103 Inspiring Risk-Taking Quotes

Taking risks is an integral part of achieving personal growth and success. Whether you're stepping out of your comfort zone or embracing a new challenge, the courage to pursue the uncertain can lead to transformative experiences. To inspire your journey, we've curated a collection of 103 powerful quotes about risk-taking. These words of wisdom from renowned leaders, thinkers, and visionaries will encourage you to embrace the unknown, challenge your limits, and ultimately discover your true potential. As you delve into these inspiring quotes, let them serve as a reminder that the greatest rewards often come from the boldest leaps.

1. “Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain.(Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)” - Blaise Pascal

2. “Take risks! That is really what life is about. We must pursue our own happiness. Nobody has ever lived our lives; ther are no guidelines. Trust your instincts. Accept nothing but the best. But then also look for it carefully. Don't allow it to slip between your fingers. Sometimes, good things come to us in a such a quiet fashion. And nothing comes complete. It is what we make of whatever we encounter that determines the outcome. What we choose to see, what we choose to save. And what we choose to remember. Never forget that all the love in your life is there, inside you, always.” - Linda Olsson

3. “If you don't take risks, you'll have a wasted soul.” - Drew Barrymore

4. “The only safe thing is to take a chance.” - Elaine May

5. “But if you're gonna dine with them cannibalsSooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .” - Nick Cave

6. “The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.” - Chuck Palahniuk

7. “Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.” - Thomas Huxley

8. “So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?” - Hunter S. Thompson

9. “Vital lives are about action. You can't feel warmth unless you create it, can't feel delight until you play, can't know serendipity unless you risk.” - Joan Erickson

10. “We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.” - Thomas Moore

11. “Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -- justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.” - Anne Rice

12. “There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.” - William S. Burroughs

13. “When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly.” - Patrick Overton

14. “Let the attitude of your life be a continual willingness to "go out" in dependence upon God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that is very satisfying to Jesus. You must learn to "go out" through your convictions, creeds, or experiences until you come to the point in your faith where there is nothing between yourself and God.” - Oswald Chambers

15. “A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn.” - Helen Keller

16. “To win without risk is to triumph without glory.” - Pierre Corneille

17. “Break the glass, I thought to myself, because it is a symbolic gesture. Try to understand that within myself, things were breaking of much more importance than a glass, and I’m happy for that. Look to your own inner struggles and break this glass.Our parents taught us to be careful with glasses and with our bodies. They taught us that the passions of childhood are impossible; we should not remove men from the priesthood, that people do not perform miracles and that no one goes on a journey without knowing where he wants to go.Break this cup, please, I thought to myself, and release of all these damn misconceptions, the habit you have of only doing that which everyone agrees with.” - Paulo Coelho

18. “America is a leap of the imagination. From its beginning, people had only a persistent idea of what a good country should be. The idea involved freedom, equality, justice, and the pursuit of happiness; nowadays most of us probably could not describe it a lot more clearly than that. The truth is, it always has been a bit of a guess. No one has ever known for sure whether a country based on such an idea is really possible, but again and again, we have leaped toward the idea and hoped. What SuAnne Big Crow demonstrated in the Lead high school gym is that making the leap is the whole point. The idea does not truly live unless it is expressed by an act; the country does not live unless we make the leap from our tribe or focus group or gated community or demographic, and land on the shaky platform of that idea of a good country which all kinds of different people share.This leap is made in public, and it's made for free. It's not a product or a service that anyone will pay you for. You do it for reasons unexplainable by economics--for ambition, out of conviction, for the heck of it, in playfulness, for love. It's done in public spaces, face-to-face, where anyone is free to go. It's not done on television, on the Internet, or over the telephone; our electronic systems can only tell us if the leap made elsewhere has succeeded or failed. The places you'll see it are high school gyms, city sidewalks, the subway, bus stations, public parks, parking lots, and wherever people gather during natural disasters. In those places and others like them, the leaps that continue to invent and knit the country continue to be made. When the leap fails, it looks like the L.A. riots, or Sherman's March through Georgia. When it succeeds, it looks like the New York City Bicentennial Celebration in July 1976 or the Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963. On that scale, whether it succeeds or fails, it's always something to see. The leap requires physical presence and physical risk. But the payoff--in terms of dreams realized, of understanding, of people getting along--can be so glorious as to make the risk seem minuscule.” - Ian Frazier

