"We focus on those signals that tell a story about the world as we would like it to be, not ow it really is. We ignore the risks that are hardest to measure even when they pose the greatest threats to our well-being." (Chapter 1, page 20)

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." (Chapter 1, page 26)

"'I think I had five congressional hearings after Katrina,' said Max Mayfield, who was director of the National Hurricane Center at the time the storm hit, when I asked him to recall when he first recognized the full magnitude of the threat. 'One of them asked me when I first became concerned about New Orleans, I said sixty...