Risk-taking

“ The risk depends, in its turn, on two things: first, the magnitude of the threatened evil, and second, the probability of it. The greater the evil is, and the nearer it is, the greater is the indifference or carelessness of him who creates the danger. ”

“ The tips of sinew quivered as if Sleth Forander were fighting to restrain their power. George tried to ignore their closeness and went on. "There's a principle here," he said. "A very basic principle. Risk. You have to take a risk every time to take a step ahead. Risk to your vulnerable parts, whether it be in your physical body or your secret dreams.
"We learned that a long time ago. You have never learned it, because you demanded one hundred percent protection and no risk at all to your vulnerable spot. ”

“ The members of the Joint Select Committee risked my producing a revolver and shooting them when they admitted me to the room without having me handcuffed. And these risks are no unreal ones. Every day some child is maimed or drowned and some young man infected with disease; and political assassinations have been appallingly frequent of late years. Railway travelling has its risks; motoring has its risks; aeroplaning has its risks; every advance we make costs us a risk of some sort. And though these are only risks to the individual, to the community they are certainties. ”

“ After breathing hard for a little while he went on.
“We who have survived this ordeal have gained much more than we risked. I know that anything is worth a risk, the risk in itself is the gain, and to risk everything for nothing is a fine thing. ”

“ It is enough that the risk be real, but it may be more or less imminent. A slight risk would justify a trifling sacrifice. A more imminent risk a greater sacrifice. The terms risk, hazard, peril, and, indeed, the whole class of words used in describing general average cases, always include both the idea of danger and the possibility of escape. The only questions in judging of the propriety of the course of a master, in any given case of voluntary sacrifice, are, Was the peril real? ”

“ Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?’ Should you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were proposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? ”

“ As to “risk,”—why, a carpenter cannot ascend to the top of a house to put the rafters thereon without risk; a chemist cannot investigate the properties of certain fumes without risk; you cannot even eat your dinner without risk. ”

“ Ought n't one to try to be safe?"
"One ought to try, yes. That is common prudence. But the point is that, whatever you do or get, you are n't after all secure. There is no such condition, and the harder you demand it, the more risk you run. ”

“ It is the price we must pay for our insurance, and it is but a moderate price for so important an insurance. I know there are persons who will say, 'Let us run the risk.' Be it so. But, my lords, if the calamity should come, if the conflagration should take place, what words can describe the extent of the calamity, or what imagination can paint the overwhelming ruin that would fall upon us? ”

“ You've always wanted to get out of the insurance business, and now with that fear of being turned out which you have you mustn't neglect this offer. I suppose it has its risks, but it's a risk keeping on as we are ”

“ It is probable that risks would be estimated and undertaken more wisely or less wisely under a different system of society or of industrial organization? Upon this issue, methods of precise analysis are out of place, but we may have something to learn from the emphatic testimony of tradition. It has become an axiom of business men that, while Governments can manage with more or less competence a safe and routine business like a Postal Service, their success would be unlikely to prove conspicuous in undertakings where the element of risk is great. ”

“ So we call it a great risk."
"It seems to be a small risk of a great calamity," said Marco.
"Yes," replied Forester, "but we call it a great risk. We call the risk great, when either the evil which we are in danger of is great, or when the chance of its befalling us is great. For example, if you and I were to walk over that log which lies across the stream, we should run a great risk; but that would be, not a small chance of a great evil, but a great chance of a small evil. There would be a great chance that we should fall off into the stream ”

“ The rule deducible from them is, that the measure of care against accident, which one must take to avoid responsibility, is that which a person of ordinary prudence and caution would use if his own interests were to be affected, and the whole risk were his own. ”

“ "But nobody can stay alive without getting into danger sometimes, and danger doesn't mean getting hurt, Cap'n; it only means we might get hurt. So I guess we'll have to take the risk." ”

“ Do not try to refute me with those rare and accidental cases, viz. that a circumspect person perishes, whilst the careless and unprotected one is saved. For the word safety means something quite different from the word risk. ”

“ Every operation is a risk that we judge wise to take, and this is a malignant misbelief to be extirpated. There will be no unreasonable danger."
"If we can somehow get this medium out here—" said Mr. Tabor. ”

“ And to see everything smiling and serene around, and yet to know that the most deadly danger may arrive to you at any innocent opening, or round the first street-corner, is a kind of risk which naturally tells upon the nerves more than a more open peril. ”

“ Because you humans cheated at every opportunity. And you still do. That's why we must have guarantees. We go to all the expense, take all the risk and then run the added risk of being double crossed. That's too much. ”

“ Though this objection is hardly worth answering to men of business, yet it looks something fair to them that know no better; and for the information of such, I trouble the reader with a few heads:
First, they must consider the insurer is out no stock.
Secondly, it is but one risk the insurer runs; whereas the assured has had a risk out, a risk of debts abroad, a risk of a market, and a risk of his factor, and has a risk of a market to come, and therefore ought to have an answerable profit. ”

“ Wherefore, then, should I run a fearful and terrible risk daily from your excesses? You admit—you must admit—that I, to the very spirit and letter, fulfil my contract with you; and yet I run a fearful risk—a risk which can do you no manner of good. What, if you were to die, Andrew Britton? You are a man of wild excesses ”

“ It is, however, exceedingly difficult to define precisely, what import or value we are to attach to our ideas of safety, even in many of the ordinary occurrences of life. As in all cases involving risk of any kind, the idea of safety can only be taken in a qualified sense. ”

