Risk

potential for uncontrolled loss due to underlying vulnerability or uncertainties

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.

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

Quotes

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  • 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, [1].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.
  • Rather than reacting to every risk we hear and see, we should make an effort to discern which ones we can do something about.
  • If we set our priority “the removal of all risk”, we'll soon have sterile, stagnant, and unstimulating learning environments.
  • 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.
  • 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)
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  The dictionary definition of risk on Wiktionary