By Lolly Daskal
At some point in life we're all
faced with a decision of whether to take a risk. Whether it's leaving a miserable job, moving to a different position that stretches you, starting your own business,
or even taking on a tricky new assignment, greatness requires risk.
Whether you succeed or fail, the act of taking a risk will stretch you and give you faith in yourself--
and the confidence to do even more. Maybe we're meant to do things that scare us so we can build greatness in ourselves.
Allow these amazing quotes to dare you:
1. "Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
--Mark Twain
2. "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."
--Lao Tzu
3. "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
--T. S. Eliot
4. "Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at."
--Unknown
5. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I ... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
--Robert Frost
6. "Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have."
--Oprah Winfrey
7. "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten."
--Tony Robbins
8. "If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary."
--Jim Rohn
9. "If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on."
--Sheryl Sandberg
10. "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
11. "Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."
--e. e. Cummings
12. "If you're going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big."
--Donald Trump
13. "Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore."
--Andre Gide
14. "The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open."
--Chuck Palahniuk
15. "You can't outwit fate by trying to stand on the sidelines and place little side bets about the outcome of life. Either you wade in and risk everything to play the game, or you don't play at all. And if you don't play, you can't win."
--Judith McNaught
16. "If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough."
--Mario Andretti
17. "Everyone has a 'risk muscle.' You keep it in shape by trying new things. If you don't, it atrophies. Make a point of using it at least once a day."
--Roger von Oech
18. "Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it."
--Oprah Winfrey
19. "The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live."
--Leo F. Buscaglia
20. "Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing."
--Denis Waitley
21. "You can measure opportunity with the same yardstick that measures the risk involved. They go together."
--Earl Nightingale
22. "The universe has no restrictions. You place restrictions on the universe with your expectations."
--Deepak Chopra
23. "Do one thing every day that scares you."
--Mary Schmich
24. "I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
--Pablo Picasso
25. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."
--Steve Jobs
26. "If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary."
--Jim Rohn
27. "There is only one way to avoid criticism: Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing."
--Aristotle
28. "There's something liberating about not pretending. Dare to embarrass yourself. Risk." --
Drew Barrymore
29. "If you don't build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs."
--Dhirubhai Ambani
30. "You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done."
--Chuck Yeager
31. "The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself. "
--Mark Cain
e
32. "Always go with your passions. Never ask yourself if it's realistic or not."
--Deepak Chopra
33. "Creative people who can't help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane."
--R. D. Laing
34. "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
--Steve Jobs
35. "The most important thing to remember is this: to be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become."
--W. E. B. Du Bois
36. "Leap and the net will appear."
--Zen saying
37. "Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act."
--Maxwell Maltz
38. "I don't think you're human if you don't get nervous."
--Sidney Crosby
39. "There can be no vulnerability without risk. There can be no community without vulnerability. There can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community."
--M. Scott Peck
40. "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
--John A. Shedd
41. "Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves."
--Walter Anderson
42. "Think big and don't listen to people who tell you it can't be done. Life's too short to think small."
--Tim Ferriss
43. "You've got to keep fighting; you've got to risk your life every six months to stay alive."
--Elia Kazan
44. "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
--Michael Jordan
45. "Because if you're prepared and you know what it takes, it's not a risk. You just have to figure out how to get there. There is always a way to get there."
--Mark Cuban
46. "When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important."
--Ellen DeGeneres
47. "To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself."
--Soren Kierkegaard
48. "Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
49. "The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!"
--Gen. George S. Patton
50. "Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself."
--J. B. Priestley
51. "Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk--and to act."
--Andre Malraux
52. "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might has well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default. "
--J.K. Rowling
53. "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
--Chinese Proverb
54. "Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth." -
-Katherine Mansfield
55. "Don't worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try."
--Jack Canfield
56. "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, dream, discover."
--H. Jackson Brown
57. "When you play it too safe, you're taking the biggest risk of your life. Time is the only wealth we're given."
--Barbara Sher
58. "Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear."
--George Addair
59. "Screw it, Let's do it!"
--Richard Branson
60. "You can't have everything you want, but you can have the things that really matter to you."
--Marissa Mayer
61. "Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's."
--Billy Wilder
62. "I am thankful for all of those who said NO to me. It's because of them I'm doing it myself."
--Albert Einstein
63. "Only those who play win. Only those who risk win. History favors risk-takers. Forgets the timid. Everything else is commentary." --
Iveta Cherneva
64. "The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me." --
Ayn Rand
65. "Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible."
--Cadet maxim
When you take the path of timidity and fear, your destiny is to wonder, years later, what might have been. So go for it! The cost may be great but the reward may be bigger. Get inspired and take the chance you need today.