19. “Fortune sides with him who dares.” - Virgil

20. “In theory, the risk of business failure can be reduced to a number, the probability of failure multiplied by the cost of failure. Sure, this turns out to be a subjective analysis, but in the process your own attitudes toward financial risk and reward are revealed.By contrast, personal risk usually defies quantification. It's a matter of values and priorities, an expression of who you are. "Playing it safe" may simply mean you do not weigh heavily the compromises inherent in the status quo. The financial rewards of the moment may fully compensate you for the loss of time and fulfillment. Or maybe you just don't think about it. On the other hand, if time and satisfaction are precious, truly priceless, you will find the cost of business failure, so long as it does not put in peril the well-being of you or your family, pales in comparison with the personal risks of no trying to live the life you want today.Considering personal risk forces us to define personal success. We may well discover that the business failure we avoid and the business success we strive for do not lead us to personal success at all. Most of us have inherited notions of "success" from someone else or have arrived at these notions by facing a seemingly endless line of hurdles extending from grade school through college and into our careers. We constantly judge ourselves against criteria that others have set and rank ourselves against others in their game. Personal goals, on the other hand, leave us on our own, without this habit of useless measurement and comparison.Only the Whole Life Plan leads to personal success. It has the greatest chance of providing satisfaction and contentment that one can take to the grave, tomorrow. In the Deferred Life Plan there will always be another prize to covet, another distraction, a new hunger to sate. You will forever come up short.” - Randy Komisar

21. “In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.” - Robert T. Kiyosaki

22. “Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing” - Warren Buffett

23. “Maybe freedom really is nothing left to lose. You had it once in childhood, when it was okay to climb a tree, to paint a crazy picture and wipe out on your bike, to get hurt. The spirit of risk gradually takes its leave. It follows the wild cries of joy and pain down the wind, through the hedgerow, growing ever fainter. What was that sound? A dog barking far off? That was our life calling to us, the one that was vigorous and undefended and curious.” - Peter Heller

24. “Risk means 'shit happens' or 'good luck” - Toba Beta

25. “Doing risk sport had taught me another important lesson: never exceed your limits. You push the envelope and you live for those moments when you’re right on the edge, but you don’t go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live within your means.” - Yvon Chouinard

26. “Overconfidence blurs out the risk. Inferiority magnifies it.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

27. “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.” - Peter F. Drucker

28. “If you play it safe in life, you've decided that you don't want to grow anymore.” - Shirley Hufstedler

29. “Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right.” - Sarah Addison Allen

30. “Not learning by doing, but learning by risking.” - Toba Beta

31. “I've long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we're talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime 'associates,' food, for me, has always been an adventure” - Anthony Bourdain

32. “Smartass Disciple: Why men don't ready yet to join the intergalactic confederation?Master of Stupidity: Men could make them laugh to death. It'd be too risky for them.” - Toba Beta

33. “Hypocrite shouts about the change,but never let risk coming on his way.” - Toba Beta

34. “They were two lovely choices. One of them meant giving up every chance of a decent life forever...and the other one scared me out of my mind.” - Frederik Pohl

35. “You jeopardize all if move slowly on a fast lane.” - Toba Beta

36. “You won't be a wiser man if you always keep away from bad people or poor ones.” - Toba Beta

37. “There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.” - Jeanette Winterson

38. “She'd risked everything, and here was the result: the raw, warped core of her life.” - Jennifer Egan

39. “Risk is the factor of a stratagem measured by what man is powerless to control.” - Mike Norton

40. “I think given the choice between loving Mare - betrayal included - and never knowing her, I'd chose love. I risked, and I lost, but the risk was still worth it.” - Brandon Sanderson

41. “All life's a risk, that's what makes it interesting.” - Megan Chance

42. “The question, love, is whether you want me enough to take the risk.” - Lisa Kleypas

43. “It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.” - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

44. “Being safe doesn't mean you won't be sorry.” - Katerina Stoykova Klemer

45. “Risk management seemed to have completed its transformation into pure entertainment. Dudley seemed the epitome of a risk manager who would drown crossing a river that was 12 inches in depth on average.” - Satyajit Das

46. “...the more risks you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves. If you never let them take any risks, then I believe they become very prone to injury. Boys should be allowed to climb tall trees and walk along the tops of high walls and dive into the sea from high rocks... The same with girls. I like the type of child who takes risks. Better by far than the one who never does so.” - Roald Dahl

47. “The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown..” - Paul Theroux

48. “Suddenly, I was just sure he was going to kiss me. He was there, I could feel his breath, the ground solid beneath us. But then something crossed his face, a thought, a hesitation, and he shifted slightly. Not now. Not yet. It was something I'd done so often - weighing what I could afford to risk, right at that moment - that I recognized it instantly. It was like looking in a mirror.” - Sarah Dessen

