Risk Taking Quotes

"Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.

— Tom Peters

"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!"

— General George S. Patton, Jr.

"Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

— Mark Twain

"People will rise to meet seemingly insurmountable obstacles and challenges if they understand the worthiness of the personal sacrifices and effort. Supporting that understanding must be mentors who provide leadership; without both ingredients, a cause will go unrealized and a mission is likely to fail."

— Glenn R. Jones
Creating a Leadership Organization with a Learning Mission in The Organization of the Future

"This the world of white water where we have to change to survive; where we have to develop to thrive; and, paradoxically, where the very act of change increases the risk that we won't survive."

— Randall White, Phillip Hodgson and Stuart Crainer
The Future of Leadership: A White Water Revolution

"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."

— Helen Keller

"All of life is on the wire, all else is waiting."

— Anonymous circus aerialist

"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."

— John W. Gardner

"If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough."

—Mario Andretti

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I . . . I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."

— Robert Frost

"The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety."

— Goethe

"Are you placing enough interesting, freakish, long shot, weirdo bets?"

— Tom Peters

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."

— William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

"Let's make a dent in the universe."

— Steve Jobs