Mike Leavitt Quotes

The safety of the people is the first and foremost responsibility of government… We are not as prepared as we should be with our public safety network…. The margin for error is exceedingly and uniquely low.

The military has to think in terms of worst case scenarios. In a sense, they have to play the pessimist.

Be Prepared... the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.

In any aircraft you fly, you always think about what can go wrong, and you plan for it in advance. You always have back-up plans.

I fear, my Lords, it is too much the temper of this country to be insensible of the approach of danger, until it comes with accumulated terror upon us.

Anything you say before a pandemic occurs sounds alarmist; anything you say after it occurs is inadequate.

The safety of the American people has got to be our number one priority. That is our most important problem.

I’ve worked as a leader for many years and I’ve always trained myself to be prepared for the worst.

You can’t prepare for the best case; you have to prepare for the worst case.

Don’t ignore planning for unlikely events. Over long periods of time the highly improbable gets more probable to occur at least once.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right.

Don't wait until you're in a crisis to come up with a crisis plan.

We all must recognize that homeland security funds should be allocated by threat and no other reason.

You need to carry out very careful pre-feasibility and feasibility studies before you enter any crisis situation.

Well, you know, any defense force worth its salt has to be able to deal with uncertainty, has to be able to deal with events that we may not have planned for.

Think as you work, for in the final analysis, your worth to your company comes not only in solving problems, but also in anticipating them.

But I warn my colleagues that we will fail in our efforts to protect the homeland if we do not take additional steps to avoid a trade-off between protecting ourselves against terrorists attacks and preparing for and responding to natural disasters.

I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future.

If the Bush Administration cannot ensure Americans that they will be safe from the flu, how will they protect our country against a possible bio-terror or chemical attack? The American people deserve better.

I never know what I'm going to do for the Post next. Two weeks ago I had a piece on Homeland Security. This is one of my pig ongoing projects. How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack.

In the military we plan for the worst case, because we have learned that if you do not, you will be surprised.

We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur .

Four years after 9/11 it is scandalous that police and firefighters in large cities still cannot communicate reliably in a major crisis. It is scandalous that airline passengers are still not screened against all names on a terrorist watch list. It is scandalous that we still allocate scarce homeland security dollars on the basis of pork barrel spending, not risk.

In terms of responders to a national disaster those first responders must be able to talk to each other…. They are still not able to do so.