Quotes about risk (1278 quotes, page 4)

“This Treasury paper, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

As cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 50, ISBN 1586486389
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Reading

“Getting a job scared her but she was determined not to shy away from risk. That’s what life’s all about. Climbing out onto the airplane wing and jumping off.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

Life

“I've long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we're talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime 'associates,' food, for me, has always been an adventure.”

Anthony Bourdain book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Kitchen Confidential (2000)
Source: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Food

“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesberman/2014/04/20/the-three-essential-warren-buffett-quotes-to-live-by/ "The Three Essential Warren Buffett Quotes To Live By" forbes.com (20 April 2014)
Quotes from the press
Variant: Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

“Causes have a way of tainting your reason until a person takes much bigger risks than sanity would otherwise allow.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Keys to the Demon Prison

Way , Personality

“Women want the fairytale. Not all women, of course, but most women grow up dreaming about the kind of man who would risk everything for them, even knowing they might get hurt.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

Women , Dreams , Fairytale , Hurt

“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Hurtful , Love , Pain , Loss

“Many people have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Variant: People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.
Source: Diary

Love , People , Suffering

“If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.”

Philip Pullman book Clockwork

Source: Clockwork

Failure , Despair

“If you risked love, it took you wherever you wanted to go. If you repressed it, you ended up unhappy.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

Love

“I feel like I am floating in plasma
I need a teacher or a lover
I need someone to risk being involved with me.
I am so vain
and I am so masochistic.
How can they coexist?”

Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) American photographer

Feeling , Lovers , Teachers

“Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

For Team , Courageous , Graduation

“Love's easy to learn. It's like taking a risk. You set your mind on it and refuse to be afraid, and in no time you feel terrifically exhilarated and all your inhibitions fly out of the window.”

Dick Francis book Dead Cert

Source: Dead Cert (1962)

Love , Feeling , Learning , Time

“I wondered about the explorers who'd sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

World , Dreams

“The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.”

Christopher Hitchens Letters to a Young Contrarian

Source: Letters to a Young Contrarian

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 1, Opening introduction voice-over
The Power of Myth (1988)

God , World , Travel , Time

“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.”

Cara Lockwood (1973) American writer

Source: I Do -- But I Don't

Love

“Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Source: The Second Sex

Freedom

“And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer (1954) Canadian author

Love , Help

“We all want to break our orbits, float like a satellite gone wild in space, run the risk of disintegration. We all want to take our lives in our own hands and hurl them out among the stars.”

David Bottoms (1949) American writer

Star

“To trust someone is to take the greatest risk of all. (180)”

Jonathan Kellerman book Blood Test

Source: Blood Test

“If you focus on the risks, they'll multiply in your mind and eventually paralyze you. You want to focus on the task, instead, on doing what needs to be done.”

Barry Eisler (1963) American writer

“Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Christopher Hitchens vs. William Dembski, 18/11/2010 ( closing remarks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwgYYxfpPC0)
2010s, 2010
Context: When Socrates was sentenced to death, for his philosophical investigations and his blasphemy for challenging the Gods of the city and he accepted his death. He did say "well, if we're lucky perhaps I'll be able to hold a conversation with other great thinkers and philosophers and doubters too", in other words that the discussion about what is good, what is beautiful, what is noble and what is pure and what is true can always go on. Why is that important, why would I like to do that? Because that is the only conversation worth having. And whether it goes on or not after I die, I don't know, but I do know that it is the conversation I want to have while I am still alive. Which means that for me, the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can't give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don't know anything like enough yet. That I haven't understood enough, that I can't know enough, that I'm always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn't have it any other way. And I urge you to look at those of you that tell you (at your age) that that you are dead until you believe as they do. (What a terrible thing to be telling to children.) And that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority. Don't think of that as a gift, think of it as a poison chalice. Push it aside no matter how tempting it is. Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.

Wisdom , Truth , Beauty , Way

“Martin is your best friend, isn't he?' a sweet and well-intentioned girl once said when both of us were present: it was the only time I ever felt awkward about this precious idea, which seemed somehow to risk diminishment if it were uttered aloud.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: Hitch-22: A Memoir

Girl , Idea , Time

“I'm still prone to periods of isolation, still more fearful of the world out there and more averse to pleasure and risk than I'd like to be; I still direct more energy toward controlling and minimizing appetites than toward indulging them.”

