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Sep 10, 2025
Most innovators are successful to the extent to which they define risks and confine them.
I think people are much more concerned about money now. There aren't the big advances of the past. You feel the sense of nervousness about the book industry. It's not like before. Not that I knew very much about what it was like because I was a newcomer to it, but I get that feeling that people are more conservative in their book choices and what they are going to publish and what's a sure sell. As opposed to - just like in the economy - a sense of luxury and sense of risk taking ten years ago.
Pressure to produce over the short term - a gun to the head of everyone - encourages excessive risk taking which manifests itself in several ways - fully invested posture at all times, the use of leverage, and a market centric orientation that makes it difficult to stand apart from the crowd and take a long term perspective.
I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.
Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can and surely will at times fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying, too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.
Strategic planning is the continuous process of making present entrepreneurial (risk-taking) decisions systematically and with the greatest knowledge of their futurity; organizing systematically the efforts needed to carry out these decisions; and measuring the results of these decisions against the expectations through organized, systematic feedback.
Sometimes I feel an obligation to be accessible as a personality, but for me the driving force since the beginning has always been good work, taking risks, trying new things. If the door opens, go through it. Always go forwards.
I hope progressive ways of thinking will permeate the "mainstream" more and more in the coming years. Goddess knows we have endured a very long spell (thirty plus years) of regressive thinking and hyper conservativism dominating our culture and national discourse. It necessitates risk taking and rule breaking by people in all walks of life to swing that pendulum back though.
Have courage and a little willingness to venture and be defeated.
If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.
You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.
What leaders have to remember is that somewhere under the somnolent surface is the creature that builds civilizations, the dreamer of dreams, the risk taker. And remembering that, the leader must reach down to the springs that never dry up, the ever-fresh springs of the human spirit.
There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth.
Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?
Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
You can measure opportunity with the same yardstick that measures the risk involved. They go together.
If you give up on your dreams, what's left?
It is better to risk starving to death then surrender. If you give up on your dreams, what's left?
You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is.
Do the hardest thing on earth for you. ACT YOURSELF.
Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do.
Our lives improve only when we take chances.
Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
A risk-taking environment starts at the top of a corporation. If the CEO doesn't have this spirit, chances are you won't find it anywhere else in the organization.
America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can't be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products.
The biggest risk is not taking any risk.
The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.
Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.
The greatest hazard in life is to risk NOTHING.
You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks.
The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!
Failure is a badge of honor. It means you risked failure. And if you don’t risk failure, you’re never going to do anything that’s different from what you’ve already done or what somebody else has done.
[High income tax rates] not only check consumption but discourage investment and encourage...the avoidance of taxes [rather] than the production of goods.[...]Our present tax system...reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking.
I honestly think vulnerability is a beautiful thing: it's tenderness, authenticity, and risk-taking. It means you're living a life where the stakes are high and you are continuing to push your own boundaries and learn new things. It keeps you flexible and young.
The best approach here, if at all possible, is to use supervisory and regulatory methods to restrain undue risk-taking and to make sure the system is resilient in case an asset-price bubble bursts in the future.
Icelandic people are inbred. And they have a sense of themselves as genetically special, and a history of risk-taking because they make their living on the high seas fishing. Assets generally rose in value during this period, and so it looked like they actually knew what they were doing.
Without a vision there is no possibility of creating something larger than what al-ready exists. An entrepreneur has to be able to bring something to the table through his or her vision that is not being provided by others - a special way of meeting needs, caring for others, treating patients, or marketing. An entrepreneur must have enormous faith. Risk-taking is critical to the development of an enterprise. You will not take risks unless you have the faith to do so.
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult
It is not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.
It is not the critic who counts
Do one thing every day that scares you.
If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.