Quotes About Risk

What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

It's not what you know about money—it's what you don't know that can wipe you out.

IF U WANT TO KICK THE TIGER ASS BECAREFULL OF HIS TEETH FIRST.

Nature places a simple constraint on those who leave the flock to go their own way: they get eaten. In society it's a bit more complicated. Nonetheless the admonition stands: avoiding the unknown has considerable survival value. Society, nature, and artmaking tend to produce guarded creatures.

Making art can feel dangerous and revealing. Making art is dangerous and revealing. Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be.

In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot — and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.

Control, apparently, is not the answer. People who need certainty in their lives are less likely to make art that is risky, subversive, complicated, iffy, suggestive or spontaneous. What's really needed is nothing more than a broad sense of what you are looking for, some strategy for how to find it, and an overriding willingess to embrace mistakes and surprises along the way.

What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don't, quit. Each step in the artmaking process puts that issue to the test.

Making art is a common and intimately human activity, filled with all the perils (and rewards) that accompany any worthwhile effort.

The only time you stop run out of chances is when you stop taking them

You don't do something because it's a sure thing. You don't do something for the bank. That's the one that flops. That's a riskier proposition than doing something completely original. It's risky to be safe.

The life you think you should want ... is always the life that looks safest.

It isn't funny," said Ben. "I just don't like open water. Not to swim in." Yron crooked a finger and reluctantly Ben waded out the yard or so to him and the log. "I'll let you into a secret," said Yron. "You won't need to swim." "No?" Ben's face brightened. "No. When the croc grabs you, you don't get the chance.

A rife platoon's] members must care for one another. Its leaders must cherish the men in very fire team and squad. For a rifleman, a leader's misjudgment, ignorance or inexperience can be fatal - no second chances. No rerunning the exercise until you get it right. When the word 'go' is given, there is no turning back from the consequences. It is the monstrous burden of command..." -Bernard "Mick" Trainor

Adventure and excitement are the two things missing from civilization. Danger keeps you on your toes. You'll never feel as alive as when death is over your shoulder.

I tried to stir the imagination and enthusiasms of students to take risks, to do what they were most afraid of doing, to widen their horizons of action.

Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.

James Buckley Jr.

Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.

A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice!

There are many talented people who haven't fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith.

Failure is an option, fear is not.

NASA has this phrase that they like: 'Failure is not an option.' But failure has to be an option in art and in exploration, because it's a leap of faith. And no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. So, that's the thought I would leave you with, is that in whatever you're doing, failure is an option, but fear is not.

Every single time it was grand. I loved the moment when you announce the stickup and everything suddenly goes brighter and sharper and the world seems to spin faster. You show them the gun and say hand it over and there's no telling what's going to happen in the next tick of the clock.