Quotes About Risk

The risk of working with people you don't respect; the risk of working for a company whose values are incosistent with your own; the risk of compromising what's important; the risk of doing something that fails to express-or even contradicts--who you are. And then there is the most dangerous risk of all--the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet that you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.

What caused 2008, in my opinion, is that people just didn't see the risk. These people that took on all this risk didn't think they had it - they thought they hedged it all away. As long as there's a perception of risk, and a culture of looking for risk, it's going to be hard to deflate us.

There's no risk in doing a lousy meditation or not meditating at all. There's no risk in being convenient and comfortable. There's a lot of risk in the world of enlightenment.

Innovation implies high risk, and with high risk comes failure, so you've got to be prepared for that, but if you don't risk, then your business goes stale very quickly.

Most people have an aversion to risk, my college economics professor told me. Which means they have to be rewarded to take on that risk. The higher the risk, the higher the possible payout has to be for people to jump.

Risk is the universe's way of pushing us to become more than what we are. Risk is faith at the edge. Risk is the pulsating nature of life.

If your friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 45 percent higher. ... If your friend's friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 25 percent higher. ... If your friend's friend's friend, someone you probably don't even know, is obese, your risk of obesity is 10 percent higher. It's only when you get to your friend's friend's friend's friends that there's no longer a relationship between that person's body size and your own body size.

Risk-taking, trust, and serendipity are key ingredients of joy. Without risk, nothing new ever happens. Without trust, fear creeps in. Without serendipity, there are no surprises.

To prefer paper to gold is to prefer high risk to lower risk, instability to stability, inflation to steady long term values, a system of very low grade performance to a system of higher, though not perfect performance.

"Risk means more things can happen than will happen." It is not standard deviation. It is not variability. It is this sense that the future events are highly variable and unknowable that gives us the best sense for risk.

The greatest risk is the risk of riskless living.

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

We need to risk, we need to dare to risk and fail greatly because that's the only way we grow.

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

You have to invest something [in your work]. If you don't risk something that really matters to you - like your integrity, or your pride, or your time, or your security, or your reputation - if you don't risk yourself, you can hear it right away.

If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.

You can try to please everyone and risk accomplishing nothing, or go for your dreams and risk pissing a few people off.

That's exactly what I'm driving at. 'Basterds' was interesting because it was, in a way, unfamiliar. I thought well, OK. Let's leave the comfort zone and just risk it. Why not? Because, exactly as you said, in a way, by taking that risk, I make up a little bit for my ignorance in the subject, or rather, the genre.

Do not accept principal risk while investing short-term cash: the greedy effort to earn a few extra basis points of yield inevitably leads to the incurrence of greater risk, which increases the likelihood of losses and severe illiquidity at precisely the moment when cash is needed to cover expenses, to meet commitments, or to make compelling long-term investments.

[C]ultivated risk-taking represents an 'experiment with trust' (in the sense of basic trust) which consequently has implications for an individual's self-identity. (...) In cultivated risk-taking, the encounter with danger and its resolution are bound up in the same activity, whereas in other consequential settings the payoff of chosen strategies may not be seen for years afterwards.

By creating the European Central Bank, the member states exposed their own government bonds to the risk of default. Developed countries that issue bonds in their own currency never default, because they can always print money. Their currency may depreciate, but the risk of default is absent.

You, (my meat-eating friends), put your health at risk – that’s your business. But animal-based diets put the land, the water, the air, a society’s collective health, and even our collective pharmaceutical resources at risk. That’s my business. That’s everyone’s business.

Options other than mastectomy include high risk surveillance and risk reduction. Surveillance is a combination of monthly self breast exam, annual mammography and whole breast screening ultrasound, annual breast MRI, and biannual clinical breast exam.

A life lesson for me is, how do you muster the courage to take on a new risk? Whether it's starting up a business or taking on a new project or expedition. I think the risks that we take are all relative to the risk-taker.

America's got to look after America again. That means taking a realistic appraisal of who is actually at risk in this country, not whining feminists, or whinging Black Lives Matter activists, but gay people and women at risk from Islam. Also, so people in this country who have been treated badly, lied to and lied about. An honest appraisal of who actually needs government attention in this country. And when all of that is done, then we can think about interfering elsewhere again.

I don't think I'm a risk-taker. I don't think any entrepreneur is. I think that's one of those myths of commerce. The new entrepreneur is more values-led: you do what looks risky to other people because that's what your convictions tell you to do. Other companies would say I'm taking risks, but that's my path - it doesn't feel like risk to me.

