"We forget the little things, so it's no wonder some of us screw up the big things"
About this Quote
Cavuto’s line lands because it’s deceptively modest: a small admission that turns into a broad indictment. “We forget the little things” sounds like ordinary self-help language, the kind of gentle reminder you’d hear in a morning segment. Then he sharpens it with “so it’s no wonder,” pivoting from personal habit to collective consequence. The phrase quietly absolves and accuses at the same time: if the basics slip, disaster isn’t shocking - it’s predictable.
As a cable-news journalist, Cavuto speaks from a world built on “big things”: elections, markets, scandals, breaking news. The subtext is an argument about attention, not memory. In an ecosystem that rewards outrage and urgency, the “little things” - reading past the headline, checking sources, understanding incentives, noticing incremental policy changes - become optional. That’s how the big failures arrive: not as a single villainous act, but as the accumulation of ignored details.
The offhand “some of us screw up” is doing social work, too. Cavuto avoids sermonizing; he uses a shruggy, colloquial verb that sounds like kitchen-table truth, not ideology. It invites the listener to self-identify without feeling directly attacked. Yet “some of us” also hints at stratification: mistakes aren’t evenly distributed. People with power can forget “little things” and turn them into systemic “big things” for everyone else.
It’s a compact critique of modern competence: our largest collapses are often just neglected basics, scaled up.
As a cable-news journalist, Cavuto speaks from a world built on “big things”: elections, markets, scandals, breaking news. The subtext is an argument about attention, not memory. In an ecosystem that rewards outrage and urgency, the “little things” - reading past the headline, checking sources, understanding incentives, noticing incremental policy changes - become optional. That’s how the big failures arrive: not as a single villainous act, but as the accumulation of ignored details.
The offhand “some of us screw up” is doing social work, too. Cavuto avoids sermonizing; he uses a shruggy, colloquial verb that sounds like kitchen-table truth, not ideology. It invites the listener to self-identify without feeling directly attacked. Yet “some of us” also hints at stratification: mistakes aren’t evenly distributed. People with power can forget “little things” and turn them into systemic “big things” for everyone else.
It’s a compact critique of modern competence: our largest collapses are often just neglected basics, scaled up.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning from Mistakes |
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