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.

If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world.

Fire is the best of servents; but what a master!

Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.

There's no such thing as security in this life, sweetheart; and the sooner you accept that fact, the better off you'll be. The person who strives for security will never be free. The person who believes that she's found security will never reach paradise. What she mistakes for security is purgatory. You know what purgatory is, Gwendolyn? It's the waiting room, it's the lobby. Not only does she have the wrong libretto, she's stuck in the lobby where she can't see the show.

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all to prudent.

Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair? [citation needed]

Courage is the main quality of leadership, in my opinion, no matter where it is exercised. Usually it implies some risk - especially in new undertakings. Courage to initiate something and to keep it going, pioneering and adventurous spirit to blaze new ways, often, in our land of opportunity.

To some people, I am a kind of Merlin who takes lots of crazy chances, but rarely makes mistakes. I've made some bad ones, but fortunately, the successes have come along fast enough to cover up the mistakes. When you go to bat as many times as I do, you're bound to get a good average. That's why I keep my projects diversified.

When we opened Disneyland, a lot of people got the impressions that it was a get-rich-quick thing, but they didn't realize that behind Disneyland was this great organization that I built here at the Studio, and they all got into it and we were doing it because we loved to do it... We did it, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster - closed and forgotten within the first year.

Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honoured by the name of 'speculation'; but which ought to be called Gambling.

Liberals were intimidated by the Reagan administration and did not want to appear naive by talking about programs that called for government support. I just said, 'The hell with that. I'm out there. I'm exposed with this book.'

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent, or arrogant Commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations - all take their seats at the Council Board on the morrow of a declaration of war. Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.

The most dangerous moment of the War, and the one which caused me the greatest alarm, was when the Japanese Fleet was heading for Ceylon and the naval base there. The capture of Ceylon, the consequent control of the Indian Ocean, and the possibility at the same time of a German conquest of Egypt would have closed the ring and the future would have been black. (1942-04-05)

The other team could make trouble for us if they win.

You do not examine legislation in light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

...only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.

...in the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.

It is always easier to get forgiveness than permission

If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved

Fortune favours the brave:

Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new - North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination - piece of machinery so to speak - compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision.

The chief danger in life is taking too many precautions.

You must wager; it is not optional... Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God exists... If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

If God does not exist, one will lose nothing by believing in him, while if he does exist, one will lose everything by not believing.

Now some guys they just give up living and start dying little by little piece by piece. Some guys come home from work and wash up And go racing in the streets. Tonight, tonight the strip's just right, I wanna blow 'em all out of their seats. We're callin' out around the world, we're going racin' in the street.

'I do not intend to tip-toe through life only to arrive safely at death.'

I know what you're thinkin' punk, you're thinkin': 'Did he fire six shots, or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Who calls a lawyer rogue, may find, too late Upon one of these depends his whole estate.

A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things.

Something must be left to chance; nothing is sure in a sea fight above all.

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

And a wandering beauty is a blade out of its scabbard. You know how dangerous, gentlemen of threescore? May you know it yet ten more.

The profession of book-writing makes horse-racing seem like a solid, stable business.

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.

Anyway, there's plenty of room for doubt. It might seem easy enough, but computer language design is just like a stroll in the park. Jurassic Park, that is.

The greatest risk is risking nothing at all.

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt. But people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents. People die everyday. Same with fighters, some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just dont let yourself believe it will happen to you.

[U]nlike a well-defined, precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality.

'The same thing that makes you live can kill you in the end.' - 'From Hank to Hendrix'

The fact that now we know well that there is proliferation of nuclear weapons and that many of the weapons that Saddam Hussein had, for example, we do not know where they are, so that means the terrorists have access to all that.

We can no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the book of Revelation, or any of the other fantastical notions that have lurked in the minds of the faithful for millennia-because our neighbors are now armed with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.[2]

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

Put your money where your mouth is Then we can get something going In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime And leave one or two cards showing.

Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose.

I say we are here in human form to learn by the human hieroglyphs of love and suffering. There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without reserve or defense.

Publish and be damned.

You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety

There can be no freedom without freedom to fail. page 80, Buccaneer Books edition (1990) ISBN 0899667481 172 pages total

I think... I would rather recollect a life misspent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt

Thus, Statesman-like, I'll saucily impose, And, safe from Danger, valiantly advise; Sheltered in Impotence, urge you to Blows, And, being good for nothing else, be Wise.

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)

There always comes a time in history when the person who dares to say that 2+2=4 is punished by death. And the issue is not what reward or what punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not 2+2=4.

'If you make one mistake, it's half a day out with the undertaker.'

I've learned many things from him, but perhaps the most significant is that it's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong.

The measure may be thought bold, but I am of the opinion the boldest are the safest.

I thought you said you liked this kid. 'If the buggers get him, they'll make me look like his favorite uncle.' 'All right. We're saving the world, after all. Take him.'

Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.