Great Throughts Treasury

"We must always seek to reach up and reach out to achieve our full potential... It is a mistake to assume that we can ever achieve perfection. But it is an even greater mistake to cease trying. Without risk there will be neither success nor failure. As Thomas Aquinas observed: If the primary aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever." -

"Perhaps more than any other single factor, the intimate alchemy between the healer and the patient helps mobilize the body's natural resources. The mere presence of a healer often evokes hope in the patient and an expectation of recovery. When the two people create a partnership based on compassion, trust, and shared decision-making, and when the relationship nurtures the patient's hope for a positive outcome, even seemingly incurable diseases sometimes go into remission.... insistently restoring the human heart to the practice of medicine. Rather than treating patients as disease processes, they risk bringing their full humanness to the therapeutic encounter. They not only call on their technological expertise, but on the inner qualities practiced by healers from time immemorial: patience, humility, compassion, and an ability to inspire and mobilize their patients' healing resources." - Ronald S. Miller

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot

"For us in the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life, in a great cause." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"Our ideas about life inevitably shape its structure, and, because they are usually too simple, it is wise to reflect on them... simple life axioms... The first is afraid of failure, yet it is surely impossible to have love in your life at all without the possibility of its loss. The second is afraid of self-revelation and vulnerability, and yet how can there be love without an opening of the heart and considerable emotional risk? The third is afraid of mortal love - the knowledge that although love itself may be eternal, the people who love are faced with the inevitable separation of death." - Thomas Moore

"It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"If you don't risk anything you risk even more." - Erica Mann Jong

"If you don't risk anything, you risk even more. " - Erica Mann Jong

"Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age. " - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"No risk attends the meed that silence brings." - Augustus or Augustus Caesar, fully Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, NULL

"Creative risk taking is essential to success in any goal where the stakes are high. Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity. " - Gary Ryan Blair

"Hope is a risk that must be run." - Georges Bernanos

"Caring about others, running the risk of feeling, and leaving an impact on people, brings happiness." - Harold Kushner, fully Harold Samuel Kushner

"Psychoanalysis is a terribly efficient instrument, and because it is more and more a prestigious instrument, we run the risk of using it with a purpose for which it was not made for, and in this way we may degrade it. " - Jacques Lacan, fully Jacques Marie Émile Lacan

"Before all else, each of us must take a fundamental risk to be true to ourselves." - James Webb

"Before all else, each of us must take a fundamental risk - to be true to our selves." - Jim Webb, formally James Henry Webb, Jr.

"Added man-made failure really hurts young children [under six]. No one has to contrive lessons for these youngsters so that they will learn how to lose—they are losers too much of the time. No one has to put them in their place—they know all too well in their hearts the little place they are in. No one has to cut them down to size—their size is painfully small. At this stage in their development we are wise to stay away from competition, from games and races and contests with winners and losers. It matters too much to each child to come in first—they cannot stand the risk of competition. " - James L. Hymes, Jr.

"All too often our so-called strength comes from fear, not love; instead of having a strong back, many of us have a defended front shielding a weak spine. In other words, we walk around brittle and defensive, trying to conceal our lack of confidence. If we strengthen our backs, metaphorically speaking, and develop a spine that’s flexible but sturdy, then we can risk having a front that’s soft and open, representing choiceless compassion. The place in your body where these two meet — strong back and soft front — is the brave, tender ground in which to root our caring deeply when we begin the process of being with dying." - Joan Halifax, fully Roshi Joan Jiko Halifax

"The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all." - John Updike

"The man who is afraid to risk failure seldom has to face success." - John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden

"The biggest risk is that a lot of people will try to talk you out of pursuing your dream. The world has too many people who are happy to discuss why something might not work, and too few who will cheer you and say, "I'm there for you." The more time you spend navel-gazing, the longer you give those negative gravitational forces to keep you in their tether." - John Wood

"All perfect republics are perfect nonsense. The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?" - John Fowles, fully John Robert Fowles

"People are an organization's only appreciable asset, but creative people are an organization's most needed asset. Be willing to absorb some risk and failures to allow people freedom to express themselves. Creative leaders inherently know when rules need to be challenged, and they can see when a more flexible approach should be taken. Handle the ideas of your people carefully: If an idea is half-developed but has potential, pass it to the people in your organization who are proven process thinkers and implementers. Sometimes giving your people permission to be creative is not enough; inspire them by modeling creativity. The word 'reactive' and the word 'creative' are made up of exactly the same letters; the only difference between the two is that you 'c' (see) differently." - John C. Maxwell

