Quotes About Risk

We don't manage money for anyone else. We bear responsibility only for our own risks.

When companies fail, shareholders bear the losses. It's just the way our system is supposed to work.

If the money is right, I will fight a bear.

I'm kind of scared of bears.

I think entrepreneurship is a beautiful thing.

If I can't play for big money, I play for a little money. And if I can't play for a little money, I stay in bed that day.

I used to write things out beforehand. But sometimes it backfires.

Everybody has had that experience of really wanting to do something and being afraid.

I think there are lots of reasons to take projects. Being scared about one is always good.

In life, I'm a guy who likes to drive a car quite fast, but I wear a seat belt at the same time.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.

With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill," Hall observed. "The trick is to get back down alive.

This forms the nub of a dilemna that every Everest climber eventually comes up against: in order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven, but if you're too driven you're likely to die.

Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition.

People don't get it. He didn't even have a fuckin' map; what kind of idiot? THAT was the point. There's no blank spots on the map anymore, anywhere on earth. If you want a blank spot on the map, you gotta leave the map behind.

There were many, many fine reasons not to go, but attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act—a triumph of desire over sensibility. Any person who would seriously consider it is almost by definition beyond the sway of reasoned argument.

I was dimly aware that I might be getting in over my head. But that only added to the scheme's appeal. That it wouldn't be easy was the whole point.

Thus the slopes of Everest are littered with corpses.

Immediately after graduating, with honors, from Emory University in the summer of 1990, McCandless dropped out of sight. He changed his name, gave the entire balance of a twenty-four-thousand-dollar savings account to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet. And then he invented a new life for himself, taking up residence at the ragged margin of our society, wandering across North America in search of raw, transcendent experience.

The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure.

Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from the tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.

The plain truth is that I knew better but went to Everest anyway. And in doing so I was a party to the death of good people, which is something that is apt to remain on my conscience for a very long time.

The more improbable the situation and the greater the demands made on [the climber], the more sweetly the blood flows later in release from all that tension. The possibility of danger serves merely to sharpen his awareness and control. And perhaps this is the rationale of all risky sports: You deliberately raise the ante of effort and concentration in order, as it were, to clear your mind of trivialities.

In climbing, having confidence in your partners is no small concern. One climber's actions can affect the welfare of the entire team. The consequences of a poorly tied knot, a stumble, a dislodged rock, or some other careless deed are as likely to be felt by the perpetrator's colleagues as the perpetrator. Hence it's not surprising that climbers are typically wary of joining forces with those whose bona fides are unknown to them. But