49. “My whole life, I had thought that my story was, again and again: Once upon a time, there was a boy, and he had to risk everything to keep what he loved. But really, the story was: Once upon a time, there was a boy, and his fear ate him alive.” - Maggie Stiefvater

50. “We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.” - Maxwell Maltz

51. “People who live life in fear of taking risks die without living it.” - Fola

52. “Risks? I have lived with the prospect of assassination for years. What risks? All men die, rich and poor alike. But if I am to die, then let it be while I fight, not like some bullock in a pen waiting for the ax to fall.” - David Gemmell

53. “With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.” - Criss Jami

54. “In order to share one's true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool: genius is like a wheel that spins so fast, it at first glance appears to be sitting still.” - Criss Jami

55. “Wisdom is nothing more than confirmed imagination: just because one did not study for his exam does not mean that he should leave it blank.” - Criss Jami

56. “If you risk nothing, then you risk everything.” - Geena Davis

57. “The faithful man perceives nothing less than opportunity in difficulties. Flowing through his spine, faith and courage work together: Such a man does not fear losing his life, thus he will risk losing it at times in order to empower it. By this he actually values his life more than the man who fears losing his life. It is much like leaping from a window in order to avoid a fire yet in that most crucial moment knowing that God will appear to catch you.” - Criss Jami

58. “After awhile you realize that putting your actions where your mouth is makes you less likely to have to put your money where your mouth is.” - Criss Jami

59. “True rebels hate their own rebellion. They know by experience that it is not a cool and glamorous lifestyle; it takes a courageous fool to say things that have not been said and to do things that have not been done.” - Criss Jami

60. “The greatest risk to man is not that he aims too high and misses, but that he aims too low and hits.” - Michaelangelo

61. “I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again. God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us.” - Donald Miller

62. “Since that day there is nothing anyone could ever say to convince me that one person cannot change a nation. One person can do unbelievable things. All it takes is that one person who's willing to risk everything to make it happen.” - Sam Childers

63. “I know I'll never marry, never risk bringing a child into the world. Because if there's one thing being a victor doesn't guarantee, it's our children's safety. My kids' names would go right into the reaping balls with everyone else's. And I swear I'll never let that happen.” - Suzanne Collins

64. “You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty."Levin nodded thoughtfully."The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either.” - Michael Connelly

65. “The word 'risk' derives from the early Italian risicare, which means 'to dare'. In this sense, risk is a choice rather than a fate. The actions we dare to take, which depend on how free we are to make choices, are what the story of risk is all about. And that story helps define what it means to be a human being.” - Peter L. Bernstein

66. “and I said, 'That is why you don't climb mountains, Gwen.' But now I wonder. You aren't afraid of heights.""No", she said. "Not particularly.""Only missteps."She paused midstroke. Did he mean to imply this had been a misstep? "I was afraid," she said carefully. "For a very long time. But no longer." "So was I," he said, and lifted her chin and kissed her.” - Meredith Duran

67. “There. That is the answer to this riddle. The promises I can make, and the one I can't. Gwen. I will never leave you willingly. Life is a risk, and so love is, as well. But I swear to God, you will not regret the gamble.” - Meredith Duran

68. “All choices are fraught with peril, but inaction is the most perilous of all.” - Frewin Jones

69. “If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.” - Clint Eastwood

70. “Change is not always a good thing. What I need is not change from one thing to another but transformation from who I am into who I was meant to become. Only when God's transforming power touches me can I begin to live the simpler, freer, fresher, more creative, more patient, more passionate, more sacrificial, riskier, rawer, more real, more love-driven life God intended for me all along. That transformation is what awaits all who dare to enter the story of God. As Paul wrote, 'Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think' (Romans 12:2)” - Steven James

71. “I recalled the afternoon when the two of us stood beating erasers, and Camille confided that she'd done penance for stories - stories that I'll never know if she wrote or only imagined writing. She'd wanted me to tell her a secret from my dreams, a secret from my dreams I hadn't had as yet, and so I didn't quite understand what she was after."It's about feeling," Camille had insisted.I didn't understand then that she was talking about risk.” - Stuart Dybek

72. “If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.” - Henry David Thoreau

73. “Wisdom mitigates the risk of being honest.” - Toba Beta

74. “I’ll not let the pair of you charge boldly into wolves’ teeth without me alongside” - Meredith Ann Pierce

75. “The smart strategist allows strategy to be shaped by events. Good reactions can make great strategy. Strategy involves competition of goals, and the risk is the difference between those goals and the ability of the organization to achieve them. So part of the risk is created by the strategy.” - Max Mckeown

76. “...I don't want security - to be self-assured - I want to risk my heart in making your portrait and be paid the wages of your devotion...” - John Geddes

