Be inspired to make well-informed decisions, navigate challenges, and seize opportunities with this list of risk management quotes!
From the smallest daily choices to the most significant strategic moves, understanding and embracing risk is crucial for progress and success. Below is a curated list of risk management quotes from renowned leaders, entrepreneurs, and thinkers to help sharpen your decision-making, transform potential pitfalls into opportunities, and cultivate resilience in the face of uncertainty.
(by Jonathan M. Pham)
Short Risk Management Quotes
- Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing. – Warren Buffett
- All of life is the management of risk, not its elimination. – Walter Wriston
- The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. – Oprah Winfrey
- Risk management is a more realistic term than safety. – Jerome F. Lederer
- In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. – Albert Einstein
Short quote for risk management
Motivational Risk Management Quotes
- If you don’t take risks, you risk everything. – Geena Davis
- A ship is safe in harbor—but that’s not what ships are for. – William G.T. Shedd
- When you take risks and they work out, they lead to new capabilities you never saw before. – Tom Soderstrom
- Progress always involves risk; you can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first. – Frederick Wilcox
- There are risks and costs to action—but they are far less than the long‑range risks of comfortable inaction. – John F. Kennedy
Famous quote about risk
Quotes About Taking Risks
- When you aren’t a little not ready to do something—you won’t grow. – Marissa Mayer
- To win without risk is to triumph without glory. – Pierre Corneille
- Opportunities, the good ones, they’re messy and confusing and hard to recognize. They’re risky. They challenge you. – Susan Wojcicki
- What’s the worst thing that would happen if I failed? – Dave Hitz
- The biggest risk is not taking any risk. – Mark Zuckerberg
Motto of a risk taker
Quotes About Risk and Reward
- The reward is in the risk. – Rachel Cohn
- If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. – Nora Roberts
- If you want the most reward you have to take the most risk. – Jesse Itzler
- Business is a risk‑reward proposition. – Bill Bain
- Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. – T. S. Eliot
Quotes about risk, opportunity and success
Risk Assessment Quotes
- You need a certain emotional intelligence when approaching risk. – David Hillson
- Some risks thought unknown are not unknown—foresight and tools can help reveal them. – Daniel Wagner
- A major lesson in risk management is that a ‘receding sea’ is not free beach but a tsunami warning. – Jos Berkemeijer
- Thoughtfully assessing and addressing enterprise risk and placing a high value on corporate transparency can protect the one thing we cannot afford to lose: trust. – Dale E. Jones
- Alignment of strategy and risk appetite should minimize exposure to unexpected losses. – Jerome Powell
Read more: 50 Essential Emotional Intelligence Quotes for Success
Quotes about risk management
Risk Control Quotes
- Never take both hands off the pump. As an entrepreneur, you need to be on constant lookout for opportunity, and that will involve risk. But you minimize those risks by keeping one hand on the pump that is producing for you. – Kenneth E. Behring
- Unprecedented events occur regularly—be prepared. – Seth Klarman
- My mission isn’t to make money—it’s to preserve capital. – Michael Price
- Large losses are almost always caused by trying to get too much by taking too much risk. – Charles Ellis
- Not taking risks one doesn’t understand is often the best form of risk management. – Raghuram G. Rajan
Read more: 65 Entrepreneur Quotes – Wisdom to Launch & Lead
Quotes about risk mitigation
Business Risk Quotes
- If you don’t invest in risk management, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, it’s a risky business. – Gary Cohn
- Being a Navy SEAL taught me risk management: reduce variables to acceptable levels. – Brandon Webb
- Even F1 has the best risk management of any industry. – Jackie Stewart
- Indeed, better risk management may be the only necessary element of success in banking. – Alan Greenspan
- Be a business analyst, not a market, macroeconomic, or security analyst. Consider the totality of risk and effect; look always at potential second-order and higher-level impacts. – Charles T. Munger
Read more: 60 Business Strategy Quotes – From Planning to Profit
Quotes about risk in business
Operational Risk Management Quotes
- Managing risk is very different from managing strategy. – Robert S. Kaplan
- Risk management is about people and processes—not models and tech. – Trevor Levine
- Success is about smart risk management, not about wild risk taking. – Michael Masterson
- We learn from history that people don’t learn from history. – Warren Buffett
- Operational risk reporting can best support business decision-making if it is prepared to complement rather than mimic other forms of management reporting. – Paul Lowrie
Financial risk quotes
Project Risk Management Quotes
- Keeping the risk management plan up to date can transform it from a door stop into a vital project management tool. – Bruce Pittman
- Remember: what you don’t know can kill your project. – Bruce Pittman
- Never put yourself in a position where you cannot live to fight another day. – Richard S. Fuld Jr.
- No matter how good the team or how efficient the methodology, if we’re not solving the right problem, the project fails. – Woody Williams
- Crisis planning and continuous learning maximize organizational ability through risk. – Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Quotes on risk
Enterprise Risk Management Quotes
- Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) involves viewing risk holistically and horizontally across an organization. – Al Decker
- Risk management should be an enterprise-wide exercise and engrained in the business culture of the organization. – Julie Dickson
- Total enterprise risk management is critical—but implementing it is easier said than done. – Danny Klinefelter
- We try to protect against tail risk: the risk of unlikely but possible events that could be catastrophic. – Seth Klarman
- The essence of risk management lies in maximizing the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimizing the areas where we have absolutely no control over the outcome. – Peter L. Bernstein
Read more: 110 Leadership Quotes to Unlock Greatness
Quote about courage to take risks
Other resources you might be interested in:
- 125 Management Quotes: Essential Wisdom for Excellence
- 57 Change Management Quotes: Wisdom for Leaders
- 55 Company Culture Quotes: Building a Great Workplace
- 44 Organizational Development Quotes: Spark Change & Drive Momentum