Caroline Knapp (1959–2002) American writer

Source: Appetites: Why Women Want

Pleasure , World , Fear

“Adventure without risk is Disneyland.”

Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Deep , Friendship , Relationship , Valentine's Day

“There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.”

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer

Truth , World

“Can you cook and sew, make flowers grow, do you understand my pain? Are you willing to risk it all or is your love in vain?”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Love , Pain , Flowers , Understanding

“The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: Hitch-22: A Memoir

Women , Beauty

“The future is up for grabs. It belongs to any and all who will take the risk and accept the responsibility of consciously creating the future they want.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

Future

“Our time here is brief, our risk enormous. Don't waste the one or increase the other, if you please.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Time

“The world lies in the hands of those that have the courage to dream and who take the risk of living out their dreams - each according to his or her own talent.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

World , Dreams , Courage

“Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling down the gage of mortal battle. We called it rebellion; but we recognized it as courageous and manly to avow your purpose, take all the risks, and fight it out in the open field. Notwithstanding your utmost efforts to destroy it, the government was saved. Year by year, since the war ended, those who resisted you have come to believe that you have finally renounced your purpose to destroy, and are willing to maintain the government. In that belief you have been permitted to return to power in the two Houses.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1870s, Speech (1879)

War , Courage , Effort , Fight

“The more clearly we express it that the whole weight of our future victories will lie on our enemies, the more, in my opinion, will it tend to shorten the war. We have covered a considerable distance towards peace. The Entente no longer has any possibility of beating us economically. Do they think they can beat us militarily, now that our position in the West has become better that it ever was? If the statesmen of the Entente wanted understanding, they ought to have taken advantage of the situation now, when the Reich Chancellor has offered them the hand of understanding. They are playing a wanton game with their misguided peoples. Let the example of Russia be a warning to them. Russia, which offered us the hand of understanding, could have obtained a good peace of understanding if she had not risked this peace through the arrogance of Trotsky. May this struggle bring us victory, but may it also bring the benefits of this victory for Germany's future.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918

War , People , Lie , Peace

“Philip Tetlock has just produced a study which suggests we should view expertise in political forecasting--by academics or intelligence analysts, independent pundits, journalists or institutional specialists--with the same skepticism that the well-informed now apply to stockmarket forecasting… It is the scientific spirit with which he tackled his project that is the most notable thing about his book, but the findings of his inquiry are important and, for both reasons, everyone seriously concerned with forecasting, political risk, strategic analysis and public policy debate would do well to read the book.”

Philip E. Tetlock (1954) American political science writer

Paul Monk, Australian Financial Review, cited in: Philip E. Tetlock. Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, 2015. Back cover.
About

Books , Intelligence , Study , Reading

“Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Mere Christianity (1952)

God , Way , Freedom

“Leaders and managers do not have to risk lives, profit, or mission failure because they failed to plan for a crisis. Do not allow yourself to be put on the defense by changing circumstances. No one enjoys wasting time, but don't be reluctant to call a meeting just to discuss something that might happen. Remember the oil filter theory. Rather than disobey your instincts and proceed with the status quo or embark on a risky course, invest some planning time in your business. Control your risks. Identify important decision points. Forecast potential crisis. Apply the six hour model. A little time spent discussing your business is never wasted.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 74

Failure , Business , Decision , Change

“I can think of a few microorganisms, possibly the tubercle bacillus, the syphilis spirochete, the malarial parasite, and a few others, that have a selective advantage in their ability to infect human beings, but there is nothing to be gained, in an evolutionary sense, by the capacity to cause illness or death. Pathogenicity may be something of a disadvantage for most microbes, carrying lethal risks far more frightening to them than to us. The man who catches a meningococcus is in considerably less danger for his life, even without chemotherapy, than meningococci with the bad luck to catch a man.”

