Frank Herbert Quotes

I forced myself to think what is the new concept and it became clear to me that it was risk, not only in technology and ecology, but in life and employment, too.

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

Uncertainty is seen to retard investment independently of considerations of risk or expected return.

Betting on the success of innovative technologies in the marketplace can carry all the uncertainty and risk that betting on the next card in the deck does at a blackjack table in Las Vegas. There is a factor of randomness that must be factored in, but precisely how to do so is anyone's guess.

There is no elimination of all risks.

Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.

If you want to avoid all risks, soon you will have no risks to worry about.

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.

None of us live in a zero-risk world.

People need to take a little bit more risk.

Companies don't like uncertainty; travelers don't like uncertainty.

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

Not taking a risk is a risk. That's how I see it.

If you risk nothing you gain nothing

Unbelief is safe, because it takes no risk and almost always gets what it expects.

Nothing is really 'safe'.

Proverbial wisdom counsels against risk and change. But sitting ducks fare worst of all.

'Why risk?' I responded. 'It should be, why not to risk?'

I always tell other people to protect against the downside, and not risk roughing on new ventures, but I never stuck to that rule myself.

A lot of people approach risk as if it's the enemy when it's really fortune's accomplice.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk.

All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.

I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.

But perhaps this is all to the good. Perhaps it’s best to live with the possibility that around any corner, at any time, may come the person who reminds you of your own capacity to surprise yourself, to put at risk everything that’s dear to you. Who reminds you of the distances we have to bridge to begin to know anything about one another. Who reminds you that what seems to be—even about yourself—may not be. That like him, you need to be forgiven.

There's major changes happening with technology and economics. But unfortunately, the initial reaction on any new frontier, it gets bloody, and people are overreacting, and very defensive, and they're not taking risks. In fact, they're taking such safe measures that they're shooting themselves in the foot.