Risk
Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity (including the choice of inaction) will lead to a loss (an undesirable outcome). The notion implies that a choice having an influence on the outcome exists (or existed). Potential losses themselves may also be called "risks". Almost any human endeavor carries some risk, but some are much more risky than others.
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Famous quotes containing the word risk:
“I saw the man my friend ... wants pardoned, Thomas Flinton. He is a bright, good-looking fellow.... Of his innocence all are confident. The governor strikes me as a man seeking popularity, who lacks the independence and manhood to do right at the risk of losing popularity. Afraid of what will be said. He is prejudiced against the Irish and Democrats.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Maybe we were the blind mechanics of disaster, but you don’t pin the guilt on the scientists that easily. You might as well pin it on M motherhood.... Every man who ever worked on this thing told you what would happen. The scientists signed petition after petition, but nobody listened. There was a choice. It was build the bombs and use them, or risk that the United States and the Soviet Union and the rest of us would find some way to go on living.”
—John Paxton (1911–1985)
“The reality is that zero defects in products plus zero pollution plus zero risk on the job is equivalent to maximum growth of government plus zero economic growth plus runaway inflation.”
—Dixie Lee Ray (b. 1924)