Lewis Thomas book The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

"Germs"
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

Life , Death , Bad luck , Thinking

“First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its particular economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), p. 117

Life , Intelligence , Optimism , Nature

“How did we become so intrigued by risk – and so worried about it at the same time?”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 47

Time

“The private ownership of great art, its seclusion from the general view of men and women, let alone from that of interested amateurs and scholars, is a curious business. The literal disappearance of a Turner or a Van Gogh into some Middle Eastern or Latin-American bank vault to be kept as investment and collateral, the sardonic decision of a Greek shipping tycoon to put an incomparable El Greco on his yacht, where it hangs at persistent risk — these are phenomena that verge on vandalism.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"The Cleric of Treason".
George Steiner: A Reader (1984)

Women , Men , Art , Business

“The experience was an exciting one for me. It illustrated that writing was about risk—about risking everything. And that the value of the writing is not in what you publish but in its consequences. If you set out to describe reality, then the influence of the writing is upon reality.”

Ryszard Kapuściński (1932–2007) Polish historian

A 1989 interview with Granta magazine founder Bill Buford. Reprinted in Adbusters Magazine #71.

Reality

“We have to recover those islands, we have to recover them for the people on them are British and British stock and they still owe allegiance to the Crown and want to be British. We have to do what is necessary to recover those islands…When you stop a dictator there are always risks but there are great risks in not stopping a dictator. My generation learned that a long time ago.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

TV Interview for ITN (5 April 1982) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104913 regarding the Falkland Islands
First term as Prime Minister

People , Learning , Time

“Believe me, Ginger was great. She contributed her full fifty percent in making them such a great team. She could follow Fred as if one brain was thinking. She blended with his every step and mood immaculately. He was able to do dances on screen that would have been impossible to risk if he hadn't had a partner like Ginger - as skillful as she was attractive.”

Ginger Rogers (1911–1995) American actress and dancer

Edward Everett Horton to Dick Richards. Ginger - Salute to a Star, p. 162.
About

Mood , Thinking , Dance

“If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss.”

Rudyard Kipling book The Second Jungle Book

Stanza 3.
The Second Jungle Book (1895), If— (1896)

Loss

“The ultimate guide to decision should be our estimate at the time of the nature and extent of the American interest. There may be good reasons to use our resources to resist a troublemaking power which commits aggression against a weak and friendly state if the subversion of that state would be a significant gain to the troublemaker or a significant loss to us. Even then, we should have a reasonably accurate and encouraging estimate of the chances of success before we act. We cannot afford to stake our world standing on a lost cause or on one with unduly high risks of failure.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: Responsibility and Response (1967), p. 49

World , Failure , Nature , Decision

“Sexual dysfunction often plays a key role in risk management by couples over time. It seems crucial not to get too excited about the other, and diminished excitement serves the purposes at once of self-protection and revenge. I was once excited about you, the diminished arousal seems to be expressing, but there is not much to get excited about now. Often lovers work together to pretend they are safer (even if also a bit sadder) over time, by collapsing their expectations of each other in collusively arranged, choreographed routine. Each feels the other is less exciting because of being so familiar and predictable. And each acts towards the other in as wholly and artificially predictable a fashion as possible. But, of course, lowering expectations also empties out passion. No risk, no gain.”

Stephen Mitchell (1946–2000) American psychologist

Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 143

Feeling , Lovers , Fashion , Revenge

““It’s a Texan’s attitude toward risk, reward and failure I’m talking about. It’s how they handle life. They live it big.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Life , Failure

“To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. Judging by Mr. Greenspan's remarkably cheerful recent testimony, he still thinks he can pull that off. But the Fed chairman's crystal ball has been cloudy lately; remember how he urged Congress to cut taxes to head off the risk of excessive budget surpluses? And a sober look at recent data is not encouraging.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Dubya's Double Dip?" http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html, The New York Times, 2 August 2002
:It should be noted that Krugman was being sarcastic http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/when-someone-says-paul-krugman-called-for-greenspan-to-create-a-housing-bubble-back-in-2002-they-are-trying-to-say-that-they-are-either-a-fool-or-a-liar; two weeks later, he wrote an article http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/16/opinion/mind-the-gap.html warning about the dangers of a housing bubble.
The New York Times Columns

Business , Thinking , Fight , Housing

“Since we cannot completely eliminate existential risk — at any moment, we might be tossed into the dustbin of cosmic history by the advancing front of a vacuum phase transition triggered in some remote galaxy a billion years ago — the use of maximin in the present context would entail choosing the action that has the greatest benefit under the assumption of impending extinction. Maximin thus implies that we ought all to start partying as if there were no tomorrow. That implication, while perhaps tempting, is implausible.”

