Quotes About Risk

Nostalgia for what? Nostalgia is when you want things to stay as they were. I know so many people who stay in the same place. And I think, my God, look at them! They're dead before they die. Living is risking.

True love is taking the risk that it won't be a happily-ever-after. True love is joining hands with the man who loves you for who you are, and saying, "I'm not afraid to believe in you.

It's better to put yourself out there and get hurt than to never take the chance at all.

Go for it, You never really know what you believe until your curatorial growing pains are hung out there for the whole world to examine, so why not strive for legibility first? - Dan Cameron

Actually it was the mark of the stupid, which is what you get for sitting under a tree during a thunderstorm.

Well, you know what they say about traps."       "Be sure the reward is worth the risk?"       "Aye.

The sure path can only lead to death.

No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that someone will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears new witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles.

Only boldness can deliver from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is somehow violated, and the whole future is condemned to hopeless staleness.

No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need to risk it, but it is certain that someone will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears new witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles.

As we stand on the tracks, we can avoid the oncoming train only if we are willing to see it and willing to predict that it won't stop. But instead of improving the technologies of prediction, America improves the technologies of conflict:

Those people we are willing to suspect are inherently less dangerous than those we refuse to suspect. We

Sending a sheep after a predator is merely home delivery

An absurdly literal example helps demonstrate this: As you stand near the edge of a high cliff, you might fear getting too close. If you stand right at the edge, you no longer fear getting too close, you now fear falling. Edward Gorey gives us his dark-humored but accurate take on the fact that if you do fall, you no longer fear falling—you fear landing:

So here we are, traveling along faster than anyone before the 1900's ever traveled (unless they were falling off a cliff), dodging giant, high-momentum steel missiles, judging the intent of their operators with a fantastic accuracy, and then saying we can't predict human behavior.

Women, particularly in big cities, live with a constant wariness. Their lives are literally on the line in ways men just don't experience. Ask some man you know, "When is the last time you were concerned or afraid that another person would harm you?" Many men cannot recall an incident within years. Ask a woman the same question and most will give you a recent example or say, "Last night," "Today," or even "Every day." Still

Whether or not men can relate to it or believe it or accept it, that is the way it is. Women, particularly in big cities, live with a constant wariness. Their lives are literally on the line in ways men just don't experience.

As parent and child advocate Anna McDonnell says, "To have a child is to have the chance to revisit your own childhood and self, and sometimes to make changes that have been needed for a long while." Trained for decades to interact with men in ways that serve the patriarchy, the new mother must answer to no man if doing so might place her or her child at risk.

John Kennedy once made the point that assassins could not be stopped because "all anyone has to do is be willing to trade his life for the President's.

Imagine a widely televised report: "Dolphin attacks swimmer!" Such a story would make a new connection in the minds of literally millions of people: Dolphins are dangerous to man (which they are not). Though unusual animal-attack stories are good news fodder, humans are not the favored prey of any predator. (We are somewhat bony, low on meat, and smart as the Dickens.) The point is that your survival brilliance is wasted when you focus on unlikely risks. Unfortunately

I've presented these facts about the frequency of violence for a reason: to increase the likelihood that you will believe it is at least possible that you or someone you care for will be a victim at some time. That belief is a key element in recognizing when you are in the presence of danger. That belief balances denial, the powerful and cunning enemy of successful predictions.

Humor, particularly dark humor, is a common way to communicate true concern without the risk of feeling silly afterwards, and without overtly showing fear. But

Believing that others will react as we would is the single most dangerous myth of intervention.

You never know about the deaths you didn't die: the mountain peaks you missed, the collisions that didn't happen. It's a warm, cosy feeling. It's the way the airlines fly.