"It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win." - John Paul Jones

"We have not even to risk the adventure alone for the hero’s of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had though to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. And where we had though to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone we shall be with all the world." - Joseph Campbell

"Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself." - Joseph Priestley

"Metaphysical guilt is the lack of absolute solidarity with the human being as such--an indelible claim beyond morally meaningful duty. This solidarity is violated by my presence at a wrong or a crime. It is not enough that I cautiously risk my life to prevent it; if it happens, and I was there, and if I survive where the other is killed, I know from a voice within myself: I am guilty of being still alive." - Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers

"Thoroughly living life requires initiative, risk taking, sustained action against the odds, making sacrifices for ideals and for others, and leaps of faith. People who live such lives report being happy, hopeful, and exhilarated – even when they fail." - Laura Schlesinger, fully Laura Catherine Schlessinger, aka Dr. Laura

"In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy. " - Learned Hand, fully Billings Learned Hand

"Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing." - Leo Busacaglia

"In general, kids have very little tolerance for humiliation or failure. One of a student's most important goals is to make it through the day without embarrassment. Imagine then, the frustration of children with differences in learning, who are at risk of growing up deprived of experiencing success. Naturally, they compare themselves to their peers and siblings. While some may see themselves as "different," many will feel inferior. Unfortunately, these feelings are likely to endure. When they do, serious complications can develop including plummeting self- esteem, behavior problems, excessive dependence on peers, alienation from family, deep anxiety, and a loss of motivation. The sad reality is that a difference in learning, not addressed as such, can lead to anti-social behavior, substance abuse, dropping out, and other serious forms of maladjustment." - Mel Levine, formally Melvin D Levine

"I am a member of a fragile species, still new to the earth, the youngest creatures of any scale, here only a few moments as evolutionary time is measured, a juvenile species, a child of a species. We are only tentatively set in place, error prone, at risk of fumbling, in real danger at the moment of leaving behind only a thin layer of of our fossils, radioactive at that." - Lewis Thomas

"If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation." -

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL

"Happiness comes from the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed." - Margaret Storm Jameson

"Dare to risk public criticism. " - Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash

"The step between prudence and paranoia is short and steep. Prudence wears a seat belt. Paranoia avoids cars. Prudence washes with soap. Paranoia avoids human contact. Prudence saves for old age. Paranoia hoards even trash. Prudence prepares and plans, paranoia panics. Prudence calculates the risk and takes the plunge. Paranoia never enters the water." - Max Lucado

"Sometimes we think we're a little too gifted to show up, yo uknow. But none of us truly is...By avoiding risk we really risk what's most important in life---reaching toward growth, our potential, and a true contribution to a common good." - Max DePree, alternatively De Pree or Depree

"If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation." - Madeleine L’Engle

"Most of us would rather risk catastrophe than read the directions." - Mignon McLaughlin

"Liberty is one of the most precious gifts heaven has bestowed upon Man. No treasures the earth contains or the sea conceals can be compared to it. For liberty one can rightfully risk one's life." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

"There is nothing more difficult, than to please all People, not more easie and common than to censure Books that come abroad in the World. All Books, without exception, that see the light, run the common Risk of both these inconveniences, though they may be sheltered under the most sublime Protection, what will become of this little Book then, which hath no Patronage? The Subject whereof being mystical, and not well-seasoned; carries along with it the common censure, and will seem insipid? Kind Reader, if you understand it not, be not therefore apt to censure the same. The Natural Man may hear and read these Spiritual Matters, but he can never comprehend them." - Miguel de Molinos

"If man completely forgets that there is death, that there is an end to it all, we risk becoming monkeys again. The explanation is simple,the active man, the creative man, is especially excited by the idea that one day it will all be over, that there will be an end, a final rest. Be overly aware of the existence of this end and you'll get from people the most extraordinary efforts. Whomever knows this constantly is capable of raising mountains, is capable of the wildest liberties, the most courageous acts." - Mircea Eliade

"It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment, or the courage, to pay the price…. One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover, and yet demand no easy return of love. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying." - Morris West, fully Morris Langlo West

"There is a paradox. In retaining this integrity, the writer sometimes must risk both the state's indictment of treason, and the liberation forces' complaint of lack of blind commitment." - Nadine Gordimer

"War is a lottery in which nations ought to risk nothing but small amounts." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I

"Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed." - Nathaniel Parker Willis