Nick Bostrom (1973) Swedish philosopher

Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority http://www.existential-risk.org/concept.html (2012)

History

“I never believed, as many Marxists professed to do, that normative principles were irrelevant to the socialist movement, that, since the movement was of oppressed people fighting for their own liberation, there was no room or need for specifically moral inspiration in it. I thought no such thing partly for the plain reason that I observed enormous selfless dedication among the active communists who surrounded me in my childhood, and partly for the more sophisticated reason that the self-interest of any oppressed producer would tell him to stay at home, rather than to risk his neck in a revolution whose success or failure would be anyhow unaffected by his participation in it. Revolutionary workers and, a fortiori, bourgeois fellow-travellers without a particular material interest in socialism, must perforce be morally inspired.”

Gerald Cohen (1941–2009) Canadian philosopher

G. A. Cohen, Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality https://books.google.com/books?id=oeUQjOLNY-wC&pg=PA3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3

People , Travel , Home , Failure

“Ministers who deal with billions of dollars cannot be paid low salaries without risking a system malfunction. Low salaries will not attract able men who are or can be successful in their professions or business. Low salaries will draw in the hypocrites who sweet talk their way into power in the name of public services, but once in charge will show their true colour, and ruin the country. This has happened in many countries.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

SM Lee Kuan Yew, Speech to the National Trade Union Congress at the Singapore Conference Hall, 19 July 1996 https://fcpp.org/pdf/SPEECH%20BY%20MR%20LEE%20KUAN%20YEW%202004.pdf
1990s

Men , Way , Business , Success

“Over this period many issues have been clarified. Today we know very much more about these twenty-seven short writings from a little religious sub-culture in the Roman empire than ever before. Nevertheless, they risk being forgotten - partly because the link with the Christian history which they have influenced has been broken, partly because many of our educated contemporaries come from other religious and cultural traditions, and partly because the results of historical-critical research are so complex that many people are deterred from trying to grasp them.”

Gerd Theissen (1943) German theologian

Preface
The New Testament : History, Literature, Religion (2003)

People , Education , History

“It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative; it is not till the second or third thought that doubt begins. Belief is so vital and necessary that one would say the tendency was made strong at the perpetual risk of extra belief and superstition; it were better to believe too much than not enough. Hence mankind have always believed too much, as if to make sure that the anchor hold. To believe just enough, to free his mind from all cant and from all illusion, and see things just as in themselves they are, is the aim of the philosopher or of the true skeptic.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. VII: The Modern Skeptic

Nature , Strong

“And let's not make any mistake, or gloss over that fact: Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are at risk every day of their lives. Not only are we the group most at risk of violence, we are most at risk of job discrimination, losing our families; homophobia retains its title as the last socially acceptable form of bigotry.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me

People , Family

“[T]wo moments, of trance and struggle, mingle in the real life of societyː an undercurrent of conflict and disbelief always counteracts the routines of dependence and deference. Society, no matter how impregnable it seems to its inhabitants, always stands at the edge of the cliff. The petty practical quarrels and normative disputes, endlessly refought to reproduce a social world in the face of divergent interests and changing circumstance, can escalate at any moment into broader and more intense conflicts that put this world at risk.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Social Theoryː Its Situation and Its Task (1987), p. 205

Life , World , Change , Dependency

“What I am saying is that it is not so much what man is that counts as it is what he ventures to make of himself. To make the leap he must do more than disclose himself; he must risk a certain amount of confusion. Then, as soon as he does catch a glimpse of a different kind of life, he needs to find some way of overcoming the paralyzing moment of threat, for this is the instant when he wonders who he really is - whether he is what he just was or is what he is about to be. Adam must have experienced such a moment.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Variant: What I am saying is that it is not so much what man is that counts as it is what he ventures to make of himself. To make the leap he must do more than disclose himself; he must risk a certain amount of confusion. Then, as soon as he does catch a glimpse of a different kind of life, he needs to find some way of overcoming the paralyzing moment of threat, for this is the instant when he wonders who he really is - whether he is what he just was or is what he is about to be. Adam must have experienced such a moment.
Source: The Language of Hypothesis, 1964, p. 158

