"The only risk we run is by doing nothing"
About this Quote
“The only risk we run is by doing nothing” is the kind of political line that sounds like reassurance while quietly tightening the screws. Brian Higgins, a career public servant, isn’t offering a meditation on courage so much as a governing philosophy disguised as common sense: action is framed not as a choice but as the responsible default.
The intent is to invert the normal caution voters bring to policy. Most public debates treat change as the gamble and the status quo as safety. Higgins flips that script, casting inaction as the truly reckless move. It’s a neat rhetorical hack because it relocates fear. If you’re worried about unintended consequences, he implies, you’re already accepting the biggest consequence of all: stagnation. The phrase “the only risk” is doing heavy lifting here; it’s absolute, almost parental. It narrows the mental menu, turning a spectrum of options into a binary: act or fail.
The subtext is also political triage. “Doing nothing” is rarely neutral in government; it can mean letting infrastructure decay, letting costs rise, letting problems metastasize until they become emergencies. The line signals competence and urgency without naming a specific policy, which makes it adaptable to everything from economic investment to climate response to public health.
Contextually, it fits a modern governance era where leaders must justify intervention amid polarization and skepticism. Higgins’ bet is that voters can be persuaded that the status quo isn’t stability, it’s drift - and drift, in a crisis-prone century, is its own kind of decision.
The intent is to invert the normal caution voters bring to policy. Most public debates treat change as the gamble and the status quo as safety. Higgins flips that script, casting inaction as the truly reckless move. It’s a neat rhetorical hack because it relocates fear. If you’re worried about unintended consequences, he implies, you’re already accepting the biggest consequence of all: stagnation. The phrase “the only risk” is doing heavy lifting here; it’s absolute, almost parental. It narrows the mental menu, turning a spectrum of options into a binary: act or fail.
The subtext is also political triage. “Doing nothing” is rarely neutral in government; it can mean letting infrastructure decay, letting costs rise, letting problems metastasize until they become emergencies. The line signals competence and urgency without naming a specific policy, which makes it adaptable to everything from economic investment to climate response to public health.
Contextually, it fits a modern governance era where leaders must justify intervention amid polarization and skepticism. Higgins’ bet is that voters can be persuaded that the status quo isn’t stability, it’s drift - and drift, in a crisis-prone century, is its own kind of decision.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
|---|
More Quotes by Brian
Add to List
