Quotes About Risk

Our doubts are traitors / And make us lose the good we oft might win / By fearing to attempt.

Banks smiled. Don't worry, he said it's my balls on the chopping-block, not yours. I'll cover for you. My word on it. Susan smiled back. Well, that's the first time not having any balls has ever done me any good.

The basic reality is that the risks that scare people and the risks that kill people are very different.

As education and creativity researcher and author Sir Ken Robinson puts it, "We are educating people out of their creativity." Another major factor is that, for years, organizational management has been developing methods for increasing productivity and minimizing risk and errors that tend to stifle creative experimentation.

Unlike most CEOs, when trying something new, Jeff Bezos and his senior team (known as the S Team) don't try to develop elaborate financial projections or return on investment calculations. "You can't put into a spreadsheet how people are going to behave around a new product," Bezos will say.

When much is known, procedural planning approaches work perfectly well. When much is unknown, they do not.

Ironically, in attempting to minimize risk and reduce errors, GM's emphasis on regimented systems stymied innovation.

Thorn illustrated that there lies a point when bravery shades into arrogance, and arrogance shades into idiocy.

She had been like a roller coaster aficionado for whom tame county fair roller coasters were as good as the ones that spun you upside down and dropped you so fast your eyes turned red. It was all just a ride.

fail and fail often—but keep the cost of each failure low, so that you can keep going until you succeed.

ARTISTIC CREATION is a voyage into the unknown.

Just because we cannot imagine our actions leading to disaster, it doesn't mean that such a disaster cannot happen.

When life has lost its meaning, a pilgrim will risk everything to get back in touch with life. This is why relics, such as a tooth of the Buddha, the dried blood of Christ, or a Shakespeare folio, are objects that must be touched as an integral part of the pilgrimage. This is what the risk is for, the confirmation that the mystery exists at all in a modern world seemingly determined to undermine the sacred as mere superstition.

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. SØREN KIERKEGAARD

Winning is about moving into the unknown and creating something new.

We watch Paracelsus in Basle as though seeing a man run headlong toward a precipice. Like an indestructible lunatic, he will do so again and again throughout his life.

Cabe decir que los genios tienen más posibilidades de incurrir en el error que la media.

Don't ask, don't get.

That is what I wanted, to find in a commonplace world a chance to live heroically. Having known nothing but security, comfort, and peace, I hungered for danger, challenges, and violence.

If, in the face of genocide, governments fear placing their soldiers at risk, he said, then don't send soldiers, send Boy Scouts - which is basically what the world did in the refugee camps [in Zaire].

On the other side is chaos, libertinism, vice, danger and the unknown. And the unknown will always remain so to those who do not choose to explore it.

They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow.

Dilemma of civilized man; body mobilized, but danger obscure.

Damn her he said to himself. What good does it do my risking my life? She doesn't care whether we own an ostrich or not. Nothing penetrates.