Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eric S. Raymond, in his guide "The Art of Unix Programming", mentions this principle as Rule of Silence: "When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing." His statement probably related to command line applications, but it makes sense for a lot of cases.
It sounds smart but what counts as surprising is entirely context dependent and most programs won't be aware of your context. E.g. a command line app where you put a subtly wrong switch in that does exactly what it thought you wanted and prints nothing while outputting a 0 exit code is dangerous.
It's about context, of course, but it's not really the program's responsibility to know the user's context. It's the user's responsibility to understand their own context.
A tool should have sufficient interlocks to ensure safety when not engaged, but no more.