Quotes About Risk

Without a saving faith in the future, no one would ever invest at all." P 535

Without banks, you would be burying your money in coffee cans in the back yard

It's better to make the wrong choice, my father had continued, than to make no choice at all.

Play with the devil, Finan said, and you get burned.

It was madness. And, as Finan had said, sometimes madness works.

Put a cat to watch a flock and the wolves eat well.

Just what do you plan to do, Sharpe? the Lieutenant asked. Don't know, sir. Won't know till we get there. You're going to the mine? Aye, sir. There'll be guards. Like as not. And only two of us. I can count, sir. Sharpe grinned. It's reading I find hard. But my letters are coming on, aren't they?

in uncertainty lies opportunity.

Bravery is overcoming fear," I said, "and I don't know how you do that. Duty helps a little, experience, of course, and not letting down your comrades helps a lot, but really bravery is a kind of madness.

To gain everything, a man must risk everything.

If you collect a fat flock, you don't leave it grazing beside a wolf's den.

A man does not go into battle without fear.

There's no point in kicking a wild bee's nest, not unless you're determined to get the honey.

I knew it was stupid, knew I would probably die if I went again, but we were warriors and warriors will not be beaten. It is reputation. It is pride. It is the madness of battle. I began beating Serpent-Breath against my half-broken shield, and other men took up the rhythm, and the Danes, so close, were inviting us to come and be killed, and I shouted that we were coming.

If you wait for certainty in war, lord king, you'll die waiting.

They have no idea we're here. And stupidity gets you killed.

Love is a dangerous thing. It comes in disguise to change our life.

My dear: in this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

It was more dangerous not to go; I was running the risk of becoming trapped in my own fantasies. So I was doing the right thing by going. She would behave normally, I would behave normally, and everything would be normal again.

Suppose you are walking in a thunderstorm, and you say to yourself, "I am not at all likely to be struck by lightning." The next moment you are struck. but you experience no surprise, because you are dead.

The extent to which beliefs are based upon evidence is very much less than believers suppose. Take the kind of action which is most nearly rational: the investment of money by a rich City man. You will often find that his view (say) on the question whether the French franc will go up or down depends upon his political sympathies, and yet is so strongly held that he is prepared to risk money on it.

But although the world was happy, some savour had gone out of life, since safety had been preferred to adventure.

Great Empedocles, that ardent soul, Leapt into Etna, and was roasted whole.

In spite of the fundamental importance of economic facts in determining politics and beliefs of an age or nation, I do not think that non-economic factors can be neglected without risks of error which may be fatal in practice.