Risk Quotes

“An afternoon drive from Los Angeles will take you up into the high mountains, where eagles circle above the forests and the cold blue lakes, or out over the Mojave Desert, with its weird vegetation and immense vistas. Not very far away are Death Valley, and Yosemite, and Sequoia Forest with its giant trees which were growing long before the Parthenon was built; they are the oldest living things in the world. One should visit such places often, and be conscious, in the midst of the city, of their surrounding presence. For this is the real nature of California and the secret of its fascination; this untamed, undomesticated, aloof, prehistoric landscape which relentlessly reminds the traveller of his human condition and the circumstances of his tenure upon the earth. "You are perfectly welcome," it tells him, "during your short visit. Everything is at your disposal. Only, I must warn you, if things go wrong, don't blame me. I accept no responsibility. I am not part of your neurosis. Don't cry to me for safety. There is no home here. There is no security in your mansions or your fortresses, your family vaults or your banks or your double beds. Understand this fact, and you will be free. Accept it, and you will be happy.”
― Christopher Isherwood, Exhumations

“The word 'risk' derives from the early Italian risicare, which means 'to dare'. In this sense, risk is a choice rather than a fate. The actions we dare to take, which depend on how free we are to make choices, are what the story of risk is all about. And that story helps define what it means to be a human being.”
― Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

“If you risk nothing, then you risk everything.”
― Geena Davis

“You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty."

Levin nodded thoughtfully.

"The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“Doing risk sport had taught me another important lesson: never exceed your limits. You push the envelope and you live for those moments when you’re right on the edge, but you don’t go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live within your means.”
― Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

“Chirp of coward shouted in crowd,
dare to speak but not to be known.”
― Toba Beta

“To reach only for that which pleasantly enchants you is the least of imagination, if even imagination at all, by the obvious reality of remaining within your means. The greater of imagination is parallel to risk. It extends beyond your comfort zone or haven, or sense of beauty, or what you personally believe suits you in exploration of what may not.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I mean you're cute, but not that cute. Would Rhea really risk life in a maximum security detention unit just so that she could press herself against your manly body?”
― Malorie Blackman, Noble Conflict

“Risk is the factor of a stratagem measured by what man is powerless to control.”
― Mike Norton, White Mountain

“There are some who never try, get left behind, forever dying, they just sit it by on the sidelines while they criticize, hide and scrutinize; but then there are others who are tough enough, who stand to risk their wrongs, flying high, as they rise up in this life and thus, fight right through the lies.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“and I said, 'That is why you don't climb mountains, Gwen.' But now I wonder. You aren't afraid of heights."

"No", she said. "Not particularly."

"Only missteps."

She paused midstroke. Did he mean to imply this had been a misstep? "I was afraid," she said carefully. "For a very long time. But no longer."

"So was I," he said, and lifted her chin and kissed her.”
― Meredith Duran, Wicked Becomes You

“Deep Song


Belief is what
buries us—that

& the belief in belief—
No longer

do I trust liltlessness
—leeward

is the world's
way—Go on

plunge in
—the lungs will

let us float.
Joy is the mile-

high ledge
the leap—a breath

above the lip of the abandoned
quarry—belief

the dark the deep.”
― Kevin Young, Jelly Roll

“Security means the state of being free from danger or threat.

Danger means the possibility of suffering harm or injury. The possibility of something unwelcome or unpleasant happening.

There are times I have to stress as I express the correct, precise, real and honest definitions; so that the deceptive, politically motivated folks who destructively branded me as “threat to danger” would realise their double denial duplicity, dishonesty and hypocrisy.

Have you at least questioned the personal motives and faulty malicious and intentional misjudgment or at least be honestly curious to discern the motive of a cunning person who warns you against another as a danger, a threat or a risk to life or security?

Did the political harridan mean political threat to her political coalition or a danger to reveal the harridan's creative deception matched with her political ambitious power links? ~ Angelica Hopes, K.H. Trilogy”
― Angelica Hopes

“I recalled the afternoon when the two of us stood beating erasers, and Camille confided that she'd done penance for stories - stories that I'll never know if she wrote or only imagined writing. She'd wanted me to tell her a secret from my dreams, a secret from my dreams I hadn't had as yet, and so I didn't quite understand what she was after.
"It's about feeling," Camille had insisted.
I didn't understand then that she was talking about risk.”
― Stuart Dybek, I Sailed with Magellan

“Well.’ Maud handed me a bandage. 'That was the most foolish thing you’ve ever done.’
'Don’t joke. We both know it isn’t.”
― Linsey Miller, Ruin of Stars

“Never go into venture capital if you want a peaceful life.”
― Georges F. Doriot

“When you put your whole heart in something you risk just that. Your whole heart. It's a high roller's type of gamble. I can tell by your letters that you love with your whole heart.”
― Suzanne Hayes, I'll Be Seeing You

“Risk management seemed to have completed its transformation into pure entertainment. Dudley seemed the epitome of a risk manager who would drown crossing a river that was 12 inches in depth on average.”
― Satyajit Das, Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives

“Did if feel like jumping off a cliff when he kissed you? I imagine it did.”
― Suzanne Hayes, I'll Be Seeing You

“... although the future is not predictable in any detail, it is manageable as an aggregate phenomenon.”
― Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial

“You mean something like ‘truth or dare’? I haven’t played that in a long time.” She didn’t think he would ever get himself entangled in a game like that, but it was addictive, a compromising icebreaker featuring all the strategy of Poker, minus the cards, mixed with a dash of danger from Russian Roulette, without the revolver.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“Because what’s life
Without happiness
And where’s happiness
Without risk”
― Dennis Sharpe, Hole in the World

“Sung Win smiled to himself, enjoying the tension across his shoulders and the way his pulse beat in his veins. All life involved risk.”
― Conn Iggulden, Conqueror

“I recalled with some discomfort that the man driving the vehicle had invented the sport of volcano boarding, presumably as a way of solving, in one deft move, the problems of the insufficient riskiness of both snowboarding and hanging out on the slopes of active volcanoes. Although I was not sure that I wanted to live forever, I was sure that I didn’t want to go down in a blaze of chintzy irony, plunging into a ravine strapped into the passenger seat of a thing called the Immortality Bus.”
― Mark O'Connell, To Be a Machine : Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death

“If you are a sea level adapted human, then your health is at risk by working at the biologically toxic Mauna Kea Observatories.”
― Steven Magee

“Listen, darling, being old is risky. The rest of it is just a matter of tactics.”
― Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Plus

“Would you rather have a 100 percent chance nothing happens to your Stradivarius, or would you rather have music coming from your Stradivarius? You can’t have both.”
― Patrick Bringley

“But since you must fail, being human, it is better to fail in an excess of daring, than an excess of cowardice.”
― Aleister Crowley, Liber Aleph vel CXI: The Book of Wisdom or Folly

“Chasing the sun may burn you, but standing in the shadows will freeze your soul.”
― Shivanshu K. Srivastava

“In order for the turtle to move, it has to stick its neck out. There are going to be times in your life when you’re going to have to stick your neck out. There will be challenges. And instead of hiding in a shell, you have to go out and meet them.”
― Ruth Westheimer