Quotes: Risk-taking
Risk-taking is framed here as a decision to step into life: to act boldly and thereby invite fortune, as Virgil suggests; to move now to protect your dreams, as J. Cole urges; and to dive fully into experience, as Rumi teaches. Together they present risk as a route to vitality rather than mere recklessness.
The tension running through these voices is practical and moral: which risks are worth taking? Between caution and passion, the challenge is to choose risks that create meaning and avoid the slow accumulation of what might have been.
3 quotes on this theme, each with its source and insight
The quotes
“Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”
Source: The Journal of Katherine Mansfield, journal entry 14 October 1922 (published 1927) · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The wording is documented as a Katherine Mansfield journal entry dated 14 October 1922 and published posthumously in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927).
- What remains uncertain
- Minor textual variants are recorded (e.g. “those other voices” vs “those voices”); these reflect editorial transmission, not a different author.
A compact call to honest courage: choose what your conscience demands, not what others expect. Written as a private imperative, it presses creative and moral authenticity over public approval. The lines come from Mansfield’s personal journal.
“Fortune favors the bold.”
Source: Aeneid · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The sentiment is securely Virgilian: it appears in the Aeneid and is spoken in the poem by the character Turnus.
- What remains uncertain
- The familiar English wording is a translation/normalization of the Latin and several Latin variants exist in tradition.
Born as a battle cry, the line claims decisive action wins the favor of Fortune. In Virgil it functions as a martial exhortation—invoking the goddess Fortuna—rather than a pop self-help tip. Over time it turned into a compact proverb about taking risks.
“Don't sit and wait. Get out there, feel life. Touch the sun, and immerse in the sea.”
Source: no specific work is documented · Check the source
MisattributedWhat we know
- What is documented
- The wording is not found in standard editions of Rumi’s Persian works; it appears mainly in modern compilations and online posts.
- What remains uncertain
- Attribution to Rumi is disputed and likely apocryphal—the phrasing reads as a contemporary paraphrase rather than a traceable medieval line.
This line urges active engagement with life: abandon waiting, feel the world, and use elemental images — touch the sun, immerse in the sea — to express spiritual intensity and wholehearted presence, a hallmark of ecstatic poetry.