Quotes About Risk

prime threat hovering over a society of general well-being.

Speculation, it has been noted, comes when popular imagination settles on something seemingly new in the field of commerce or finance.

to pursue the gold deposits that were presumed to exist in the great North American territory of Louisiana. There was no evidence of the gold, but this, as ever in such episodes, was no time for doubters or doubting

The rule is that financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation. What

There is nothing in economic life so willfully misunderstood as the great speculative episode. T

The rule will often be here reiterated: financial genius is before the fall.

Leverage was magnificently available

Men of genius do not destroy themselves along with so many others and invite such a dismal end.

But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me; there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved. And if it wasn't there, as for example with Phineas, then I put it there myself.

I jounced the limb.

I'm having yet another dinner, but this time with more of the working-level capital markets origination bankers. These guys are considerably more risk averse; they don't have the stomach for sales and trading and lack the smarts for M&A.

The prudent leader "dreads and reflects on everything that can happen to him but is bold when he is in the thick of action." Xerxes listens patiently, but objects that "if you were to take account of everything . . . , you would never do anything. It is better to have a brave heart and endure one half of the terrors we dread than to [calculate] all of the terrors and suffer nothing at all. . . . Big things are won by big dangers.

Like poles on tightropes, temperament makes the difference between slips and safe arrivals.

After crossing the Rubicon—the real one—in 49

El poder, no obstante, abre la puerta a cometer grandes idioteces.[36]

todo lo que puede ocurrir, pero es audaz

Xerxes tinha razão. Se tentarmos prever tudo, arriscamo-nos a não fazer nada. Mas também a tinha Artabano. Se não nos prepararmos para tudo o que pode acontecer, garantimos que alguma parte disso acontecerá.

Los grandes ejércitos transportan consigo lo necesario para asegurarse de que lo que pudiera ir mal no vaya

He insisted on flying to Washington in a new and untested airplane so that its size would intimidate his hosts.

80% of plane crashes occur in the first three or last eight minutes of a flight.

You are 14% more likely to die on your birthday than any other day. 51

They had not done the wild things that had no basis in their understanding of the workings of the body. They had not given quinine or typhoid vaccine to influenza victims in the wild hope that because it worked against malaria or typhoid it might work against influenza. Others had done these things and more, but they had not.

There was nothing even faintly exciting about this work; it was pure tedium, and pure boredom. And yet every step involved contact with something that could kill, and every step involved passion.

For if there is a single dominant lesson from 1918, it's that governments need to tell the truth in a crisis. Risk communication implies managing the truth. You don't manage the truth. You tell the truth.