Quotes About Risk-taking

I think there will be a 200-story skyscraper someday. However, it will require a developer who will not think in conventional terms and for whom economic restraints won't apply.

I say, 'Why not' to everything.

The two questions I always ask myself are 'What if' and 'Why not?

As a matter of personal philosophy, I have generally said, 'Why not?' far more often than either 'Why?' or 'Not.'

To me, unconventional thinking is approaching a problem and asking, 'Why not? Why can't something be done?' If someone can't give me a good reason why you can't do something, I find a way to do it.

People have used Crowley before, but we wanted to try and get a Crowley-reference song on the radio. We just wanted to have a go, and just try things. There was a kind of 'why not?' attitude.

I painted the Astor-Victoria sign seven times, and it's 395 feet wide and 58 feet high. I dropped a gallon of purple paint on Seventh Avenue and 47th Street from 15 stories up and didn't kill anybody. I dropped a brush at Columbus Circle. It fell on a guy's camel-hair coat.

I think couldn't not make a song called 'Wild Boy' and not be a wild boy.

By the time I was a teenager, my desire to be daring and taste everything got me in trouble. Too often, I was in the company of kids my parents would call 'wild.'

Anything that you think is wild or fun, or can't wait to see or show your friends, go for it.

My first company failed completely. And it failed at about ten months old. I had about 12 months of savings, so when it failed I was thinking: 'Do I go back to work?' And at that point I believed so deeply in what I was doing that I couldn't imagine anything else other than trying to make this business work.

I'm in a position where, theoretically, I could play the same ten concertos and make a very good living bouncing around playing Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Barber, but I really think artists should keep pushing limits and trying new things.

I think entrepreneurship is combining a passion with the tenacity to problem-solve and the fearlessness to fail.

What we're going to do is redouble our efforts on financial regulatory reform, because that has in it sensible things like say on pay, so at least the shareholders are minding the store, sensible things like saying, for heaven's sakes, compensation should be focused on - on long term, so that you don't have rewards for short-term risk-taking.

I've had many failures in terms of technological... business... and even research failures. I really believe that entrepreneurship is about being able to face failure, manage failure and succeed after failing.

In terms of music, I can try anything I want, even something that doesn't work at all, because I'm not putting my career in jeopardy.

As a comedian, it really gelled when I started doing standup. Because standup is so much about bravery, especially in the early days. There is no doubt that it is going to go terribly for you over and over and over again. But you cannot get funny without bombing.

Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.

Everyone's got skeletons in their closet, and I've got a million in mine, believe me. I tested the envelope; I pushed it. Whenever somebody in authority told me not to do something, I did it just to find out why they said not to do it.

There are times when we're testing an actual explosion, and then there are times when we blow stuff up just because we can.

A friend of mine had a private kitchen that was available and it was an inexpensive way of starting a restaurant and testing whether or not I could sell my cuisine.

We are raising today's children in sterile, risk-averse and highly structured environments. In so doing, we are failing to cultivate artists, pioneers and entrepreneurs, and instead cultivating a generation of children who can follow the rules in organized sports games, sit for hours in front of screens and mark bubbles on standardized tests.

Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad.

Something about Bekka and Haylee reminded her of Candace's line between ingenious and insane. Ingenuity inspired their dreams, and insanity gave them the courage to pursue them. It was something Melody wanted for herself.