Risk taking Quotes

To say that one waits a lifetime for his soulmate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soulmates, which takes a lifetime to perfect.

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals
Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .

If you dare nothing,
then when the day is over,
nothing is all you will have gained.

If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on.

There is always the risk: something is good and good and good and good, and then all at once it gets awkward. All at once, she sees you looking at her, and then she doesn't want to joke around with you anymore, because she doesn't want to seem flirty, because she doesn't want you to think she likes you. It’s such a disaster, whenever, in the course of human relationships, someone begins to chisel away at the wall of separation between friendship and kissing. Breaking down that wall is the kind of story that might have a happy middle— oh, look, we broke down this wall, I’m going to look at you like a girl and you’re going to look at me like a boy and we’re going to play a fun game called Can I Put My Hand There What About There What About There. And sometimes that happy middle looks so great that you can convince yourself that it’s not the middle but will last forever.

But he'd learned long ago that a life lived without risks pretty much wasn't worth living. Life rewarded courage, even when that first step was taken neck-deep in fear.

Most men either compromise or drop their greatest talents and start running after, what they perceive to be, a more reasonable success, and somewhere in between they end up with a discontented settlement. Safety is indeed stability, but it is not progression.

...maybe sometimes it's riskier not to take a risk. Sometimes all you're guaranteeing is that things will stay the same.

...If there is no risk, there is no reward.

Letting my heart instead of my hormones decide when to do it made what Aiden and I'd done special. And when we passed each other throughout the day, the looks we stole suddenly meant more. Everything meant more, because we both were risking it all and neither of us regretted that.

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.

Wherever there is danger, there lurks opportunity; wherever there is opportunity, there lurks danger. The two are inseparable.

This is our big chance to see what people think of us. The real us. We have to show em there's nothing to be afraid of. If we don't get over our fears, they never will.

Only those who play win. Only those who risk win. History favors risk-takers. Forgets the timid. Everything else is commentary.

But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.

The reward is in the risk.

The ignoramus crow of "love it or leave it" omits other viable options, such as staying and changing it.

It's about risking everything. Putting your heart on the line, even when you don't know what's going to happen. It's risking having the person you love rip it out and stomp all over it in public.

That grin was pulling me into the deep end of the pool. The scary part, the part that made me search desperately for some other task I could lose myself in, was that there was a small, insistent voice urging me to dive right in.

Awakening and owning the dreams that God has placed in our hearts isn't about getting stuff or attaining something. It's about embracing who we are and who he has created us to be. In him. He is our dream come true, and the one true love of our life. But we can't love him with our whole hearts when our hearts are asleep. To love Jesus means to risk coming awake, to risk wanting and desiring.

The value of taking risks through all stages of life is constant...it's the excuses that change.

All field agents have some cowboy in them – even the ones from New York.

Sholem [a painter] was saying that freedom, for him, is having the technical facility to be able to execute whatever he wants, just whatever image he has in his mind. But that's not freedom! That's control, or power. Whereas I think Margaux understands freedom to be the freedom to take risks, the freedom to do something bad or appear foolish. To not recognize that difference is a pretty big thing. [...]
"It's like with improv," Misha said. "True improv is about surprising yourself--but most people won't improvise truthfully. They're afraid. What they do is pull from their bag of tricks. They take what they already know how to do and apply it to the present situation. But that's cheating! And cheating's bad for an artist. It's bad in life--but it's really bad in art." -p.20-1, How Should A Person Be

I didn’t say a word. He wouldn’t be using oxygen. K2 is more dangerous than Everest.

Reaching the summit of K2 was an incredible experience, but I would trade it in a heartbeat to have Dan back.