(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)

But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.

You cannot do only one thing.

No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.

In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable

People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed.

Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.

Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.

Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

The only thing we can really count on in this uncertain world is human unreliability itself.

Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.

The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.

The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.

If people can live through genocide and retain compassion, if they can take strength in pain, if they are able, still, to laugh, then certainly we can learn something from them.

Tradition has made women cowardly.

I've often stopped working for long periods.

If you're stupid and you're arrogant, you're going to get hurt.

In my case such an expression as 'to be fallen for' or even 'to be loved' is not in the least appropriate; perhaps it describes the situation more accurately to say that I was 'looked after.

Some bosses believe they can't afford to employ someone legitimately - so they employ them illegally.

When companies get bigger they try to replicate their success. But they assume their magic came from process. They try to use processes to substitute content.

Flat or round, there has always been hate in the world.