50 Safety Quotes for Tier Boards and Toolbox Talks

On responsibility

1. "Safety is not a gadget but a state of mind." — Eleanor Everet. Ask: what state of mind did you bring to the first task today?
2. "Safety doesn't happen by accident." — Unknown. What did we do on purpose this week to prevent one?
3. "Prepare and prevent, don't repair and repent." — Unknown. Which repair this month could have been a prevention?
4. "The safe way is the right way." — Unknown. Where is the safe way also the slow way here, and what would fix that?
5. "Your safety is everyone's responsibility, especially yours." — Unknown. Who looked out for you yesterday?
6. "Working safely may get old, but so do those who practice it." — Unknown. Who is the longest-serving person on this crew, and what do they do differently?
7. "It takes leadership to improve safety." — Jackie Stewart. What did a leader do on this floor this week that made it safer?
8. "Know safety, no injury. No safety, know injury." — Unknown. Which standard here protects you most, and when was it last checked?
9. "Safety is a cheap and effective insurance policy." — Unknown. What is the simplest control we have not yet put in place?
10. "Chance takers are accident makers." — Unknown. Where did someone take a chance this week and get away with it?

On prevention

11. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." — Benjamin Franklin. What is the ounce for today's job?
12. "Accidents do not happen — they are caused." — Ernest Greenwood (adapted). What caused the last one here?
13. "If you think safety is expensive, try an accident." — Attributed to Trevor Kletz. Which control have we delayed?
14. "Hazards are everywhere; the trick is to see them before they see you." — Unknown. What did your Take 5 find this morning?
15. "The best safety device is a careful worker." — Unknown. And what is the second best, so we do not rely on the first?
16. "Safety first is safety always." — Charles M. Hayes. Which task do we treat as the exception?
17. "Falling objects can be brutal if you don't protect your noodle." — Unknown. What is above you right now?
18. "Shortcuts cut life short." — Unknown. Which shortcut has become normal here?
19. "A spill, a slip, a hospital trip." — Unknown. Where is the leak nobody has reported?
20. "Better a thousand times careful than once dead." — Proverb. Which step do we rush?

On speaking up

21. "If you see something, say something." — US Department of Homeland Security campaign. What did you see this week and not say?
22. "The first step to a safer workplace is a reported near miss." — Unknown. How many did we report last week, and how many happened?
23. "Silence is consent." — Unknown. What are we silently consenting to on this line?
24. "Stop work is a right, not a request." — Unknown. When did someone last use it here?
25. "Nobody gets hurt for raising a hazard." — Unknown. Is that true here? Say if it is not.
26. "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak." — Attributed to Winston Churchill. Who spoke up this week, and did we thank them?
27. "A near miss is a free lesson." — Unknown. What did yesterday's near miss teach us?
28. "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." — Attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Who wrote the last standard, and who follows it?
29. "You cannot fix what you do not know is broken." — Unknown. What is broken that we have stopped seeing?
30. "Speak up today or explain tomorrow." — Unknown. What would be hard to explain?

On leadership

31. "What you permit, you promote." — Unknown. What did a leader walk past this week?
32. "Safety culture is how the organisation behaves when no one is watching." — Common definition. What happens on night shift?
33. "Go and see." — Taiichi Ohno (paraphrased). When was the last leader walk on this line?
34. "Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing." — Albert Schweitzer. What did the crew see the supervisor do with PPE today?
35. "The standard you walk past is the standard you accept." — Lieutenant General David Morrison. Which standard did we walk past?
36. "Good leaders make people feel safe to say the thing nobody wants to hear." — Unknown. What is the thing here?
37. "Trust is built in drops and lost in buckets." — Kevin Plank. What drop can a leader add today?
38. "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." — African proverb. Who is working alone today who should not be?
39. "Measure what matters." — John Doerr. Which leading indicator is on our board?
40. "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." — Attributed to Peter Drucker. What does our culture do with a near miss?

On learning

41. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." — George Santayana. What happened here five years ago that nobody on shift remembers?
42. "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." — Attributed, origin uncertain. Which corrective action have we written three times?
43. "Every accident is a notice that something is wrong with men, methods, or material." — Unknown. Which of the three was it last time?
44. "A mistake repeated more than once is a decision." — Paulo Coelho. Which mistake have we decided to keep?
45. "Learn from the mistakes of others; you can't live long enough to make them all yourself." — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt. What did the sister site learn last month?
46. "Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment." — Attributed, origin uncertain. Whose experience can save someone else's bad judgment today?
47. "The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." — Henry Ford. What did we learn from the last one?
48. "Verification is the step most systems skip." — TeamAssurance. Which closed action have we never checked?
49. "Standards are the bedrock of improvement." — TeamAssurance. Which standard was updated after the last incident?
50. "The board is only as honest as the crew that runs it." — TeamAssurance. Is ours?

How do you use a safety quote?

Choose one for the week and write it at the top of the safety section of the tier board. On Monday, read it and ask the question beside it. On Friday, ask what changed. A quote without the question is decoration.

Safety quotes inside daily management

The quote is the frame for the week's safety conversation at Tier 1; the question beside it is what produces the hazard, idea or near miss that becomes an action. Rotate who chooses the quote, and let the crew replace the ones that do not land with words of their own.

A worked example

A utilities depot put a weekly quote on its Tier 1 board for a year and saw no change until the supervisor added the question beside each one. 'What you permit, you promote' with 'what did a leader walk past this week?' produced an uncomfortable answer about a missing guard everyone had been stepping around; it was fixed within two days and the crew asked to choose the following week's quote themselves.