Quotes about risk

“So. Tell me. What do you think? Which is better? To take action and perhaps make a fatal mistake - or to take no action and die slowly anyway?”

Logic was good, but too much logical analysis inhibited action. Darya had heard it seriously suggested that the original human cladeworld, Earth, had degenerated to an ineffectual backwater of a planet because computer trade-off analysis had increasingly been used as the basis for decision making. On purely logical grounds, no one would ever explore, invent, rejoice, sing, strive, fall in love, or take physical and psychological risks of any kind. Better to stay in bed in the morning; it was much safer.

Once you were committed to a course of action, you didn’t waste your time looking back and second-guessing the decision, because every action in life was taken on the basis of incomplete information. You looked at what you had, and you did all you could to improve the odds; but at some point you had to roll the dice—and live or die with whatever you had thrown.

When you worked in a profession whose tools included guns and bombs, death was always on the menu; only a matter of time until the order you placed arrived...

It wasn’t a death wish. It was a see-how-close-you-can-get-and-live wish.

There is no such thing as free lunch, and even if there were, there’d be no guarantee against indigestion.

Ride at any fence hard enough, and the chances are you’ll get over. The harder you ride the heavier the fall, if you get a fall; but the greater the chance of your getting over.

Who dares wins—if he does not perish. And who wins also makes himself irresistibly desirable and attractive, not least because of the development of character that adventure inevitably produces. And this is what makes us forever more than rabbits.

Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life?

“There’re all kinds of people in this world. But they break down into two main groups, one big and one smaller. There’s the people who get moved out of the way or into line, and then there’s the people who do the moving. It’s safer and a lot more comfortable to go where you’re pushed. You don’t take any of the responsibility, and if you do what you’re told, every once in a while you get thrown a fish.

“Being a mover isn’t safe, because you may be heading for a hole, and it isn’t comfortable because you do a lot of jostling back and forth, and what’s more, it’s up to you to get your own fish. But it’s a hell of a lot of fun.” He looked into Hawks’ eyes. “Isn’t it?”

I would rather do a dangerous job than a job that makes me comatose with boredom.

To come out from under the protective wall of role, habit, and frozen perception, a person must throw himself into a situation of heightened exposure. He must put himself at greater risk to the harm that other people may do to him and to the destructive influence that enlarged experience may have on what he had previously regarded as his enduring core of identity.