Risk

Its analysts were only too aware that no one has ever been penalized for not having foreseen an opportunity, but that many careers have been blighted for not predicting a risk. Therefore the intelligence community has always been tempted for forecast dire consequences for any conceivable course of action, an attitude that encourages paralysis rather than adventurism. After every crisis there surfaces in the press some obscure intelligence report or analyst purporting to have predicted it, only to have been foolishly ignored by the policymakers. What these claims omit to mention is that when warnings become too routine they lose all significance; when reports are not called specifically to the attention of the top leadership they are lost in bureaucratic background noise, particularly since for every admonitory report one can probably find also its opposite in the files.

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing

He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave. He has forfeited his freedom

Only a person who dares to risk is free