A Quote by Bill McKibben

It's off the charts - and if you don't believe the scientists, ask the insurance industry, the people we pay to analyze risk in our society.

Bill McKibben

Quote Topics

Analyze Ask Believe Charts Don't Believe Industry Insurance Off Our Our Society Pay People Risk Scientists Society

Quote Author

Bill McKibben
American - Environmentalist
Born: December 8, 1960

How do commercial interests usually protect themselves from liability claims? Through insurance. In fact, in our society, the litmus test for safety is insurance. You can be insured for almost anything if you pay enough for the premium, but if the insurance industry isn't willing to bet its money on the safety of [biotechnology], it means the risks are simply too high or too uncertain for them to take the gamble.

David Suzuki

The private motives of scientists are not the trend of science. The trend of science is made by the needs of society: navigation before the eighteenth century, manufacture thereafter; and in our age I believe the liberation of personality. Whatever the part which scientists like to act, or for that matter which painters like to dress, science shares the aims of our society just as art does.

Jacob Bronowski

People ask me all the time what it is about Australia that produces so many big stars. Honestly, I believe it is a combination of things. Our education standards are quite high, but our industry is very limited. Yet we're very aware of the industry - everyone goes to the theater, sees TV shows.

Margot Robbie

I pay for homeowner's insurance, I pay for car insurance, I pay for health insurance.

Elizabeth Warren

The premise of insurance is to spread the risk. It's the premise of homeowner's insurance, of car insurance, and of health insurance. It's one reason why it's important to have insurance when you're healthy, so that when you get sick, you won't go sign up just when you get sick, because that increases the cost for everyone.

Jeanne Shaheen

What does the future look like if the heads of society ask our young people to risk their lives for questionable causes? I think it looks rather bleak.

Tracy Chapman

We can all instinctively understand the idea of life insurance; most of us will feel an instinctive repugnance at the thought of the viatical industry, or 'dead peasants insurance.' As market thinking penetrated the life insurance industry, a moral line was crossed, and the application of market ideas was taken too far.

John Lanchester

Even from the very beginning, the type of fans the Ramones generated were the kind of people who wound up running industry, who became professors and scientists. Our staunchest fans were always a little bit more on the outside, the type of people who didn't fit in with society.

Tommy Ramone

You ask people, do you pray to [a person or] God. If you say yes to that, you're religious by, presumably, anybody's standards of your conduct. And it's the yes to that question that applies to 40% of scientists. So, there're plenty of atheists who are scientists or not scientists. There maybe a conflict but many people in this country coexist in both worlds.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Who's paying the million bucks? The insurance company. We've been trying for years to get the insurance industry to say to the gun industry, We won't insure you unless you have policies that will reduce the likelihood of guns falling into the wrong hands easily.

Michael D. Barnes

I have argued that we need livelihood insurance, which would protect people against the risk of seeing their skills and expertise no longer needed. Such insurance could be offered by the private sector.

Robert J. Shiller

The life insurance industry is filled with good people who believe in their work and their companies, but who may never have challenged the assumptions underlying their efforts.

Andrew Tobias

With the socialization of the health care system through institutions such as Medicaid and Medicare and the regulation of the insurance industry (by restricting an insurer’s right of refusal: to exclude any individual risk as uninsurable, and discriminate freely, according to actuarial methods, between different group risks) a monstrous machinery of wealth and income redistribution at the expense of responsible individuals and low-risk groups in favor of irresponsible actors and high-risk groups has been put in motion.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

We confuse insurance with our moral obligation to provide health-care services to people. And what we try to do is finance our moral obligation through the insurance system, which punishes the people who are fiscally responsible to buy insurance.

Ron Williams

Everything is a risk in Pakistan: If you defend women, it's a risk. If you defend non-Muslims it's a risk. If you discuss religion, it's a risk. But you can't really sit there like a vegetable in your own society. And I'm committed to that society... and I feel I need to turn around and speak as I should.