Risk quotes
2.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside risk — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Dragging out life to the last possible second is not living to the best effect. The nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat. The best of life, Passworthy, lies nearest to the edge of death."
"When you determine to risk a battle, reserve to yourself every possible chance of success, more particularly if you have to deal with an adversary of superior talent, for if you are beaten, even in the midst of your magazines and your communications, woe to the vanquished!"
"It's a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing nothing."
"We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price."
"It was obvious that their profits were simply cash borrowed from destiny with some random payback time."
"If you roll dice, you know that the odds are one in six that the dice will come up on a particular side. So you can calculate the risk. But, in the stock market, such computations are bull - you don't even know how many sides the dice have!"
"Whoever entered the political realm had first to be ready to risk his life, and too great a love for life obstructed freedom, was a sure sign of slavishness. Courage therefore became the political virtue par excellence."
"To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not - there is no weakness in that."
"The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed."
"If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained."
"One should never risk one's whole fortune unless supported by one's entire forces."
"A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold."
"I think people have got to understand when a murder is committed on British soil, when innocent people have been put at risk by the method that murder is committed then we expect authorities in other parts of the world to co-operate."
"To save all we must risk all."
"I cannot keep from talking, even at the risk of being instructive."
"As the U.S. trade deficit, and the portion of that deficit attributed to China, continue to grow, our own economy is at risk of losing its reputation as a leader in world trade."
"Should I become President...I will not risk American lives...by permitting any other nation to drag us into the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time through an unwise commitment that is unwise militarily, unnecessary to our security and unsupported by our allies."
"Classical music is at odds with contemporary culture precisely because of its insistence on the tension between the bodily and intellectual, the material and the spiritual, the thinglike and its transcendence in thought. A culture that is merely sensuous and that denies the activity of the mind within sensuous materials risks becoming pornographic."
"This is the risk: the primary word can only be spoken with the whole being. He who gives himself to it may withhold nothing of himself."
"Gossip is vice enjoyed vicariously - the sweet, subtle satisfaction without the risk."
