The document provides 20 famous safety quotes from experts to strengthen safety culture. The quotes emphasize that safety is a top priority and should be a state of mind, not just avoiding injuries. They also stress the importance of good systems over individuals, as people and teams can be hurt by poor choices or shortcuts. Investing in education and conference methods to build understanding of safety issues is highlighted as well.

1. Famous Safety Quotes
to
Strengthen Your Safety
Culture
www.basicsafe.us/

2. “Measuring performance
by the number of injuries
you have is like measuring
parenting by the number
of smacks you give.”
-Dr. Robert Long

3. “Safety is not an intellectual
exercise to keep us in work. It is a
matter of life and death. It is the
sum of our contributions to
safety management that
determines whether the people
we work with live or die.”
-Sir Brian Appleton, safety assessor

4. “Safety is not a gadget, but a state
of mind.”
-Eleanor Everet, safety expert

5. “If you put good people in
bad systems, you get bad
results. You have to water
the flowers you want to
grow.”
-Stephen Covey

6. “A chain is only as strong as its
weakest link.”
-Unknown

7. “Better to be late in this world
instead of early to the next.”
-Unknown

8. “Don’t do something
detrimental to yourself. In
hurting yourself, you
obviously do damage to
you, but you are part of
the team, so when you
damage yourself via a
poor choice, you are
hurting the team as well.”
-Matt Forck, Safetystrat.com

9. “Shortcuts cut life short.”
-Unknown

10. “Whether you think you can or
think you can’t, you’re right.”
-Henry Ford

11. “You are your own
last line of defense in
safety. It boils down
to you.”
-Kina Repp,
workplace accident survivor
& motivational speaker

12. “To one who believes that
really good industrial
conditions are the hope for
a machine civilization,
nothing is more heartening
than to watch conference
methods and education
replacing police methods.”
-Frances Perkins,
Secretary of Labor

13. “Error is pervasive. The unexpected
is pervasive...What is not pervasive
are well-developed skills to detect
and contain these errors at their
early stages.”
-Karl E. Weick,
author, Managing the Unexpected

14. “A health and safety problem
can be described by statistics
but cannot be understood by
statistics. It can only be
understood by knowing and
feeling the pain, anguish and
depression and shattered
hopes of the victim and of the
wives, husbands, parents,
children, grandparents and
friends…”
-George Robotham, safety
advocate

15. “An incident is just the tip of the iceberg, a
sign of a much larger problem below the
surface.”
-Don Brown,
Owner, Director of Software Products and Services for BasicSafe

16. About BasicSafe
Basicsafe is an internet based integrated approach to managing safe
work cultures and compliance with regulatory requirements.
Extensive programming based on proven safety methodologies that
target employee training and information access are the backbone
of the BasicSafe suite.
For more information, please visit www.basicsafe.us/