"Where things are getting done, little things will go wrong"

A Danish adage says: "hvor der handles der spildes". It seems the nearest English-language adage is "accidents will happen", but that does not cover it. It means: "where things are getting done, little things will go wrong", or "where there's action there's waste". The last one is pretty direct. The first one is better. Could even be used as such.

Quite wise really. If you're too afraid of losing or ruining anything, you just can't get things done.

I once extended this into a rather extenuated Danish joke:


"Hvor der handles der spildes, og hvor der spilles der synges, og hvor der synges der danses, og hvor der danses har man det sjovt." - Eolake

It has a nice rhythm.
Machine translation:
Accidents will happen , and where there pretend to be there sing , and where there sing there dance , and where there dance has decent that funny.

But more exactly:

Where there's action there's waste. And where there's music there's singing. And where there's singing there's dancing. And where there's dancing, there's fun.

I made this up decades ago. The joke is the phonetic semilarity between "spildes" and "spilles" (the D is silent), two very different words. "Spildes" means being wasted and "spilles" means being played as in music.