Strategic Risk-Taking Quotes

All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.

I try not to take any foolish chances, but there's just no way to play it completely safe and still do your job.

Take calculated risks. Act boldly and thoughtfully. Be an agile company.

Every time I took these bigger risks, the opportunity for a bigger payout was always there.

Taking smart risks can be very gratifying.

I always believe in going hard at everything, whether it is Latin or mathematics, boxing or football, but at the same time I want to keep the sense of proportion. It is never worth while to absolutely exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate object. I want you to keep in training the faculties which would make you, if the need arose, able to put your last ounce of pluck and strength into a contest. But I do not want you to squander these qualities.

Our philosophy has been to be fiscally conservative, so we can be operationally aggressive. We're not using borrowed money to grow. So we'll put up a store just to get there before the competition. If it doesn't work, we'll close it and lose a little equity. It won't kill us.

Enormous self-belief, intuition, the ability to take a risk at a critical moment and go in for a very dangerous play with counter-chances for the opponent - it is precisely these qualities that distinguish great players.

Ultimately, what separates a Winner from a Loser at the Grandmaster level is the Willingness to do the Unthinkable.

Sometimes I even say that I have surpassed Lasker in using psychology. How? Well, sometimes I use psychology with a portion of risk. That is something else, something that Lasker wouldn't allow.

Innovation at large companies is hard, but it doesn't have to be.

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.

You need to be uncomfortable and apprehensive: True strategy is about placing bets and making hard choices. The objective is not to eliminate risk but to increase the odds of success.

Learn how to fail intelligently.

Place your army in deadly peril, and it will survive; plunge it into desperate straits, and it will come off in safety.

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

I have a bad rote memory, but I tend to learn through my experiences. And then when I went into the markets, and then starting my business as an entrepreneur, that affected my thinking a lot, too, because in order to be successful as both an investor and an entrepreneur, one has to be an independent thinker and bet against the consensus and be right. Because the consensus is built into the price, and if you're not an independent thinker in the markets you won't succeed. And if you're not an independent thinker as an entrepreneur starting out, you're not going to bring anything special.

I take big risks, but I'm not reckless about it.