Quotes about Risk

If your life's story were written, would you read it?

Life is what you make it will your story have a peak, a conflict, suspence, action, a climax, and a conclusion? Or will you live your life keeping it safe and never taking any risks?  Ask yourself: if your life story were written, would you read it?

DISCLAIMER: Material in this book may be too intense and controversial for some readers.  It contains graphic scenes of peace, love, joy, passion, reverence, splendor, and understanding…. You should therefore proceed with caution if you are a jaded hipster who is suspicious of feeling healthy and happy. Ask yourself: "Am I ready to stop equating cynicism with insight?  Do I dare take the risk that exposing myself to uplifting entertainment might dull my intelligence?"

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

How much beauty do you think is enough for a life? And how is it that one measures beauty? And how must it be wrapped, and how shall it be doled out? The truth is that we've likely lived more than our share of beauty. More than most get to live, I mean. But our portion may not be used up. Let's risk it… It's time to stop being afraid... Stop practicing for death. The only way out of the maze is to take back our life.

We must risk delight.  We can do without pleasure,
but not delight.  Not enjoyment.  We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.  To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.

Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being.
If not, leave this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn't reach into majesty.
You set out to find God,
but then you keep stopping for long periods
at meanspitited roadhouses.

Don't wait any longer...

They sicken of the calm who know the storm

The ultimate challenge in life is to neither allow our fantasies to bring us too much suffering nor to prevent us from living fully.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time... Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.  Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.  Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

The "public" seems to have bought into this belief that life can, and should, be run without risk, that all accidents are avoidable, and that death is something that only happens to people who eat meat and smoke.

Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being.

The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing.  He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, live, love. Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave - he has forfeited freedom.  Only a person who risks is free.

What kind of person would live where there is no daring?  I don't believe in taking foolish chances, but nothing can be accomplished without taking any chance at all.

When you have the wolf by the ears it's just as hard to let go as it is to hold on.

I had always tried to live my life fairly simply and by 1991, knowing what I knew about the state of the environment, I had begun to eat lower on the food chain and reduce my consumption of material goods. Doing risk sports had taught me another important lesson: never exceed your limits. You push the envelope and you live for those moments when you’re right on the edge, but you don’t go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live within your means. The same is true for a business. The sooner a company tries to be what it is not, the sooner it tries to “have it all,” the sooner it will die.

If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.

The Risk of Love

There is a risk involved in everything
Every time you share a smile
Every time you shed a tear
You are opening yourself up to hurt.

Some people tread slowly through life,
Avoiding the closeness risk brings,
Side-stepping the things they can't understand
Turning away from those who care too much,
Those who care stay too long,
Those who hold too tightly.

There is never an easy way to love
You can not approach it cautiously
It will not wait for you to arm yourself.
It does not care if you turn away
It is everywhere, it is everything.

Love is the greatest of all risks.
It is not reliable, it is not cautious,
It is not sympathetic
It is unprejudiced and unmerciliess.
It strikes the strongest of mind,
And brings them to their knees in one blow.

Even in the best of times, love hurts.
It hurts to need, it hurts to belong,
It hurts to be the other part of someone else,
Without either of your consent.
But, from the moment it overtakes you,
It hurts worse to be all alone.

The risk of love never depletes;
It grows stronger and more dangerous with time.
But, it's in the total surrender of all defense,
That we, no matter weak or strong,
No matter willing or captive,
No matter what, we truly experience love.

Despite the many things love is not,
Outweighing it all are the things that love is.
Love is surrender without a loss.
It is a gift without the cost.
It consumes your every thought & desire,
Every breath you take.
It is the fire that fuels you
To do more than pass through life;
It urges you, instead, to live.

No matter the outcome, having felt love,
You will never be the same.
It may scar your heart & soul
And Leave you only memories of forever.
Or, it may cause every day of your life
To feel like there is no need for tomorrow.
But, love is worth it. It is worth the risk...

For in all of life,
Love is truly the only risk worth taking.

Trust means you're ready to risk what you currently have.

Leap and the net will appear.

The man, who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world will not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages his old self to survive.  Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him to risk himself, so that he may endure the suffering and pass courageously through it.  Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over to annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within him.  In this lies the dignity of daring.

Maude: Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE!
[beat]
Maude: Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.

"You will miss 100% of the shots you never take". ~ Wayne Gretzky 
"Decide today that your goals are worth shooting for". ~ Della Credicott

Risk
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. 
To weep is to risk being called sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas, your dreams in front of a crowd is to risk being called naive.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair, to try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greates risk in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing and becomes nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love and live. Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave, he has forfeited his freedom.
Only the person who risks is truly free.
-Janet Rand

Even though I took a pounding, rich dad was happy that I was learning to be a creative entrepreneur, rather than a competitive one. He said, "Some entrepreneurs win by creating. Other entrepreneurs win by copying and competing." He also said, "The riskiest of all types of entrepreneur is the creative entrepreneur, also known as an innovator."

"Why is the creative entrepreneur the riskiest type to be?" I asked. "Because being creative means you are often a pioneer. It is easy to copy a successful and proven product. It is also less risky. If you learn to innovate, create, or invent your way to success, you are an entrepreneur creating new value rather than an entrepreneur who wins by copying."

"To try is to risk failure. But risk must be taken because the greatest hazard of life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, live, and love."

The Dance

I have sent you my invitation, the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living.

Don't jump up and shout, "Yes, this is what I want! Let's do it!"

Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

Show me how you follow your deepest desires, spiraling down into the ache within the ache, and I will show you how I reach inward and open outward to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, every day.

Don't tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart.

Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.

Tell me a story of who you are, and see who I am in the stories I am living.

And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

Don't tell me how wonderful things will be...someday.

Show me you can risk being completely at peace, truly okay with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next...

I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring.

Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall, the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will.

What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the learn, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart, and I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are.

When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul's desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world the stories and the songs you want our children's children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle, not to change the world, but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude, knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging.

Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions have died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don't say, "Yes!"

Just take my hand and dance with me.

The greatest risk in life is not to risk at all, because that decreases our chances of succeeding to 0%