Quotes About Risk

Peter glanced up from his laptop, which he was working on now. "Have you lost your mind?" he asked her. "What?" "You're going to walk the dog alone in the dark where somebody just got shot?

Walking a small child was like herding water, Michael used to think when his own children were small. Heaven only knew what they'd take into their heads to do next - dart in front of a speeding car or throw a tantrum in mid-traffic or stop to pick a soaked cigar butt out of the gutter.

The world is wider in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain and Lazarus.

I want to climb up the blank blue dome as a man would storm the inside of a circus tent, wildly, dangling, and with a steel knife claw a rent in the top, peep, and, if I must, fall.

The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.

That's how things were out here in the wild, she was learning. Dangerous or beautiful. Or both.

Yes, it's a bit like learning French. When you open your mouth, you risk sounding like an idiot. But if you don't take that chance, you'll never speak at all.

If any of us die tonight, it won't be from cold or suffocation—it'll be from hitting the ground too fast. Have I mentioned we aren't wearing parachutes?

If you choose to go hard after God, you'll experience more adversity than you would encounter if you played it safe, but you'll delight in more power and love than you ever dreamed possible.

The more you're challenged, the more rigidly you assert your beliefs. You have nothing to lose because without your beliefs you're nothing anyway: they make you what you are. It's shit or bust.

Financial independence can lead to isolation, and isolation can put people at a greatly increased risk of depression and suicide. This might be a fair trade for a generally wealthier society, but a trade it is.

You can be passive and not make a decision that may save your life," he says, "or you can accept death as a possibility. That was the crux of the whole thing.

It may be unpleasant, but it's preferable to getting killed.

Capitalism works only when institutions are forced to absorb the consequences of the risks that they take on.

Because they mark all their assets to market and live in constant fear of margin calls from their brokers, hedge funds generally monitor risk better and recognize setbacks faster than rivals:

Tom Perkins's dictums: you succeed in venture capital by backing the right deals, not by haggling over valuations.

If failure is not an option, then neither is success.

Yes, I think it's okay to abandon the big, established, stuck tribe. It's okay to say to them, You're not going where I need to go, and there's no way I'm going to persuade all of you to follow me. So rather than standing here watching the opportunities fade away, I'm heading off. I'm betting some of you, the best of you, will follow me.

Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you've got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don't start, you never get a chance.

In your career, even more than for a brand, being safe is risky. The path to lifetime job security is to be remarkable.

Passion can overcome fear - the fear of losing, of failing, of being traditional.

I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance…and if you have anxiety about initiating a project, then of course you will associate risk with failure.

It's not time, Take it easy, Wait and see, It's someone else's turn - none of these stalls are appropriate for a leader in search of change. There's a small price for being too early, but a huge penalty for being too late. The longer you wait to launch an innovation, the less your effort is worth.

People have come to the erroneous conclusion that if they're not willing to start something separate, world-changing, and risky, they have no business starting anything. Somehow, we've fooled ourselves into believing that the project has to have a name, a building, and a stock ticker symbol to matter.