in 2015, the victim laughed at himself: "Who could imagine that Johan Cruyff had gone into pig-rearing? I ended up saying to myself, 'Ditch the pigs. Your thing is football.' "71

In most industries, a bad business goes bankrupt, but soccer clubs almost never do. No matter how much money they waste, someone will always bail them out. This is what is known in finance as "moral hazard": when you know you will be saved no matter how much money you lose, you are free to lose money.

Big corporations aren't always the bad guys; but it's the sensible way to bet.

You know how it is, boss; you're out on the town with a few friends, drinking it up; you're young, you've got incendiaries... shit happens.

First rule of engineering; beware prototypes. Along with, avoid anything made by an engineer who doesn't have all his own fingers

First rule of engineering; beware prototypes. Along with, avoid anything made by an engineer who doesn't have all his own fingers.

Big corporations aren't always the bad guys; but it's the sensible way to bet.

Are you sure this is a good idea?' whispered the unicorn. 'No,' said Rupert. 'But it's our best chance to find a dragon.' 'Frankly, that doesn't strike me as such a hot idea either,' muttered the unicorn.

I looked forwards to the flight deck. The door was open and I could see the pilot and co-pilot toasting each other with glasses of vodka. In the context of where we were going, this felt completely normal.

Despite the willingness of people in Nagorno-Karabkh to wander through minefields, they seemed to be a surprisingly long-lived people.

Our driver bumped the cars in front and behind us to make space, then we crossed on to the other side in our big 4x4 and started driving the wrong way up the motorway, dodging cars coming at us. I thought back to it afterwards and decided it had felt worryingly normal. I realised I'd been munching on a flapjack and Craig had been texting. I wondered if we were becoming just slightly too immune to risk.

I know the odds are against us. I know she's a siren. I know she's eaten people. I know she's five thousand years older than me. But I really like her.

But sometimes you have to break rules because nothing is perfect.