Daily Inspiration Quote by Edward F. Halifax

Control is a beautiful way to look busy while quietly avoiding life. Halifax’s line cuts with the cool authority of a statesman who’s watched decisions die not from bad intentions but from over-insurance. The first clause flatters the planner: leave nothing to chance and you’ll “do few things poorly.” It’s the bureaucratic dream of error-proof governance, of policies padded with safeguards, memos, committees, and contingencies. Then the sentence snaps shut: “but he will do few things.” The real indictment isn’t that caution produces mediocrity; it produces paralysis.

The intent is less self-help than warning label. Halifax isn’t praising risk for its own sake; he’s diagnosing the hidden cost of perfectionism in public life, where the fear of scandal, of being wrong on record, of handing opponents ammunition, can make “prudence” a synonym for non-action. Chance here stands in for everything politics can’t domesticate: unpredictable events, public mood, moral urgency, the messy fact that timing is part of truth.

Subtext: the people who demand total certainty often claim to be protecting standards, but they’re also protecting themselves. Halifax, a statesman formed in an era of imperial management and looming global conflict, would have known that history doesn’t wait for the last briefing paper. The line works because it’s structured like a bargain that turns out to be a trap: trade spontaneity for competence, and you may end up competent at abstaining.