# Risk

Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity (including the choice of inaction) will lead to a loss (an undesirable outcome). The notion implies that a choice having an influence on the outcome sometimes exists (or existed). Potential losses themselves may also be called "risks". Any human endeavor carries some risk, but some are much more risky than others.

## Quotes

* Silicon Valley didn’t have smarter people; they just had people who were wired to take different risks, who actually came out to California to take risks and to get away from the status quo.
** Steve Blank, interview with Harvard Business Review, .3 August 2017
* To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
** Leo Buscaglia, in Living, Loving, and Learning (1985)
* A life of love is one of continual growth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.
** Leo Buscaglia, in interview with Veronica M. Hay, in A Magazine of People and Possibilities (1998)
* They're so risk-averse, for a couple of hundred thousand dollars in legal fees, they could have had a $2 billion franchise. They blew it.
** James Cameron, "James Cameron and his unmade films", Ryan Lamble, Den of Geek, Oct 15, 2015.
* Rather than reacting to every risk we hear and see, we should make an effort to discern which ones we can do something about.
** Ben Carson, Take The Risk (p. 58)
* If we set our priority “the removal of all risk”, we'll soon have sterile, stagnant, and unstimulating learning environments.
** Ben Carson, Take The Risk (p. 120)
* Skiers are in love with a risk sport and they're uninhibited - even in converstaion.
** Suzy Chaffee, Suzy Chaffee: The liberated beauty, Beaver County Times, March 17, 1975.
* We weren't always successful at Bain. But no one ever is in the real world of business. That's what this President doesn't seem to understand. Business and growing jobs is about taking risk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always striving. It is about dreams. Usually, it doesn't work out exactly as you might have imagined. Steve Jobs was fired at Apple. He came back and changed the world.
** Mitt Romney, 2012 Republican National Convention Acceptance Speech, August 30, 2012,
* Risks inherent in economic activities can be dealt with in a wide variety of ways. In addition to the commodity speculation and inventory management discussed in the previous chapter, other ways of dealing with risk include stocks, bonds, and insurance. There are also other economic activities analogous to stocks, bonds, and insurance which deal with risks in ways that are legally different, though similar economically.
** Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics, 4th ed. (2010), Ch. 13. Risks and Insurance
* A monotonous life, lived without any purpose or direction, is not worth much. To achieve anything big in life, you should be prepared to risk your all and take a leap of faith for whatever they believed in.
** Deendayal Upadhyaya: in 'Dao lagaao zindagi pe’ (put a stake on your life) by Deendayal Upadhyaya, and quoted from L.K. Advani, My Country My Life (2008)

## External links

The dictionary definition of risk on Wiktionary
* Risk - The entry of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
* "Risk preference and religiosity" article from the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion