Jim Mattis Quotes

An investment said to have an 80% chance of success sounds far more attractive than one with a 20% chance of failure. The mind can't easily recognize that they are the same.

We tend to ignore the high probability of small gains or losses and focus on big payoffs or disaster despite remote odds.

I think that we have to be constantly asking ourselves, 'How do we calculate the risk?' And sometimes we don't calculate it correctly; we either overstate it or understate it.

The ability to calibrate risk doesn't happen rationally.

You don't trade in the devil you know for the one you don't know.

The hardest thing to judge is what level of risk is safe.

Risk is what you make of it.

Even those who venture to dip a toe in the pond of risk never allow themselves to get used to the water.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgements of probabilities, and not on certainties.

All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties.

Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don't know the odds. It's a big difference.

We must become more comfortable with probability and uncertainty.

One reason we resist making deliberate choices is that choice equals change and most of us, feeling the world is unpredictable enough, try to minimise the trauma of change in our personal lives.

People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.

You have to take risks.

Some of the most interesting research that I did was about risk assessment and how ordinary citizens like me handle risk assessment and how irregular our risk assessments are.

We respond to the unknown by trying to retreat from it, or trying to comprehend it, or trying to control it. The first approach is evident in longings for return to a simpler "risk-free" life that never was. The second is reflected in the fantasy of synoptic risk assessment: Measure the requisite probabilities and trade-offs, calculate the social risk-benefit function, and the common good will have been defined. The third approach is in the tradition of professional engineering. It serves us well but, as engineers have been among the first to point out, has met its match and more in the complex social problems it increasingly is called upon to address.

All market response results from a reduction of uncertainty.

We necessarily operate in an environment in which there's a great deal of uncertainty. In such an environment, it makes sense to use a risk-management approach to identify and avoid the big mistakes. That's one reason I favor a cautious approach.

We misjudge risk if we feel we have some control over it, even if it's an illusory sense of control.

Everyone has a different definition of risk. Sometimes that creates opportunities as well.

Poker is all about comfort with uncertainty, after all.

The two great risks are risking too much but also risking too little. That's for each person to decide. For me, not risking anything is worse than death. By far.

Choices are easy when you have nothing to lose.