Last Updated: August 30, 2022 by Quote.cc Team
Here are 101 of the best safety quotes I could find. Maybe our list of workplace safety quotes from well-known safety experts and public figures will give you some ideas on raising awareness about it.
101 Safety Quotes
Top 10 Safety Quotes
“Safety doesn’t happen by accident.” – Jerry Smith
“If you don’t think it is safe, it probably isn’t” – Jerry Smith
“It takes leadership to improve safety.” – Jackie Stewart
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius
“Obedience is the mother of success and is wedded to safety.” – Aeschylus
“Teaching the world to be careful is a constructive service worthy of God’s great gift of life to man.” – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harold H. Burton (1946)
“There is no such thing as an accident, only a failure to recognise the hand of fate” – Napoleon
“What is now proven was once only imagined.” Hindsight is a wonderful thing but foresight is better, especially when it comes to saving life, or some pain!” – William Blake
“Working safely is like breathing – if you don’t, you die.” – Jerry Smith
“Deterrence itself is not a preeminent value; the primary values are safety and morality.” – Herman Kahn
Funny Safety Quotes
“Prepare and prevent, don’t repair and repent.” – Anon
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett
“Luck runs out, but safety is good for life.” – Anon
“Safety work is today recognized as an economic necessity. It is the study of the right way to do things.” – Robert W. Campbell
“Protect your hands, you need them to pick up your pay check.”
Motivational Safety Quotes
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“An incident is just the tip of the iceberg, a sign of a much larger problem below the surface.” – Don Brown
“Measuring Safety Performance by the number of injuries you have is like measuring parenting by the number of smacks you give.” – Dr. Robert Long
“Nothing is of greater importance than the conservation of human life.” – Former U.S. President Calvin Coolidge
“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.” – Utopia
“I’m just not that into safety any more” – Rob Sams
“Our motto is to work for peace based on social justice. Our mandate is to improve the condition, health and safety of workers, and our mission is universal.” – David A. Morse
“Safety applies with equal force to the individual, to the family, to the employer, to the state, the nation and to international affairs. Safety, in its widest sense, concerns the happiness, contentment and freedom of mankind.” – William M. Jeffers
“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
“If you want to work out what a safety displacement activity is, take it out of the equation and see if it makes any difference. If there’s no difference, then whatever that activity is, it’s probably a waste of time.” – George Robotham
“The future of the safety movement is not so much dependent upon the invention of safety devices as on the improvement of methods of educating people to the ideal of caution and safety.” – Walter Dill Scott
Road Safety Quotes
“What would we do if a plane crashed today and 100 people died? What would we do if it happened again tomorrow? And the next day? We’d ground air traffic. We wouldn’t live with that. It’s been going on every day on our nation’s roadways for the last 40, 50, 60 years.” – David Teater
“Danger gathers upon our path. We cannot afford — we have no right — to look back. We must look forward.” – Winston Churchill
Food Safety Quotes
“You are your last line of defense in safety. It boils down to you.” – Kina Repp
“If you are the proprietor or managing director of a company, you are ultimately responsible for the health and safety in all aspects of the business.” – Forum of Private Business
“At the end of the day, the goals are simple: safety and security.” – Jodi Rell
“The point is that being able to demonstrate ‘due diligence’ is not about having a thing (a policy or a system or a heap of procedures and checklists) it is about doing a thing” – Max Geyer
“Shortcuts cut life short.”
“Check yourself before you wreck yourself.” – Meg Cabot
“Paper doesn’t save people, people save people.” – Dan Peterson
Fire Safety Quotes
“When safety professionals’ risk tolerance is out of alignment with societal norms the safety professional is doomed to a life of frustration.” – Phil LaDuke
“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Do not think because an accident hasn’t happened to you that it can’t happen.” – Safety saying
“For safety is not a gadget but a state of mind.” – Eleanor Everet
“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
Patient Safety Quotes
“Safety saves sickness, suffering, sadness.” – Safety saying
“Safety brings first aid to the uninjured.” – F.S. Hughes
“Measuring performance by the numbers of injuries you have is liked measuring parenting by the number of smacks you give.” – Dr. Robert Long
“I’ve personally met up with quite a few legless, armless and other badly messed-up folks. There’s a whole lot of mighty serious accident contemplation going on in our hospitals. My observations have taught me that it is much better to think about accidents before they happen than to brood on them afterward. … Personally, I’d rather be late for dinner tonight here than to be on time for breakfast in the next world in the morning. Haste makes waste of a lot of good human material.” – Irvin S. Cobb
“Safety is not a gadget, but a state of mind.” – Eleanor Everet
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” – Benjamin Franklin
“The best ergonomic solutions will often improve productivity.” – Ergo-Plus.com
“Carefulness costs you nothing. Carelessness may cost you your life.” – Circa early 1900s
Safety Quotes For Work
“Working safely may get old, but so do those who practice it.”