Life , Way

“I started Live Action with some school friends of mine when I was 15 years old because I knew of no other group in my hometown of San Jose that was educating my peers about abortion as a human rights abuse, about the dignity of children in the womb, and about the risks of abortion to women. I felt passionately that if people knew the facts, they would become pro-life. I also was convicted: I had been given life, I knew how precious life was, but there were children close to me, in my own city, who were not protected.”

Lila Rose (1988) American anti-abortion activist

An Interview with Anti-Abortion Activist Lila Rose http://www.dailywire.com/news/1193/interview-anti-abortion-activist-lila-rose-pardes-seleh (November 18, 2015)

Life , Women , Children , People

“And there you see the risk of automata,” Fox replied. “They are all well and good as amusements, I grant you. But when they are built to perform the work of men, surely this must result in the atrophy of the mental processes they replace.”

David D. Levine (1961) science fiction writer

Source: Arabella and the Battle of Venus (2017), Chapter 5, “Navigation” (p. 71)

Men

“If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

“In the long run, though, the greatest IT risk facing most companies is more prosaic than a catastrophe. It is, simply, overspending. IT may be a commodity, and its costs may fall rapidly enough to ensure that any new capabilities are quickly shared, but the very fact that it is entwined with so many business functions means that it will continue to consume a large portion of corporate spending.”

Nicholas Carr (1959) American writer

Why IT Doesn't Matter Anymore http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3520.html, Harvard Business Review, June 9, 2003.

Business

“"Arrh! Stars and Mud, ever conjugate, a Paradox to consider, — one…for the Astronomer-Royal, perhaps?" His current scheme being, to assail Maskelyne's Sanity, by now and then posing to him Questions that will not bear too much cogitating upon, — most lately, Über Bernouillis Brachistochronsprobleme, 1702 by Baron von Boppdörfer ("Mind like a Spanish Blade. Read it at the Risk of your Self-Esteem.") having almost done the Trick.”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

Source: Mason & Dixon (1997), Chapter 74

Star , Question , Reading

“Nowhere have REH’s epistemological flaws and empirical disappointments been more apparent than in efforts to model financial market outcomes, which are largely driven by participants’ expectations. Beginning with Robert Shiller’s (1981) pathbreaking paper, research has shown that REH models are unable to explain the basic features of fluctuations and risk in stock markets. Likewise, in their magisterial work on the current state of international macroeconomics, Maurice Obstfeld and Kenneth Rogoff (1996: 625) concluded that “the undeniable difficulties that international economists encounter in empirically explaining nominal exchangerate movements are an embarrassment, but one shared with virtually any other field that attempts to explain asset price data.” The failures of REH explanations of aggregate outcomes gave rise to alternative approaches, most notably behavioral finance models. However, sober assessments even by the likes of Obstfeld and Rogoff did not dispel the faith of most economists that REH models would one day be able to explain financial market outcomes and macroeconomic performance.”

Roman Frydman (1948) American economist

"Which Way Forward for Macroeconomics and Policy Analysis?" 2013

Faith , Disappointment , Behavior , Failure

“It’s as if I drifted into this situation. I didn’t ever think about fighting or doing anything risky at all, not until the war came along. I agreed it was necessary, but that seemed obvious; everybody thought so, everybody I knew, anyway. And volunteering, agreeing to take part; that too seemed… natural. I knew I might die, but I was prepared to risk that; it was almost romantic. Somehow it never occurred to me that it might entail privation and suffering. Am I as stupid as those throughout history—those I’ve always despised and pitied—who’ve marched off to war, heads full of noble notions and expectations of easy glory, only to die screaming and torn in the mud?”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“Descendant” (p. 40)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

War , Stupidity , History , Nature

“The fact is that middle managers have an effective veto power over whatever risk management system is created. If they don't buy it, it won't happen.”

