Warning: These quotes are all available out there on the Internet and summarized here for readers. If you do not want your quote here or believe that by including it here, I have violated your intellectual property rights, please email me and I will remove it.
“Risk management is about people and processes and not about models and technology.” – Trevor Levine
“I can show you where your Riskczar” – Trevor Levine
“Risks were what made the whole thing fun.” – Tom Ripley
“Risk is chemistry, it’s not particle physics. You cannot separate the risks.” – Enterprise Risk Management, (Chapter 5 “Becoming the Lamp Bearer” by Anette Mikes)
“One of the greatest contributions of risk manager – arguably the single greatest – is just carrying a torch around and providing transparency.” Enterprise Risk Management, (Chapter 5 “Becoming the Lamp Bearer” by Anette Mikes)
“Risk is a function of how poorly a strategy will perform if the ‘wrong’ scenario occurs.” – Michael Porter, Competitive Advantage
“If everything is a matter of luck, risk management is a meaningless exercise. Invoking luck obscures truth, because it separates an event from its cause.” – Peter Bernstein
“Risk and time are opposite sides of the same coin, for if there were no tomorrow there would be no risk. Time transforms risk, and the nature of risk is shaped by the time horizon: the future is the playing field. – Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods
“Risk management should be an enterprisewide exercise and engrained in the business culture of the organization.” – OSFI Superintendent Julie Dickson, June 1, 2011 (courtesy Ethidex)
“One cannot take risk management too seriously” – H. Felix Kloman (in email November 18, 2011)
“The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.” – Malcolm Gladwell from Outliers Chapter 7.3
“If you don’t invest in risk management, it doesnt matter what business you’re in, it’s a risky business,” Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn.
“Risk is our business” – Oswald Grübel, CEO at UBS
“I can assure you, as long as I’m here, as long as my colleagues are here, we do know about risks.” – Oswald Grübel, CEO at UBS
“We will not rest until we have controls that are as watertight as possible” – Carsten Kengeter, head of UBS’s investment bank.
“At Berkshire, I both initiate and monitor every derivatives contract on our books … If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of the misjudgments made by a risk committee or chief risk officer”. – Warren Buffett
Harry Potter: Sirius, what are you doing here? If somebody sees you…
Sirius Black: I had to see you off, didn’t I? What’s life without a little risk?
Harry Potter: I just don’t want to see you get shut back in Azkaban.
“When our leaders accept the status quo, we run the risk of disaster.” – Max Bazerman from “Predictable Surprises”
“Enterprise risk management is a contact sport. Success comes from making contact with people.” – John Fraser, Enterprise Risk Management, (Chapter 5 “Becoming the Lamp Bearer”)
“The mistake…was attributed in part to the fact that employees called the 3-year note ‘Losh’ and the 5-year note ‘Bosh’. The comic mixing of ‘Loshes’ and ‘Boshes’ sounded more like a Dr. Seuss children’s book than a cutting-edge risk-management operation.” – Frank Portnoy from “Infectious Greed”
“My client loved risk. Risk, I had learned, was a commodity in itself. Risk could be canned and sold like tomatoes.” – Michael Lewis from “Liar’s Poker”
“Risk it, go for it. Life always gives you another chance, another go at it. It’s very important to take enormous risks.” – Mary Quant
“You got to risk it if you want the biscuit.” – Len Goodman, DWTS 5/23/2011
“This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning. History does not end so. It is the way its chapters open.” -St. Augustine.