Risk is relative. And relative to the imminent planetary 'game over' neon sign that's starting to flicker above our children's heads, just as they are preparing for a full life ahead... now that's what you call risk!

Realize that sleeping on a futon when you're 30 is not the worst thing. You know what's worse, sleeping in a king bed next to a wife you're not really in love with but for some reason you married, and you got a couple kids, and you got a job you hate. You'll be laying there fantasizing about sleeping on a futon. There's no risk when you go after a dream. There's a tremendous amount to risk to playing it safe.

I agree with a lot of the points in Taleb's book, but I don't agree with many of his conclusions. It seems to me that he rightly points out that risk managers miss a lot of the risks, but the conclusion is that he draws, is that we should abandon risk management, whereas my conclusion is we should improve it.

It is so easy to close down to risk, to protect ourselves against change and growth. But no baby bird emerges without first destroying the perfect egg sheltering it. We must risk being raw and fresh and awkward. For without such openness, life will not penetrate us anew. Unless we are open, we will not be filled.

If we define risk as 'the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome,' inaction is the greatest risk of all.

A lot of people simply don't realize their potential because they're just so risk adverse. They just don't want to take the risk.

The art of banking is always to balance the risk of a run with the reward of a profit. The tantalizing factor in the equation is that riskier borrowers pay higher interest rates. Ultimate safety - a strongbox full of currency - would avail the banker nothing. Maximum risk - a portfolio of loans to prospective bankrupts at usurious interest rates - would invite disaster. A good banker safely and profitably treads the middle ground.

Fear is the single biggest barrier to creativity. Unless we're brave enough to risk looking foolish, we'll inevitably find ourselves sticking to the status quo. That fear is disabling, One of the things we need to do as business leaders is build and nurture cultures that encourage responsible risk taking so making mistakes is OK.

The risk presented by these lethal wastes is like no other risk, and we should not be expected to accept it or to project it into the future in order for manufacturers and utilities to make a dollar killing now.

I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon - if I can. I seek opportunity - not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed... It is my heritage...to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations, and to face the world boldly and say, this I have done.

The Englishman's strong point is his vigorous insularity; that of the American his power of adaptation. Each of these attitudes has its perils. The Englishman stands firmly on his feet, but he who merely does this never advances. The American's disposition is to step forward even at the risk of a fall.

In those who rest on their unshakable faith, pharisaism and fanaticism are the unmistakable symptoms of doubt which has been repressed. Doubt is not overcome by repression but by courage. Courage does not deny that there is doubt, but it takes the doubt into itself as an expression of its own finitude and affirms the content of an ultimate concern. Courage does not need the safety of an unquestionable conviction. It includes the risk without which no creative life is possible.

Not all activities are equal in this regard. Those that involve genuine concentration—studying a musical instrument, playing board games, reading, and dancing—are associated with a lower risk for dementia. Dancing, which requires learning new moves, is both physically and mentally challenging and requires much concentration. Less intense activities, such as bowling, babysitting, and golfing, are not associated with a reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s. (254)

The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world: two million people. One out of every eight prisoners in the world is an African American. We are warehousing people as a profit to shareholders or for benefits to communities that get to host federal prisons. It is modern slavery. The whole future of America's black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery.

Many people in this world do jobs that are dangerous and where their life is at risk and they feel that there is some kind of value to their job I guess that's how I feel about what I do. There is a social function to documentary photography that is very important and it requires people to take risks.

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.

There's always a chance that I might not walk away from a racetrack. I don't ever want to think about that, but I'm prepared if something happens. I hope that nothing ever does. That's definitely a risk. My wife understands that. I'm definitely at peace with what God wants me to do. I have a lot of faith in that.

If we could be freed from our aversion to loss, our whole outlook on risk would change.

All North Koreans know the risk of all their actions. Yeonmi Park grew up in North Korea and says watching outside videos changed her perspective of the world. She says, as a child, all she learned from watching state-run media was love for the Kim regime and North Korea.

So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.

Wit puts politicians at risk.

What's great is that the picture is already taken before it goes public. It's in secret. The trust that develops from such a habit engenders risk, and you realise you're not as vulnerable as you thought. Once you become comfortable with being more truthful about who you are, the easier it is, the prouder you become. That's the way it unfolded for us.