795 Risk Quotes

Courage is poorly housed that dwells in numbers; the lion never counts the herd that are about him, nor weighs how many flocks he has to scatter.

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.

Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.

My problems aren't big but it doesn't necessarily take a big problem to kill me.

I've learned so much from my failures that I'm thinking of having some more.

Sometimes the only way you can win is to stay out of the game.

The surest way to remain a winner is to win once, and then not play any more.

If you never try anything new, you'll miss many of the world's great disappointments.

I don't know driving in another way which isn't risky. Each one has to improve himself. Each driver has its limit. My limit is a little bit further than other's.

It's going to be a season with lots of accidents, and I'll risk saying that we'll be lucky if something really serious doesn't happen.

My biggest error? Something that is to happen yet.

The danger sensation is exciting. The challenge is to find new dangers.

Don't let the fear of striking out hold you back.

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.

You don't need to pray to God any more when there are storms in the sky, but you do have to be insured.

There is a further advantage [to hydrogen bombs]: the supply of uranium in the planet is very limited, and it might be feared that it would be used up before the human race was exterminated, but now that the practically unlimited supply of hydrogen can be utilized, there is considerable reason to hope that homo sapiens may put an end to himself, to the great advantage of such less ferocious animals as may survive. But it is time to return to less cheerful topics.

In former days, men sold themselves to the Devil to acquire magical powers. Nowadays they acquire those powers from science, and find themselves compelled to become devils. There is no hope for the world unless power can be tamed, and brought into the service, not of this or that group of fanatical tyrants, but of the whole human race, white and yellow and black, fascist and communist and democrat; for science has made it inevitable that all must live or all must die.

The Smashing Pumpkins was never meant to be a small band. It was going to either be a big band, or a no band.

Well, me don't swim too tough so me don't go in the water too deep.

When you back off, it's easier to do mistakes. For me it's better to ski fast.

You can't talk of the dangers of snake poisoning and not mention snakes.

I think marriage is all about timing. Getting married is insanity; I mean, it's a risk - who knows if you're going to be together forever? But you both say, 'We're going to take this chance, in the same spirit.

You can't be happy that fire cooks your food and be mad it burns your fingertips.

The truth is always modern and there never comes a time when it is safe to give it voice.

They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.

For the love of God, folks, don't try this at home.

Fortune favors the audacious.

It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.

Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

Risk means guessing at the outcome, but never second-guessing.

'There are a few of us -madmen all! -who are in love with knowing, who would sell the last shirt from our backs for one small truth, one tiny star-fire to light up the murk and mystery of what we call our life: We may go blind before we see it, that's the haunting-'

'The hardest freedom to maintain is the freedom of making mistakes.'

He would wake up with a hundred ideas. Of them ninety-five were dangerous; three more were bad; the remaining two, however, were brilliant.

Consider that the turkey's experience may have, rather than no value, a negative value. It learned from observation, as we are all advised to do (hey, after all, this is what is believed to be the scientific method). Its confidence increased as the number of friendly feedings grew, and it felt increasingly safe even though the slaughter was more and more imminent. Consider that the feeling of safety reached its maximum when the risk was at the highest!

A casino is the only human venture I know where the probabilities are known.

It is now the scientific consensus that our risk-avoidance mechanism is not mediated by the cognitive modules of our brain, but rather by the emotional ones. This may have made us fit for the Pleistocene era. Our risk machinery is designed to run away from tigers; it is not designed for the information-laden modern world.

Never cross a river because it is on average 4 feet deep.

Ophelia was a circus queen the female cannonball projected through five flaming hoops to wild and shocked applause...

'A sparkle was in his eye, but his life was in his hand' - 'Tonights the Night'

Chomsky's morally impassioned and powerfully argued denunciation of American aggression in Vietnam and throughout the world is the most moving political document I have read since the death of Leon Trotsky. It is inspiring to see a brilliant scientist risk his prestige, his access to lucrative government grants, and his reputation for Olympian objectivity by taking a clearcut, no-holds-barred, adversary position on the burning moral-political issue of the day, and by castigating the complacent mythology of 'specialized expertise' under which many academic intellectuals shrug off the crimes committed by their government, only provided they are not naked enough (e.g., the Dominican intervention) to defy the most accomplished casuistry. --Raziel Abelson, April 20, 1967 [192]

Why is it relatively easy for a few armament makers to persuade 'men to go to war, to give their lives; and quite impossible for the much larger group who would benefit by another form of general destruction to persuade men to destroy their property? It is broadly, of course, because the folly of burning down houses is plain; the folly of the policies which lead to war is not so plain.

Man's greatest advances these last few generations have been made by the application of human intelligence to the management of matter. Now we are confronted by a more difficult problem, the application of intelligence to the management of human relations. Unless we can advance in that field also, the very instruments that man's intelligence has created may be the instruments of his destruction.

The next morning I sent Colonel Cook to Cromwell, to let him know that I had letters and instructions to him from the King. He sent me word by the same messenger, that he dared not see me, it being very dangerous to us both, and bid me be assured that he would serve his Majesty as long as he could do it without his own ruin; but desired that I should not expect that he should perish for his sake.

That means you, more than any of the others, stand to lose something truly beautiful and fine if we don't succeed in our endeavors.

The truth was that neither the first nor the second test proved anything. But if they thought it proved something, he was just as dead.

No one went broke underestimating public taste.

I got a call from my broker. The broker informed me I'm broke. I was dealing my last hand of poker. My cards were useless as smoke.

But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.

Hey don't lock and turn away lose your life today and follow me into the alleyway. ~ 'Simonize'

When you come back from your escape. Then I could follow you to hell. ~ 'Committed'

Just putting a tiny little ventilation hole in this oil tanker.

