Quotes & Sayings About Calculating Risks

Usually, the people who wind up making totally arbitrary choices - recklessly going for the next house, the next job, the next relationship that shows up - turn out to be over-calculating. They spend so much time figuring out the risks, looking at all the pros and cons, assessing every worst-case scenario, that no choice looks right, and sheer frustration pushes them to break the deadlock. Ironically, such irrational leaps sometimes work out. The universe has more in store for us than we can ever predict, and bad choices frequently smooth out in the end because our hidden aspirations know where we are going. — Deepak Chopra

a world of known risk, in short, risk (Figure 2-3, center). I use this term for a world where all alternatives, consequences, and probabilities are known. Lotteries and games of chance are examples. Most of the time, however, we live in a changing world where some of these are unknown: where we face unknown risks, or uncertainty (Figure 2-3, right). The world of uncertainty is huge compared to that of risk. Whom to marry? Whom to trust? What to do with the rest of one's life? In an uncertain world, it is impossible to determine the optimal course of action by calculating the exact risks. We have to deal with "unknown unknowns." Surprises happen. Even when calculation does not provide a clear answer, however, we have to make decisions. — Gerd Gigerenzer

Why are so many very smart people not also rich? I guess they are too busy calculating risks rather than getting into action. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Farmers the world over, in dealing with costs, returns and risks, are calculating economic agents. Within their small, individual, allocative domain, they are fine-tuning entrepreneurs, tuning so subtly that many experts fail to recognize how efficient they are. — Theodore Schultz