"The most dangerous thing in the world is to try to leap a chasm in two jumps"
About this Quote
Politics loves the comforting halfway measure: do something that looks bold, stop just short of the point of no return, and call it prudence. Lloyd George punctures that fantasy with a physical image so blunt it’s almost comic. A chasm isn’t an inconvenience; it’s an abyss. You either cross it or you fall. By turning incrementalism into a body-in-flight problem, he exposes the real risk hidden inside “moderation”: not that you’ll move too fast, but that you’ll commit enough to lose your footing without committing enough to make the far side.
The line’s intent is managerial and moral at once. As a wartime prime minister and a master of coalition arithmetic, Lloyd George understood how often leaders try to satisfy irreconcilable pressures by splitting the difference. The subtext is a warning to colleagues who want the optics of reform without paying its costs: partial measures can be more destabilizing than decisive ones, because they provoke backlash while failing to secure the benefits that would justify the upheaval.
It’s also a lesson about timing. “Two jumps” implies a pause midair, a moment to reconsider after launching. That’s the delusion he’s mocking. Once you’ve begun a large transition - constitutional change, peace terms, economic restructuring - you don’t get a safe platform to stand on while you debate your next move. The rhetoric works because it makes political hesitation feel like physics: gravity doesn’t negotiate, and neither do crises.
The line’s intent is managerial and moral at once. As a wartime prime minister and a master of coalition arithmetic, Lloyd George understood how often leaders try to satisfy irreconcilable pressures by splitting the difference. The subtext is a warning to colleagues who want the optics of reform without paying its costs: partial measures can be more destabilizing than decisive ones, because they provoke backlash while failing to secure the benefits that would justify the upheaval.
It’s also a lesson about timing. “Two jumps” implies a pause midair, a moment to reconsider after launching. That’s the delusion he’s mocking. Once you’ve begun a large transition - constitutional change, peace terms, economic restructuring - you don’t get a safe platform to stand on while you debate your next move. The rhetoric works because it makes political hesitation feel like physics: gravity doesn’t negotiate, and neither do crises.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
|---|
More Quotes by David
Add to List
