Quotes About Risk

You people are such an infertile lot that paternity seems to hit you much harder than it does others. Look at Random. For years he had disowned his son, and now-I've a feeling he'd risk his life for him.

My foolproof plan might not be proof against this-meaning I was the fool.

After presenting his completed sequences, he analysed the errors the others had made. You should never have thrown away the knave of hearts, he told Dina. That's why you lost. I took a chance.

I want to be both pathetic and admirable, I want to be at the same time a child and an adult. Thereby I gamble, I take a risk: for it is always possible that the other will simply ask no question whatever about these unaccustomed glasses; that the other will see, in the fact, no sign.

As proffering, I love you is on the side of expenditure. Those who seek the proffering of the word (lyric poets, liars, wanderers) are subjects of expenditure; they spend the word as if it were impertinent (base) that it be recovered somewhere; they are at the extreme limit of language, where language itself...recognizes that it is without backup or guarantee, working without a net

Men, as Amundsen liked to say, are the unknown factor in the Antarctic.

When you step out onto the ineffable fabric of your own invention, it is key, essential to act just like that character in the cartoons who steps off the cliff onto the absolute air. Do not look down. You wrote it; you can stand on it to reach for the next thing.

Had she stayed in business, she would have been bankrupt within a few years.

Most of these highly speculative investments never panned out.

Every company that failed and was reorganized by a bank ended up the bank's captive client.

Rockefeller knew that he was overpaying but couldn't resist a deal that would certify his position as the world's largest oil refiner at age thirty-one.

Since he also had a sizable stake in U.S. government bonds, he felt he could play the market with impunity.

A born contrarian, Rockefeller insisted upon buying in declining markets and selling in rising ones.

Having twice been sued by people for offering incorrect market advice, he refrained from offering stock tips.

His insecurities only worsened as he had more to lose.

I feel, therefore, that large sums of money are, in a sense, safer there than in other fields.

that favored stability over innovation, predictability over experimentation

Undeterred by these extreme gyrations, both Rockefeller and Andrews wanted to borrow heavily and expand, while Clark favored a more circumspect approach.

Had the action not been taken, more than half the brokerage houses on Wall Street might have gone belly-up.

He said that the first holders were not simply noble victims, nor were the current buyers simply predatory speculators. The original investors had gotten cash when they wanted it and had shown little faith in the country's future. Speculators, meanwhile, had hazarded their money and should be rewarded for the risk.

The most remarkable leaps into the unknown are often not fully appreciated

He believed the definite loss of freedom was worse than the possible loss of life.

Global Health Security Index," a sober report of a world largely unprepared to deal with a pandemic.

There were reasons for the cover-up of SARS, including the fear, typical of repressive systems, of passing bad news up the ranks; a tangled bureaucracy; and the singular priority of economic growth over all other considerations; but the naked fact stood that the Chinese government was willing to sacrifice its own people and place the entire world in jeopardy, risking millions of lives, simply to avoid accountability for the outbreak.