Quotes About Risk

Enrique Vila-Matas

my cousin hid out at a friend's place. They already knew that it was dangerous for them, because the SA had been marching around grabbing up people from their homes and hauling them off. So my cousin went into hiding, and then the Nazis took his mother into custody, the so-called Sippenhaft [a kind of special arrest for family members].

Non-Jews realized well that their non-conformity would not likely get them in trouble, and it almost never did.

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow Ã¢â'¬Â¦ what a ride.' Ã¢â'¬Â Billy liked it so much he jotted it down in

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow Ã¢â'¬Â¦ what a ride.' 

Don't ever put your life on the line for something you don't believe in.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view… where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you… beyond the next turning of the canyon walls. —Edward Abbey, "Benediction

Screw it. Bring on that sorry dragon! Comes down to it, I'll bet Hrundig knows a recipe for cooking the mangy beasts.

All you do when you are visible is map ways for yourself to be harmed by others, to give them the tools and strategies.

There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.

Law enforcement generally seems a step behind in fighting online crime; if your customers are at risk, evidently you'll need to protect them yourself, and if the Russian mafia targets your company, you're the one who's going to have to defend it.

government regulation will continue to pose a risk to PayPal into the foreseeable future.

The line between courageous faith and foolish idealism is, almost by definition, one angstrom wide.

There is no way to peace along the way of safety. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Here in Silicon Valley, I have taken part in hundreds of conversations trying to convince people to dive in and become entrepreneurs. All too often, innovators with good, safe, jobs are unwilling to put their family's access to health care at risk by walking away from company-backed medical insurance.

The attributes for entrepreneurs cut both ways. You need the ability to ignore inconvenient facts and see the world as it should be and not as it is. This inspires people to take huge leaps of faith. But this blindness to facts can be a liability, too. The characteristics that help entrepreneurs succeed can also lead to their failure.

if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

waiting too long to release can lead to the ultimate waste: making something that nobody wants.

when you have only one test, you don't have entrepreneurs, you have politicians, because you have to sell.

FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. Nobody in the startup world could have such a mug, I mused; it would be ridiculous. My experience is full of situations where reality proved too unpredictable to avoid failure.

Third, many entrepreneurs are afraid. Acknowledging failure can lead to dangerously low morale. Most entrepreneurs' biggest fear is not that their vision will prove to be wrong. More terrifying is the thought that the vision might be deemed wrong without having been given a real chance to prove itself.

The two most important assumptions entrepreneurs make are what I call the value hypothesis and the growth hypothesis.

Una startup es una institución humana diseñada para crear un nuevo producto o servicio bajo condiciones de incertidumbre extrema.

startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.