“ When he starts in motion agencies which create risks for others, he should take all the ordinary and extraordinary risks involved; and the risk he thus at the moment assumes will ultimately be assumed, as it ought to be, by the general public. ”

“ This is the element of payment for risk, or rather the reward of risk-bearing. Risk is inherent in all business, as it is inherent in all life. The vagaries of nature and the vagaries of man are alike responsible. The farmer may find his harvest ruined by a drought or by a deluge; the coal or the gold, for the extraction of which you have perhaps set up an extensive mining plant, may come to an end which is unexpectedly abrupt. You may put your money into roller-skating rinks and find that cinemas have become the rage with the fickle public ”

“ Still, we realize the precariousness of seeming, in some cases, to build upon an apparently non-existing foundation; but the risk must be taken, and, as we hope to show, the evidence from subsequent times justifies the risk. ”

“ But while under the individual system everybody charged for the risk of loss, the losses in reality fell on only a part, and so the rest got something for nothing. When insurance companies were organized to distribute part of the risks, making those who did not lose, contribute to make up the loss of those who did, the risks of all were diminished, and the profit and interest charges on that account reduced. ”

“ The students are told very frankly what the possibilities of danger for them in certain excesses may be, so that at least the young man can not say "I knew nothing about it," when the risk becomes an actual reality of danger. ”

“ I lay there for some time thinking, as men active and alert in body and mind will, of the chances I might miss of witnessing some deed of heroism or of violence, were I to allow myself to count the possible cost of the risk, rather than the certain opportunities of distinction which its dangers would present to a man of an enterprising spirit. ”

“ Qualitatively, risk may be thought of as some function of the combination of exposure and the intrinsic properties of the substance or process under consideration by linking an exposure to the likelihood of an outcome. ”

“ Now speculation has its proper place in business: there are certain inherent hazards that must be undertaken, mainly to be found in the risk of the seasons in the production of crops, and the risk of the future in undeveloped enterprise. These risks must be carried by somebody, but clearly they constitute an activity for specialists who study conditions, becoming relatively expert in determining how and when to act. ”

“ The policy-holder's. For what? To defeat one of the policy-holders in a contest for a claim no doubt as honest as any one of the others will present in his turn.
But suppose that this was not an honest claim; suppose that Colonel Dwight was not a "good risk," is it not a rather suggestive indication of the value of the medical examinations by the expert medical examiners and directors of twenty-one life-insurance companies? A risk good enough to "pass" some forty-five doctors employed by, and for the protection of, the companies is, on the face of it, a good enough risk to pay. ”

“ On the other hand, the assumption of risk, even though the risk be obvious, may be free from any suggestion of fault or negligence on the part of the employee. The risks may be present, notwithstanding the exercise of all reasonable care on his part. Some employments are necessarily fraught with danger to the workman,-danger that must be and is confronted in the line of his duty. ”

“ Risk is being assumed, traded, diversified out of, avoided, insured against. It gives rise to visions and hopes and it is the most efficient "economic natural selection" mechanism. To be a market participant one must assume risk, it in an inseparable part of economic activity. ”

“ All who contribute in bearing the risks of industry demand to be kept informed of the policies and actions of the management. In ever extending circles men share in the responsibility for action taken in their name. It is a truism
that risk is diminished and tends to disappear as it is distributed over greater and greater num- bers. Under our present political system na- tions are carrying a tremendous risk in interna- tional affairs they are risking their wealth, the lives of their citizens, their own very existence. ”

“ The same may be said of damages caused by the enemy. All the subjects are exposed to such damages; and woe to him on whom they fall! The members of a society may well encounter such risk of property, since they encounter a similar risk of life itself. ”

“ Risks are at a static level only when they are thus reduced; and for our present purpose it is best to consider that competition has eliminated the establishments where any recklessness has been shown in the management, and that the unavoidable remainder of risk resolves itself, nearly enough for practical purposes, into a deduction from the product which the surviving establishments turn out in a long period of time. ”

“ The risk, computed in free and open market, will be nearly right. It is a kind of insurance against these risks, and the insurers and insured will calculate the rate of insurance better than Government can do it. ”

“ Our bachelor friend of forty wants to reap just as badly as you, but his fields will be waste while yours will be growing. When you get your life insured at twenty-one they charge you about ten times what the risk really is. ”

“ In all this, the Risk might be truly said to fall entirely upon himself; so that it is not easy to imagine, how any Man's Circumstances could be more critical than his actually were in this Conjuncture. ”

“ If ever you have such a vulgar thing as a pain in your stomach, Mr Winch, that is a kindly hint from Nature that there is something wrong with the works. If you drink two of whisky hot the pain may cease, but it does not follow that the real cause of the trouble has been removed. In effect you have merely put back the danger-signal to safety without removing the danger. That is just what all this despicable, hand-to-mouth, time-serving legislation that you and your friends are trying to force upon a popularity-hunting Government is doing for the country to-day. ”

“ They have even undertaken to replace the old-fashioned Providence—and by what? By insurance companies! We insure ourselves against accidents, against risks, against death—indeed a far-sighted wisdom! Why should we not be insured also against fear? ”

“ Everything is sweetened by risk. ”

“ Fifthly, the work-people simply would not learn the gravity of the danger, and would eat with unwashed hands, and incur all sorts of risks, so that as my uncle put it: “the fools deserve what they get.” Sixthly, he and several associated firms had organised a simple and generous insurance scheme against lead-poisoning risks. ”