Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes

I would say it would be worth it if, in fact, it would - if you could demonstrate that that would be the case and that the results and ramifications around the world wouldn't lead to more problems and more people dying. It's a very complex issue, and that's why I think we need to decide it.

If you have something at risk, you think differently.

Measurement and categorization are, of course, fundamental to any scientific endeavor, but the implications of being able to identify psychopaths are as much practical as academic. To put it simply, if we can't spot them, we are doomed to be their victims, both as individuals and as a society.

If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure.

You take unacceptable risk, you have to be prepared to face the consequence.

Great interests demand great safeguards.

Affairs are easier of entrance than of exit. It is but common prudence to see the way out before we venture in.

There is danger in this action. But there is greater danger in inaction.

When you start a military intervention, you do not know what will happen even in the next hour

What is not a risk with a parts-per-billion test can always be exposed to a parts-per-trillion examination. If rats cope with .the heaviest dose of a chemical that can be soaked into their food and water, you can always gavage them. Or try mice or rabbits. Again, the only stopping rule is discovery of the sought-for effect, or exhaustion of the investigator (or his funds). Many of the risk assessment procedures used today are logically indistinguishable from those used by the Inquisition.

It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.

I do think... gene technology has got real benefits to offer, which will have maybe an occasional downside, but I suspect not very many.

Only by ignorance is science threatened.

I have taken restarts and have come to the conclusion myself that I can't give NASCAR that opportunity to penalize me.

People say they want to be in risky environments and do all kinds of exciting stuff. But they don't actually know what risk means: that risk actually does bring failure and mistakes.

Yes, the cost is high, but the price of neglect would be infinitely higher.

China could easily emerge as the great winner if the Chinese leaders handle the situation well. On the other hand, they could also turn out to be the biggest losers if they handle it poorly. If the management turns out be wrong, this could lead to a political crisis in China.

There is often less danger in the things we fear than in the things we desire.

At some point, you can't take a risk just to take a risk because that's a betrayal, in and of itself.

It's not like you take the right turning and you get everlasting happiness and you take the wrong one and your life's a disaster. In real life it's often impossible to tell which decision is the one you should make because what you stand to gain and what you stand to lose are sometimes-often-neck and neck.

Choices are easy when you have nothing to lose.

In real life, every field of science is incomplete, and most of them - whatever the record of accomplishment during the last 200 years - are still in their very earliest stages.

The wisdom of our actions in the first three years of peace will determine the course of world history for half a century.

Hasty work and premature decisions may lead to penalties out of all proportion to the issues immediately involved.

Some things are more important than safety.