“It is my sincere wish and hope that the day will come when the protecting arms of Universal Safety will spread out over all industry and reach all the millions of workers who make industry possible.” – Charles M. Schwab
“Safety isn’t expensive, it’s priceless.” – Anon
“What matters in a workplace, what helps an employer if you’ve got an unionized workforce is if your shop stewards know the rules of the game, if your safety reps are taught to to examine situations to make sure the workplace is more safety. Better informed delegates, better workplace safety saves companies money. Unions are very good at safety. We are good at teaching delegates how to resolve disputes.” – Bill Shorten
“I do care a great deal about the environment. Still, my real work and my greatest challenge are trying to overcome deceits that end up jeopardizing public health and safety.” – Erin Brockovich
“Work injuries and illnesses can affect every aspect of life for workers and their families.” – Maine Department of Labor
“There’s no better policy in society than pursuing the health and safety of its people.” – Ralph Nader
“The economic waste resulting from carelessness is appalling, but anyone who stops for a moment to consider the sorrow and desolation which is brought into thousands of lives each year by utter thoughtlessness must feel a new resolve to make a habit of “Safety First.” – W. C. Durant
“One earnest worker can do more by personal suggestion to prevent accidents than a carload of safety signs.” – Making Paper
“They were willing to work all the time; and when people did their best, ought they not to be able to keep alive?” – Upton Sinclair
“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
“You don’t need to know the whole alphabet of Safety. The A, B, C of it will save you if you follow it: Always Be Careful.” – Colorado School of Mines Magazine
“Working virtually 100% indoors, in a seated position and usually talking on a phone, writing or typing on a computer paves the way for some of the top injuries … to develop.” – Albert Einstein
“A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences” – Proverb
“Now: target zero; zero harm; no accidents, although they all look good on paper, they all focus on what you want to avoid. Imagine setting your business goals at the start of the year and presenting a goal of wanting to avoid any financial loss this coming year to the board. They would boot you straight out of the room! So, for what reason do we accept that with safety?” – Chad Lilley
“We would also ask real estate agents, who much they think our house is worth. But we never ask a safety professional, socially, how do I stay safe at work. In my experience, when people find out I am a safety professional, there is a deafening silence as, either, people don’t know that safety has a profession or my skills just seem irrelevant.” – Kevin Jones
“Safety is 30% Common Sense, 80% Compliance and the rest is good luck.” – Barry Spud
“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
“If the owner or manager does not show an interest in preventing employee injury and illness, then the employees will probably not give it much thought either.” – Rhode Island Small Business Recovery Program
“Better a thousand times careful than once dead.” – Proverb
“It’s very isolating when you think you are the only one struggling” – Adam Kay
“Never stop investing … never stop learning” – Captain Sully
“Alternate tasks whenever possible, mixing non-computer-related tasks into the workday. This encourages body movement and the use of different muscle groups.” – Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
“Safety has to be everyone’s responsibility… everyone needs to know that they are empowered to speak up if there’s an issue.” – Captain Scott Kelly
“I’m glad to see how young people are stepping up when it comes to safety. They are focused on safety rather than being told to be safe. It makes a difference when people own things.” – Scott Cam
“If you don’t know, ask. Working with people is far better than working against them — always bring together all the people and information available to you!” – Aidan O’Shannessy
“We must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” – Former U.S. President John F. Kennedy
“If you put good people in bad systems, you get bad results. You have to water the flowers you want to grow.” – Stephen Covey
“Work safely today. Remember, somebody expects you home tonight.” – Anon
“Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.” – Joseph Campbell
“Tomorrow: your reward for working safely today.” – Robert Pelton
“Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force” – W. Edwards Deming
Safety Quotes For The Day
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” – Nelson Mandela
“People don’t care what you know until they know you care” – Corrie Pitzer
“A chain is only as long as the weakest link.”
“Your employees learn by example. If they don’t see you practising good safety habits, they won’t think safety is important.” – Electrical Construction & Maintenance
“Shallow men believe in luck; wise and strong men in the cause and effect.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is almost no human action or decision that cannot be made to look flawed and less sensible in the misleading light of hindsight. It is essential that the critic should keep himself constantly aware of that fact.” – Anthony Hidden
“You are your own last line of defense in safety. It all boils down to you.” – Kina Repp
“Safety is never ‘attained’ but a work in progress in tension between ALARP and the Precautionary Principle.” – Rob Long
“The safety of the people shall be the highest law.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Kelly was a seaman, and his life on the water followed a strict routine, which meant observing all the safety rules that had been written in the blood of less careful men.” – Author Tom Clancy
“Anyone who believes that they have common sense has simply forgotten who taught them what they know” – Alan Quilley
“Off the shelf Safety Systems – if you want a good dust collector, buy a vacuum cleaner” – Dave Collins
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain
“The danger which is least expected soonest comes to us.” – Voltaire
“Our systems have become the equivalent of the Internet – it’s where you go to get answers without even really knowing the question or the context. Through the excessive use of processes, procedure, checklists and forms we have dumbed down their curiosity.” – John Green
“We believe that we want to do what we are doing, otherwise how would we explain to others why we are doing it?” – Chris Paley
Safety Quotes For Drivers
“Safety is something that happens between your ears, not something you hold in your hands.” – Jeff Cooper
“Every accident is a notice that something is wrong with men, methods, or material — investigate — then act.”
“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.” – Henry Ford
“Technology is moving at a much faster clip than our laws can keep up with.” – Deborah Hersman
“The automobile has brought death, injury and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people.” – Ralph Nader
