Risk Quotes - page 64
Perhaps we're too embarrassed to change or too frightened of the consequences of showing that we actually care. But why not risk it anyway Begin Today. Carry out a random act of seemingly senseless kindness, with no expectation or reward or punishment. Safe in the knowledge that one day, someone somewhere might do the same for you.
Diana, Princess of Wales
The first presidential debate in Mississippi went off as planned. And it was there that McCain truly may have lost the election. It wasn't because of McCain's performance, which was solid if a little stiff and abrasive at times. Except for some discussion of the economic crisis, the debate focused on national security and foreign policy, two issues in McCain's comfort zone. Some observers said McCain may have won the debate on points, some said Obama won outright, while still others said it was probably no worse for McCain than a draw. The problem for McCain was that a draw was all Obama needed, so that effectively made him the winner. Given the economic anxiety and Obama's lack of seasoning, the McCain campaign's last hope was that Americans might not want to risk the presidency on someone so untested. McCain needed Obama to fumble. Instead, Obama held his own against McCain and delivered a calm and collected performance that put to rest worries about his light experience.
John McCain
If we die we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. Our God-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because in the final analysis, only man can fully evaluate the moon in terms understandable to other men.
Gus Grissom
[N]o consideration in life shall make me stoop to Opposition. I am still ready to accept any part of them that will come to the assistance of my present efficient Ministers; but whilst any ten men in the kingdom will stand by me, I will not give myself up into bondage. My dear Lord, I will rather risk my crown than do what I think personally disgraceful; and whilst I have no wish but for the good and prosperity of my country, it is impossible that the nation shall not stand by me; if they will not, they shall have another king, for I will never put my hand to what would make me miserable to the last hour of my life.
George III of the United Kingdom
I'm often asked why we're in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. My administration, the Congress, and the United Nations saw the threat. And after 9/11, Saddam's regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take. The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. And now the challenge is to help the Iraqi people build a democracy that fulfills the dreams of the nearly 12 million Iraqis who came out to vote in free elections last December.
Saddam Hussein
Nuclear proliferation is on the rise. Equipment, material and training were once largely inaccessible. Today, however, there is a sophisticated worldwide network that can deliver systems for producing material usable in weapons. The demand clearly exists: countries remain interested in the illicit acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.
If we sit idly by, this trend will continue. Countries that perceive themselves to be vulnerable can be expected to try to redress that vulnerability - and in some cases they will pursue clandestine weapons programs. The supply network will grow, making it easier to acquire nuclear weapon expertise and materials. Eventually, inevitably, terrorists will gain access to such materials and technology, if not actual weapons.
If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction.
Mohamed ElBaradei
While we can see Snowden's experience as an instructional primer on both the value of whistleblowers and the costs of vilifying them, there are elements of his story-fed by the character assassination reprisal tactics of the government-that perpetuate many of the misperceptions about whistleblowers and contribute to the view that whistleblowers are problems to be addressed, rather than potential solutions. Snowden's case also typifies the most egregious manifestations of the institutional belief that whistleblowers are problems to be addressed rather than sources of risk management and mechanisms for promoting compliance-the focus on the "messenger” rather than the "message.”.
Edward Snowden
Toryism would confiscate, in the interests of a private monopoly, the produce of the industry, the toil, the capital, the risk and the effort of others. Socialism would also confiscate, in the interests of a State monopoly, the efforts of the individual. Liberalism stands for a free opportunity for the individual to do the best for himself and the nation.
David Lloyd George
I grew up in the shadow of government. Both my parents worked for the government, and I expected that I would, as well. September 11th happened when I was 18 years old... And when everybody else was protesting the Iraq War, I was volunteering to join it. And that's because I believed the things that the government was saying - not all of them, of course, but I believed that the government was mostly honest, because it seemed to me unreasonable that the government would be willing to risk sort of our long-term faith in the institution of government for short-term political advantage. As I said, I was a very young man. And I ended up going to work for the CIA undercover overseas out in the diplomatic platforms. Then I moved into contracting... because most people go into contracting still working for the government in these classified spaces because you make basically twice as much for the same work....
Edward Snowden
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. As they say in the United States: "to be different is to be indecent." The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated. And it is clear, of course, that this "everybody" is not "everybody." "Everybody" was normally the complex unity of the mass and the divergent, specialised minorities. Nowadays, "everybody" is the mass alone.
José Ortega y Gasset
The human soul has need of disciplined participation in a common task of public value, and it has need of personal initiative within this participation.
The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.
Simone Weil
However, I would like to put this criticism in perspective. The RSS and its daughter organizations do get things done. During natural disasters, RSS relief teams are always first on the scene, a fact carefully hidden from the public by the media. During the Partition, RSS workers saved the lives of Congress politicians stuck in Pakistan, often only to find that these same politicians, once safely in India, condemned "the communal forces”, meaning the RSS.... Till today, the commitment of RSS workers is such that they risk their lives for being known as Hindu activists: in some regions, Communists or Muslims regularly kill RSS workers. (Ch 9)
Koenraad Elst
It dawned on me then that Nick was proud of himself. Proud of what we had done. It may have been an unfamiliar feeling for him: that peculiarly delicious pride that comes from having taken a terrible risk to do something truly admirable. Of overcoming the instinct of self-presrvation: of fighting our fears and winning. It is the pride of discovering that one is not merely a bundle of reflexes and conditioned responses; that instead one is a thinking being, who can choose the right over the easy, and justice over safety.
Matthew Stover
Everything I have written in these lectures underlines the importance to the intellectual of passionate engagement, risk, exposure, commitment to principles, vulnerability in debating and being involved in worldly causes. For example, the difference I drew earlier between a professional and an amateur intellectual rests precisely on this, that the professional claims detachment on the basis of a profession and pretends to objectivity, whereas the amateur is moved neither by reward nor by the fulfillment of an immediate career plan but by a committed engagement with ideas and values in the public sphere.
Edward Said
