Charles Francis Richter Quotes

Disasters happen. We still have no way to eliminate earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, floods or droughts. We cope as best we can by fortifying ourselves against danger with building codes and levees, and by setting aside money to clean up afterwards.

The government employs scientists of many varieties in technical capacities, from estimating the environmental toxicity of a chemical to the structural soundness of a bridge. But when it comes to forming policies, these scientists and, especially, behavioral scientists are rarely at the table with the lawyers and the economists.

A jump from the sixth floor is definitely more harmful than taking heroin, yet we don't forbid building sixth floors.

When you build a bridge, you insist that it can carry 30,000 pounds, but you only drive 10,000-pound trucks across it. And that same principle works in investing.

The decision-making process in the White House does not let most issues get up to the President. The Council thought opening up global markets to derivatives that would destabilize other countries wasn't likely to create a lot of jobs in the U.S. and might adversely affect U.S. interests by causing global economic instability.

I think the NFL is 10 years away from an implosion.

It was the same with the whole Russian machine. Fear was the impulse. For them it was always safer to advance than retreat. Advance against the enemy and the bullet might miss you. Retreat, evade, betray and the bullet would never miss.

Having a large amount of leverage is like driving a car with a dagger on the steering wheel pointed at your heart. If you do that, you will be a better driver. There will be fewer accidents but when they happen, they will be fatal.

The most important rule is to play great defense, not great offense. Everyday I assume every position I have is wrong. I know where my stop risk points are going to be. I do that so I can define my maximum drawdown. Hopefully, I spend the rest of the day enjoying positions that are going in my direction. If they are going against me, then I have a game plan for getting out.

It is not that I don't recognize the danger in ski racing, but that I don't fear the consequences.

Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.

The right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy

It’s hard to come up with a scheme to thwart some other scheme you don’t even know about.

I highly recommend inviting the worst-case scenario into your life.

A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge

You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but you want to get rid of the bathwater so the baby can swim the next couple of days and be OK.

You always, I think, debate with yourself about whether or not you made the right decision. And you have to then give the person that you’re working for - in my instance, the president - your best judgment based on your understanding of the facts, but also the calculus you use to make a determination about what’s the best way to go forward.

In short, absolute, so-called mathematical, factors never find a firm basis in military calculations. From the very start, there is an interplay of possibilities, probabilities, good luck and bad, that weaves its way throughout the length and breadth of the tapestry. In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.

When raising money, you want to look through the lens of 'What happens when things go wrong?'

[on 8/24/04, before entering a Los Angeles hospital for heart valve replacement surgery] If things go right, I'll be there about a week, and if things don't go right, I'll be there about an hour and a half.

Wisdom consists in being able to distinguish among dangers and make a choice of the least harmful.

Larger sums may be an advantage at some cases and a disadvantage at others.

I don't think about taking a risk. I think about how far can I go. How can I make myself. What are the risks I must create.

Let's scope the place out," he suggested, heading around the side of the building, "and be careful in the bushes." "Why?" Amy asked. "This is South Africa, dude," Dan replied. "Where cobras come from. And not the hot ones, like Ian.

There was no need to inform us of the protocol involved. We were from Chicago and knew all about cement.