Adrian Slywotzky (1951) American economist

Adrian J. Slywotzky, ‎Karl Weber (2007) The Upside: The 7 Strategies for Turning Big Threats into Growth Breakthroughs. Crown Business, London. p. 219.

“Investigative practice therefore constitutes an area of considerable anxiety within the discipline of psychology. Concern with questions of methodological orthodoxy often takes the place of concern about theoretical orthodoxy when research or its results are discussed and evaluated. These preoccupations with the purity of method frequently deteriorate to a kind of method fetishism or "methodolatry." From this point of view there may be something distinctly subversive about the suggestion that the sphere of methodology is not a realm of pure reason but an area of human social activity governed by mundane circumstances like any other social activity. Nevertheless, the consequences of this suggestion should be explored, for not to do so exposes one to all the risks entailed by a naive and self-deluded style of scientific practice.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research. 1994, p. 5-6

Question

“Culture is worth a little risk.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

As quoted in "The Poetic License to Kill" by Lance Morrow, in TIME magazine (1 February 1982) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,955021,00.html

“Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book Wakefield

"Wakefield" (1835) from Twice Told Tales (1837, 1851)

World , Fear

“Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

On Manners and Fashion
Essays on Education (1861)

“The risks attendant upon change may have to be weighed against other risks arising from maintaining the same state of affairs.”

Tom Burns (1913–2001) British sociologist

Source: The Management of Innovation, 1961, p. 21

Change

“However incumbent it may be on most of us to do our duty, there is, in spite of a thousand narrow dogmatisms, nothing in the world that anyone is under the least obligation to like — not even (one braces one's self to risk the declaration) a particular kind of writing.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Flaubert (1893).

World

“Men, I say, never did believe idle songs, never risked their soul's life on allegories: men in all times, especially in early earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Life , Men , Soul , Time

“Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else.”

A.J.P. Taylor (1906–1990) Historian

"The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett", p. 14
The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939 (1957)

Love , People , Change , Past

“In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

The Arrow of Gold http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/argld10h.htm (1919), Author's note,

Memory

“With good reason, Voznesensky is a hero to all those in the Soviet Union who want their poets to tell them the truth. But at the risk of his career, freedom, and perhaps even his life, he has never been able to do much more than drop hints.”

Andrey Voznesensky (1933–2010) Soviet poet

Clive James From the Land of Shadows (London: Picador, 1983) p. 222.
Criticism

Life , Truth , Freedom

“As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1960s, Farewell address (1961)

Democracy , Loss , Future

“Very quickly I fell in with others like me—newcomers, dreamers, young people drawn to the city in spite of its dangers because sometimes, for some of us, tedium and familiarity feel worse than risking your life.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Broken Kingdoms

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 4 “Frustration” (watercolor) (p. 71)

Life , People , Feeling

“On the longest of timescales, over millions of years, the workings of chance defied human intuition. Humans were equipped with a subjective consciousness of risk and improbability suitable for creatures with a lifespan of less than a century or so. Event that came much less frequently than that—such as asteroid impacts—were place, in human minds, in the category not of rare, but of never. But the impacts happened even so, and to a creature with a lifespan of, say, ten million years, would not have seemed so improbable at all.
Given enough time even such unlikely events as ocean crossings from Africa to South America would inevitably occur, over and again, and would shape the destiny of life.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 6 “The Crossing” section IV (p. 185)

Life , Chance , Time

“The spiral model presented in this article is one candidate for improving the software process model situation. The major distinguishing feature of the spiral model is that it creates a risk-driven approach to the software process rather than a primarily document-driven or code-driven process. It incorporates many of the strengths of other models and resolves many of their difficulties.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Source: A spiral model of software development and enhancement. (1988), p. 61

“Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be. We also tend to exaggerate our ability to forecast the future, which fosters overconfidence. In terms of its consequences for decisions, the optimistic bias may well be the most significant cognitive bias. Because optimistic bias is both a blessing and a risk, you should be both happy and wary if you are temperamentally optimistic.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think (Part 1): Daniel Kahneman, bloomberg.com, 24 October 2011, 15 May 2014 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-24/bias-blindness-and-how-we-truly-think-part-1-daniel-kahneman.html,
"Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think" (2011)

World , Decision , Future , Happiness

“Most of us would rather risk catastrophe than read the directions.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Reading

