Quotes About Risk

We regard using [a stock's] volatility as a measure of risk is nuts. Risk to us is 1) the risk of permanent loss of capital, or 2) the risk of inadequate return. Some great businesses have very volatile returns - for example, See's [a candy company owned by Berkshire] usually loses money in two quarters of each year - and some terrible businesses can have steady results.

Whenever you're in a natural system and you're making sound, you are putting yourself at risk. As you go up the evolutionary ladder, from insects to frogs to birds and on up into mammals, the higher intelligence recognizes that when you vocalize, you put yourself at risk. So mammals generally vocalize or make noise much more rarely than, let's say, insects or frogs. And when they do, and put themselves at risk, it has to be worth the risk, and have true meaning, such as signaling during a hunting party, calling in prey, some religious or spiritual ceremony, something like that.

There is a risk of death associated with donating a piece of liver. It's about one in 500 for the risk of death. The risk of death of donating a kidney is about one in 3000, so this is a riskier operation than donating a kidney. The stakes are usually higher for the recipient of the transplant because unlike kidney failure, where you have a dialysis machine, in liver failure we don't have that kind of machine that allows a patient to survive until they can get a cadaver organ.

It's bad enough that you have to take market risk. Only a fool takes on the additional risk of doing yet more damage by failing to diversify properly with his or her nest egg. Avoid the problem-buy a well-run index fund and own the whole market.

As the opportunity grows for unlimited growth and progress, the chances of failure increase. There is no such thing as a program that will provide security and growth and progress with no risk . . . even within the church. As freedom for unrestricted development is enhanced, the possibilities for failure are also increased. The risk factor is great.

I think we need a politics that allows us to risk what is intelligible. To be maybe slightly unintelligible, too be slightly "illisible". To take the risk of suggesting that the human form might take another form.

A chance is what you take before you think about it. A calculated risk is what you take after you have evaluated all possible factors and have determined that risk

I want to risk hitting my head on the ceiling of my talent. I want to really test it out and say: O.K., you're not that good. You just reached the level here. I don't ever want to fail, but I want to risk failure every time out of the gate.

I would risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of the whole race.

Everything involves a risk. No risk, no reward.

The only real security is in having lots of opportunity. But risk is the price to pay for opportunity. And risk is scary.

If I limit myself to knowledge that I consider true beyond doubt, I minimize the risk of error but I maximize, at the same time, the risk of missing out on what may be the subtlest, most important and most rewarding things in life.

It takes faith and the courage to risk failure in order to realize one's destiny. Having had my share of failures throughout my career I know that it is well worth the risk.

I can afford to take a risk in my life. Only the insecure cannot afford to risk failure. The secure can be honest about themselves. They can admit failure. They are able to seek help and try again. They can change

I've never been averse to a little risk - after all, writing without risk is not really writing at all. Sometimes one has to just let fly with a high concept piece and see where the pieces fall. As it generally turns out, the central story is familiar, but just with different rules of engagement.

Often, very talented technical people find it extraordinarily difficult to take the viewpoint of customers, who are often ignorant about the technology and who may have strong and perhaps incorrect prejudices about it. The technical people may believe, deep down, that they know better what customers "should" need. Customers, of course, have a different perspective. They want products that will solve customer problems and provide other customer benefits, and will do so without undue risk or cost. Not infrequently, customers view advanced technology itself as a risk.

Sometimes we think we're a little too gifted to show up, yo uknow. But none of us truly is...By avoiding risk we really risk what's most important in life---reaching toward growth, our potential, and a true contribution to a common good.

The risk of an investment is described by both the probability and the potential amount of loss. The risk of an investment-the probability of an adverse outcome-is partly inherent in its very nature. A dollar spent on biotechnology research is a riskier investment than a dollar used to purchase utility equipment. The former has both a greater probability of loss and a greater percentage of the investment at stake.