With drugs, I think the sort of person that would die from an overdose is gonna die soon enough anyway, because they've got that will to destroy what's left of their life.

All economic activity is by definition 'high risk.' And defending yesterday--that is, not innovating--is far more risky than making tomorrow. -- Innovations and Entrepreneurship (1985)

The better a man is, the more mistakes will he make--for the more new things he will try. I would never promote a man into a top level job who had not made mistakes, and big ones at that. Otherwise he is sure to be mediocre. -- The Practice of Management (1954)

The Michelangelos of this world are not to be imitated; it is too difficult, and too dangerous.

Le feu qui semble eteint souvent dort sous la cendre.

Many young poets, nowadays, are insured against everything. For them poetry is a game like court tennis or squash racquets - one they learned at college - and they play it with propriety, as part of their social and academic existence; their poems are occasional verse for which life itself is only one more occasion.

When playing Russian roulette the fact that the first shot got off safely is little comfort for the next.

Unless you're passing a bowling ball, I don't think so. Unless you're trying to circumsize yourself with a chainsaw, I don't think so. Unless you're opening an umbrella up your ass, I don't think so!

I'll never forget the time I tried Cocaine. Horrible experience. Of course, I was on Acid at the time... (Monologue from his Saturday Night Live appearance)

I arrive at the end of this review having done my duty as a critic. I have described the movie accurately and you have a good idea what you are in for if you go to see it. Most of you will not. I cannot argue with you. Some of you will--the brave and the curious. You embody the spirit of the man who first wondered what it would taste like to eat an oyster.

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

This could destroy Roman. Marriage vows mean nothing to him but few men have adored a woman as much as he adored Sharon.

As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change... There's a realization that we are changing our climate for the worse. That would have catastrophic effects. Although the threat is not as dire as that of nuclear weapons right now, in the long term we are looking at a serious threat.

The history of a species, or any natural phenomenon that requires unbroken continuity in a world of trouble, works like a batting streak. All are games of a gambler playing with a limited stake against a house with infinite resources. The gambler must eventually go bust. His aim can only be to stick around as long as possible, to have some fun while he's at it, and, if he happens to be a moral agent as well, to worry about staying the course with honor.

The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

Et immolantem haruspex Spurinna monuit, caveret periculum, quod non ultra Martias Idus proferretur.

This I have seen in life-those who are overcautious about themselves fall into dangers at every step; those who are afraid of losing honor and respect, get only disgrace; and those who are always afraid of loss, always lose.

When you're between any kind of devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea sometimes looks very inviting.

'I do not advocate burning your ship to get rid of the cockroaches'.

You follow your feelings, you follow your dreams. You follow the leader into the trees. And what's in there waiting, neither one of us knows, you gotta keep one eye open the further you go.

Look, I am selling records. This is what I do for a living. I am selling records. I never thought it was going to be a matter of life and death.

I live the life of a thug, Live it and Die for it!

'It's at least the devil that you know, as compared to the devils you don't.'

'I don't know about that suicidal crap.' (About Sabu)

Il vaut mieux hasarder de sauver un coupable que de condamner un innocent.

Il est dangereux d'avoir raison dans des choses ou des hommes accredites ont tort.

En aimant tant la gloire, comment pouvez-vous vous obstiner a un projet qui vous la fera perdre?

If you see a Swiss banker jumping out of a window, follow him, there is sure to be 10% profit in it.

I was doing Sorcerer's Apprentice with Mickey Mouse and I happened to have dinner on night with Leopold Stokowski. And Stokowski said, 'Oh, I'd love to conduct that for you.' ... Well, that led to not only doing this one little short subject but it got us involved to where I did all of Fantasia and before I knew it I ended up spending four hundred and some thousand dollars getting music with Stokowski. But we were in then and it was the point of no return. We went ahead and made it.

We must push forward now, otherwise we risk everything. Hurry yourself with the technical aspects, a lot of time has already been lost.

Well, then it is necessary to make the attempt, since the entire offensive has no more than a 10 per cent chance of success. It must be done, since this offensive is the last remaining chance to conclude the war favourably.

This country is merciless to good small talents. A writer who doesn't take chances and swing for the fences (whether or not he has a prayer of reaching them) is less than a man.

This sentence makes me hesitate. I contend to be a fighter for pureness and truth. I hesitate, because I am afraid of you and your attitude towards truth. To say the truth about you is dangerous to life.

We're going streaking!!!!

You should avoid needless and entangling engagements. You may boast about them, you may brag about them, you may say you are procuring consideration of the country. You may say that an Englishman may now hold up his head among the nations. But what does all this come to, gentlemen? It comes to this, that you are increasing your engagements without increasing your strength; and if you increase your engagements without increasing strength, you diminish strength, you abolish strength; you really reduce the empire and do not increase it. You render it less capable of performing its duties; you render it an inheritance less precious to hand on to future generations.

Without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a type of military character which every one feels that the race should never cease to breed, for everyone is sensitive to its superiority. The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military character in stock - if keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and as pure pieces of perfection, - so that Roosevelt's weaklings and mollycoddles may not end by making everything else disappear from the face of nature.

The problems we see today are going to be a hell of a lot worse in 10 years if we're not willing to face up to them. These kids are just not going to be absorbed into the economy, so what are they going to be doing? Well, we know. They're going to be making life pretty miserable for a lot of people.

Through the air on the flying trapeze, his mind hummed. Amusing it was, astoundingly funny. A trapeze to God, or to nothing, a flying trapeze to some sort of eternity; he prayed objectively for strength to make the flight with grace.