“I have no right to risk. No, that's not quite correct. I have no right to failure. And I don't trust myself anymore. I don't know what's happened to my edge. Lost it in a strange land.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)

Failure

“I well remember that around 1874, Duret, who is above reproach, Duret himself said to me with all sorts of circumlocutions that I was on the wrong track, that everyone thought so, including my best friends… I admit that when alone, with nobody to prompt me, I reproached myself similarly, - I plumbed myself, - decision was terribly hard. - Should I, yes or no, persevere [or seek] another way? I concluded in the affirmative, I took into account the risks of the unknown, and I was right to stick.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, Paris, 9 May 1883, in a letter to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, pp. 30-31
Duret in letters urged Pissarro to abandon the impressionist group and to try to be admitted to the official Salon where his work would be seen by forty thousand people. Duret advises him to make 'paintings which have a subject, something resembling composition, pictures not too freshly painted' (from note 1. John Rewald)
1880's

Way , Decision , Perseverance

“I risked my life. I came back and wore the ribbons and medals that my commanding officer told me to wear. And now you have the audacity to challenge me after serving this country? You sleep under a blanket of freedom that I helped provide. You should just say thank you.”

Michael Grimm (1970) American politician

To Michael Allegretti, Inside City Hall, NY1, (3 September 2010). http://www.wnyc.org/story/103786-mr-incredible-goes-washington-nycs-michael-grimm/
2010s

Life , Sleep , Freedom , Help

“Picasso.... the master.... being a master: 'I don't search, I find' [a famous quote of Picasso, where he criticize the 'searching' artists].. the master, the mastery.... Producing, producing... He [Picasso! ] only knows how to work, can’t do anything else. What lost souls!... The great risk is producing for its own sake. You must never force things. You just have to wait.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

31 October 1966; p. 59
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Quotes , Soul , Search , Waiting

“Our greatest asset is the one we distrust the most: the built-in antifragility of certain risk-taking systems.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 171

“Ever since 1953, when Russell Kirk produced its intellectual coat of arms, conservatism has been "what Edmund Burke wrote." This is the equivalent of Arthur Danto’s institutional theory of art—art is whatever the art world says it is. But it’s also a cop-out. Instead of analyzing conservatism in an Aristotelian way, instead of asking how we use the term in real life, we just describe Burke. In the process, don’t we risk fleeing into what Tanenhaus calls an "alternative universe"? If conservatives are "glaringly disconnected from the realities now besetting America," as Tanenhaus says, why is the solution to be more like a man who wore a powdered wig? Liberals have problems of their own, but, to their credit, they don’t sit around debating whether Hillary Clinton or John Edwards is the "real Rousseauian."”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Conservatism Turned Upside Down: Sam Tanenhaus' Critique of Conservative Reason (2009)

Life , World , Art , Way

“On oilrigs men who only work an 8-hour day are contemptuously called nine-to-fivers. In stark contrast, women are more likely not to take risks, even when the risks are minimal. What's the message to our sons? Our praise of our sons when they risk physical danger teaches them that a willingness to be physically abused creates love. Abuse-as-love? Yes.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 39.

Love , Women , Men

“The vast majority of Europeans always believed that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was more tolerable than the risk of removing him. But Americans, being stronger, developed a lower threshold of tolerance for Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction.”

Robert Kagan book Of Paradise and Power

Of Paradise and Power, p. 31

“That thing doesn’t care about you. It won’t reward you when you take risks. It is simply indifferent. That’s the fact about it that most never learn. They hate it and fear it and finally ignore it. Because of that. It would be easier if it hated us. Maybe even if it hunted us. But it doesn’t care. Remember.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Part 2 “Aleph”, Chapter 2 (p. 51)
Against Infinity (1983)

Hate , Fear , Learning , Indifference

“The landlords are receiving eight millions a year by way of royalties. What for? They never deposited the coal in the earth. It was not they who planted these great granite rocks in Wales. Who laid the foundations of the mountains? Was it the landlord? And yet he, by some divine right, demands as his toll—for merely the right for men to risk their lives in hewing these rocks—eight millions a year.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 153-154.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Men , Way , Mountain