77. “Stand at the top of a cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down.” - Ray Bradbury

78. “Heralds don't sing about men who lived in orthodoxy or played it safe, they sing about men who lived an uncertain future and took enough risks to make your head spin.” - Evan Meekins

79. “Have nuts and be nuts.” - Criss Jami

80. “Any way, is better than no way at all.” - Anthony Liccione

81. “Dreaming is risky. While only some dreams can put you at physical risk, all dreams require that you take an emotional risk. By their nature, dreams create a gap between your present reality and the reality you want to have, causing you to question whether you can bridge that gap. This risk alone can be so daunting for people that they prefer to leave their dreams in their childhood or buried away beneath layers of fear, doubt, and resignation. That’s why dreaming bigger dreams takes courage; it means risking the possibility that your dreams will not come true.” - Margie Warrell

82. “People play small for lots of reasons, but at the core of them all is fear. Playing small means playing safe—avoiding risk, failure, criticism, and the list goes on. But just imagine how incredibly different the world would be if everyone committed to playing big—taking on audacious goals, trying to make a meaningful difference, being all they could possibly be.” - Margie Warrell

83. “Your “everybody” probably represents even a smaller proportion of the population than your Rolodex. Psychologists have documented that our typical everybody— to which they refer as the “generalized other”—is usually a collection of about five or six people.” - Margie Warrell

84. “For what it’s worth: trust your feelings. I can’t promise that you’ll never get hurt again, but I can promise you the risk is worth it.” - Rick Riordan

85. “Engaging in activities devoid of difficulty, lounging in risk-free zones, is life without great meaning.” - Jon M. Huntsman Sr.

86. “When there's nothing left to save, there's nothing left to lose.” - T.S. Welti

87. “Just remember, you never know what's possible until you risk finding out.” - Jasinda Wilder

88. “The ragamuffin gospel says we can't lose, because we have nothing to lose.” - Brennan Manning

89. “Why would we need to experience the Comforter if our lives are already comfortable?” - Francis Chan

90. “It is only by being bold that you get anywhere. If you are a risk-taker, then the art is to protect the downside.” - Richard Branson

91. “I might be manipulating you to create risk for myself.” - Sharon Stone

92. “There's never any great risk as long as you have money.” - E.M. Forster

93. “Leaders know that the fruit of life is out on a limb.” - Orrin Woodward

94. “If you are afraid to take a chance, take one anyway. What you don't do can create the same regrets as the mistakes you make.” - Iyanla Vanzant

95. “Stop looking for the path of least resistance and start running down the path of greatest glory to God and good to others, because that's what Jesus, the Real Man, did.” - Mark Driscoll

96. “Do you still insist on telling the truth even though you know that it could destroy this world?” - Toba Beta

97. “How do I get past my fears? Make a life for myself? Risk loving someone? When death is all that waits for you, what's the point in trying to have a life?” - Colleen Houck

98. “We are always hungry and never satisfied because we don’t trust and won’t risk. Can we reach a place where we are satisfied with just enough? You are enough. You have enough. Do not worry about tomorrow. God will provide in our lives just as God provides in the Eucharist.” - Mary DeTurris Poust

99. “I don't think anyone aims to be typical, really. Most people even vow to themselves some time in high school or college not to be typical. But still, they just kind of loop back to it somehow. Like the circular rails of a train at an amusement park, the scripts we know offer a brand of security, of predictability, of safety for us. But the problem is, they only take us where we've already been. They loop us back to places where everyone can easily go, not necessarily where we were made to go. Living a different kind of life takes some guts and grit and a new way of seeing things.” - Bob Goff

100. “If every day at work feels like a Friday, then you are doing what you were meant to do.” - Alan W. Kennedy

101. “Walker and Timothy sat quietly for a very long time. “Why do so many people make it so hard for anyone to help them or to love them?” Walker asked finally. Timothy chuckled. “Ah, Walker—if I could explain all of humanity’s foibles, I’d be a rich man indeed, at least as far as money goes. I believe people are like that because of fear. They fear being loved because they fear that if they’re loved, they’ll have to love back. And if they love back, they may get hurt. And many people aren’t ready to put their hearts on the line like that. Mostly because they don’t have anything to fall back on. It’s quite a shame, really, because they hurt themselves by trying to avoid getting hurt. But we have to be willing to die many times if we’re ever going to get on with this business of living.” - Tom Walsh

102. “If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.” - Terry Tempest Williams

103. “Everyone was willing to take some small risk to lessen the damage of their ambition and disorder and lawlessness.” - Kristin Cashore