Our favorite quotes on risk taking, overcoming fear and enjoying challenges.

The greatest rewards in life go to the risk takers.

Jim McCormick

Life is a great big canvas, throw all the paint on it you can.

Danny Kaye

Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.

Norman Vincent Peale

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

Helen Keller

Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.

Anias Nin

What kind of man would live where there is no daring? I don't believe in taking foolish chances, but nothing can be accomplished without taking any chance at all.

Charles Lindbergh

Every man dies, but not every man really lives.

William Wallace

Great achievements involve great risk.

The Dalai Lama

If not now, when will you begin living your life?

Jack Borland

If I had my life to live again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.

Tallulah Bankhead

Only by great risks can great results be achieved.

Xerxes

The person who goes furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure thing boat never gets far from shore.

Dale Carnegie

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

Sidney J. Harris

When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder.

William Joseph Slim

If you don't live on the edge, you can't see the view.

Vicky Corrington

You can become a winner only if you are willing to walk over the edge.

Damon Runyon

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.

Gail Sheehy

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 the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

There is no safety. Only varying degrees of risk.

Lois McMaster Bujold

The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.

Jawaharial Nehru

Work like you don't need money, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like no one's watching.

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Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are correct.

Henry Ford

To win without risk is to triumph without glory.

Pierre Corneille

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

Douglas MacArthur

Monotony is the awful reward of the careful.

A. G. Buckham

To escape criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

Elbert Hubbard

I know the secret of failure to be: trying to please everybody.

Bill Cosby

There is only one success: to be able to spend life your own way.

Christopher Morley

You can die in the bleachers or you can die on the field, so you might as well get on the field of life and have a good time! Enjoy the grand adventure.

Les Brown

Fortune favors the bold.

Virgil

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

Amelia Earhart

If you can dream it, you can do it.

Walt Disney

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

He who doesn't risk never gets to drink champagne.

Russian proverb

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandela

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be he must be.

Abraham Maslow

Trust your crazy ideas.

Dan Zadra

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.

Babe Ruth

Progress always involves risk; you can't steal second base and keep your foot on first base.

Fredrick Wilcox

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

Henry David Thoreau

Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.

Karl Wallenda

For the truth is that I already know as much about my fate as I need to know. The day will come when I will die. So the only matter of consequence before me is what I will do with my allotted time. I can remain on shore, paralyzed with fear, or I can raise my sails and dip and soar in the breeze.

Richard Bode

There is a precipice on either side of you (a precipice of caution and a precipice of over-daring.)

Winston Churchill

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Henry David Thoreau

Some people love to lead, some refuse to dance. Some play it safely, others take a chance. Most live as oysters, while some become pearls.

If you take no risks, you'll never be hurt, but you won't really live, either.

Dr. James Shiovitz

Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world.

Samuel Johnson

You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?

Robert Louis Stevenson

Commit yourself to a dream ... Nobody who tries to do something great but fails is a total failure. Why? Because he can always rest assured that he succeeded in life's most important battle - he defeated the fear of trying.

Robert H. Schuller

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

Mark Twain

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.

Henry David Thoreau

When I decided that I too must pass through the experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level.

Charles Lindberg

Few people get to do what they want to do in life. Be one of them.

Andy Broer

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: overcome fear, behold wonder.

Richard Bach
from Jonathan Livingston Seagull

There are far too many of us who place far too much stock in being alive ... and far too little in living.

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Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that never otherwise would have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamt would come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

Goethe

The rapture of being alive is what it's all about.

Joseph Campbell

"In The Arena"

The credit in life goes not to the critic who stands on the sideline and points out where the strong stumble. But rather, the real credit in life goes to the person who's actually in the arena. Who's face do sweat and dust mar. Who knows great enthusiasm and great devotion and learns to spend himself or herself at a worthy cause. If they win, they know the thrill of great achievement, and if they lose, at least they lose while daring greatly so that their place in life will never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Paraphrased from Theodore Roosevelt

If I had my life to live over I'd like to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would perhaps have more actual trouble, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. You see, I'm one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day.

Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat, and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter that I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds, I would pick more daisies.

Nadine Stair at age 85

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.

Henry Emerson Fosdick

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

Mark Twain