Luck is unreliable. – The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley p. xvi
We gauge risk literally hundreds of times per day, usually well and often subconsciously. We start assessing risk before the disaster even happens. We are doing is right now. We decide where to live and what kind of insurance to buy, just like we process all kinds of everyday risks: we wear bike helmets, or not. We buckle our seatbelts, smoke cigarettes, and let our kids stay out until midnight. Or not. – The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley p26
The public totally discounts low-probability high-consequence events. The individual says, it’s not going to be this plane, this bus, this time. – The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley p43
“A RISK is a potential for a LOSS. The LOSS is the realization of that negative potential. A RISK is running across a busy street blindfolded. A LOSS is getting hit by a car while doing that.” – Riskviews
“ERM is not an EASY button from Staples.” – Riskviews
“Risk is ‘exciting’ but management is ‘boring’.” – Keith Baxter (Fast Track to Success Risk Management)
“ERM is really about managing residual risk – that is, things that could happen. That’s what senior management needs to know.” – Jason Toledano (from Journal of Applied Corporate Finance – volume 19 number 4)
“The concept of ‘inherent risk’ is impossible to measure or even define. The idea of looking at risk absent all hard controls, soft controls, or mitigations, provides little or no useful information in most cases.” – Todd Perkins (from Journal of Applied Corporate Finance – volume 19 number 4)
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it and if you understand this you will do things differently” – Warren Buffett
“It’s important to take risks but it’s idiotic to take them blindly” – Terry Levine
“Business as usual is business at risk.” – Deloitte white paper
“”I believe that a CEO must not delegate risk control. It’s simply too important. … If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of misjudgments made by a risk committee or chief risk officer” – Warren Buffet
“Enterprise risk management is no panacea, and I know some people who question whether it really exists. But anything that gets people and the institutions they’ve built to look at risk from multiple angles, with an eye to building value, is a most welcome thing.” – Mark A Hofmann
“One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose.” – Randy Pausch
“Always putting yourself in position to control your response to situations – not have them dictated to you by the choices/actions of others.” – Professor Pinch (Not a real professor)
“Fail to identify the strategic risks and you fail as a business, no matter how well you manage your operational and project risks.” – Keith Baxter
“Risk management is turning out to be another critical capability for many businesses entering Asia, where uncertainty and volatility are often part of the business environment.” – Strategy+Business
“Total enterprise risk management is critical, but implementing it is both expensive and easier said than done. Even the most sophisticated financial institutions are still basically silo risk managers.” – Danny Klinefelter, Professor and Extension Economist with Texas AgriLife Extension, Texas A&M University
“While ERM is not a panacea for all the turmoil experienced in the markets in recent years, robust engagement by the board in enterprise risk oversight strengthens an organization’s resilience to significant risk exposures.” – COSO
“For those organizations that choose to weather this economic storm with the aid of ERM, the benefits of their efforts today will likely remain long thereafter.” – GrantThornton
“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, vice chairman and partner with Heidrick & Struggles
“Like a well-prepared meal at a fine restaurant, ERM is best taken one course at a time, not mixed up on a single, giant plate.” – Joanna Makomaski and Beaumont Vance from the book “Enterprise Risk Management for Dummies”
“We get top ten risk reports at every meeting but number one is always people risk. Technology usually shows up somewhere. What does that mean, and what are we supposed to do about it?” – A bank director complained in Mercer Management Journal 17.
“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” – Warren Buffett
“Adventure without risk is Disneyland.” – Douglas Coupland
“Risk is like fire: If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled it will rise up and destroy you.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“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
“ERM is not a panacea for all of the uncertainties facing companies. Nor is it a guarantee that bad things will never happen.” – RIMS
“The key to successful ERM practices depends on the behavioural attributes of the organization at all levels.” – RIMS
“If you treat risk management as a part-time job, you might soon find yourself looking for one.” – Deloitte white paper (Putting Risk in the Comfort Zone)
“Risk and time are opposite sides of the same coin, for if there were no tomorrow there would be no risk. Time transforms risk, and the nature of risk is shaped by the time horizon: the future is the playing field.” – Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
“Risk is just an expensive substitute for information.” –Adrian Slywotzky and Karl Weber
“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
“A logical, consistent and disciplined approach to the future’s uncertainties will allow us to live with them prudently and productively, avoiding unnecessary waste of resources.” The great Felix Kloman’s Mumpsimus
“If everything is a matter of luck, risk management is a meaningless exercise. Invoking luck obscures the truth, because it separates an event from its causes.” Bernstein’s Against the Gods