Leadership Quote by George Savile

Control is the quiet addiction of competent people, and Savile skewers it with a politician's eye for how caution masquerades as virtue. "He that leaveth nothing to chance" sounds like praise for meticulousness, the kind of temperament that keeps scandals contained and budgets balanced. Then comes the turn: yes, he will "do few things ill" - but "he will do very few things". The sting is in the trade-off. Safety doesn't just reduce error; it reduces action.

Savile was writing out of an eighteenth-century world where power ran on patronage, reputation, and slow-moving institutions. In that environment, the impulse to minimize risk isn't mere personal neurosis; it's a survival strategy. A misstep could cost office, allies, or honor. His line acknowledges the appeal of caution while exposing its political and moral cost: a state (or a statesman) can be so committed to preventing failure that it forfeits ambition. Prudence becomes an alibi.

The subtext is less self-help than indictment. It hints that "chance" isn't an inconvenience but a necessary ingredient of meaningful work - diplomacy, reform, war, even artful governance - where outcomes can't be fully engineered. To eliminate chance is to choose only tasks already domesticated by rules, precedent, and low stakes. Savile's sentence works because it refuses to romanticize risk, yet it refuses to sanctify risk-avoidance. It frames boldness not as recklessness, but as the willingness to accept that doing anything worth doing invites uncertainty.