I haven't seen too many American distance men on the international scene willing to take risks. I saw some U.S. women in Barcelona willing to risk, more than men. The Kenyans risk. Steve Prefontaine risked. I risked - I went through the first half of the Tokyo race just a second off my best 5000 time.

In today's rapidly changing world, the people who are not taking risk are the risk takers.

So my message is in whichever realm, be it going into space or going into the deep sea, you have to balance the yin and yang of caution and boldness, risk aversion and risk taking, fear and fearlessness. No great accomplishment takes place, whether it be a movie or a deep ocean expedition, or a space mission, without a kind of dynamic equipoise between the two. Luck is not a factor. Hope is not a strategy. Fear is not an option.

The best stuff happens when you take a chance. When you risk something and do the thing that the other people are taking a chance on, on a network kind of level, they will be rewarded. You know, risk-reward.

You can never protect yourself 100%. What you do is protect your self as much as possible and mitigate risk to an acceptable degree. You can never remove all risk.

Marriage is a risk; I think it's a great and glorious risk, as long as you embark on the adventure in the same spirit.

In life, if you don't risk anything, you risk everything.

A risk is a risk because it's avoidable.

At Berkshire, I both initiate and monitor every derivatives contract on our books ... If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of the misjudgments made by a risk committee or chief risk officer.

Everyone in a successful organization must be willing and ready to risk. Risk is like change; it's not a choice.

The ideal of having a real job that you risk your soul in and make good or be damned, belongs to the heroic age of capitalist enterprise, imbued with self-righteous beliefs about hard work, thrift, and public morals. Such an ideal might still have been mentioned in public fifty years ago; in our era of risk-insured semimonopolies and advertised vices it would be met with a ghastly stillness.

Let's face it, making movies is all risk. Most of the time, batting average-wise, the reward does not outweigh the risk.

The people that lend you money basically give you an answer based on the risk that they are willing to take. But just because a bank is willing to take a particular risk doesn't mean that that is the right amount for me to spend.

If I had known my own limitations, I never would have taken the risk, and the risk led to one my greatest artistic and personal experiences.

No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the "margin of safety" - never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be - can you minimize your odds of error.

I'm not an expert on how to configure the sport, but I can observe and say that accidents seem to be a part of it. The athletes are incredible, with the courage that they accept the risk of death, paralysis, and brain injury. These are really life-changing, life-threatening injuries, and the risk is extremely high.

I'm a risk manager, but I'm also a risk taker.

Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk.

Words may deeply wound us, but we must run that risk to be free.

I hate to say it because I think people are risk averse these days more than ever. Before they even pick up the phone, they know what the picture's going to be. So there's a certain comfort in that, a certain security that they can lay out the cover of the magazine and kind of know what it's going to be.

To be a leader in this new economy, you have to love risk-which means patterning your life on the heroic, not on the strategic. Acting boldly is better than acting knowingly.

A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.

Whales only get harpooned when they come to the surface, and turtles can only move forward when they stick their neck out, but investors face risk no matter what they do.

In making war with nature, there was risk of loss in winning.

My grandfather was a small-town doctor and he used to say that I was missing a gene that told me that some giant risk I am about to take with my life is both stupid and dangerous. I'm grateful for this. Everything worthwhile that we create in life requires a leap of faith.

I've been typecast. People don't want to take a risk or a chance. Quite a few times they've come up to me and say "We want you to do that Russian accent." And I'll be like, "How about if I do an Irish accent or a South African accent," and they don't trust that you can properly pull them off.

Take a chance. Take a risk. Find that passion and rekindle it. Fall in love all over again. It`s really worth it.

I think it's important to live with a certain danger and a certain risk.

I'm imagining there's a particular audience out there that's younger and older, too. It works on two levels. Do they exist? I don't know. I had to make it to find out if it does. When you do something this experimental, that's part of the process and part of the risk. I only spent my own money, so that I'm the only person that gets hurt, if it fails.

What part of me was born with the courage to stand in front of strangers and risk rejection?