Top 96 Quotes About High Stakes
#1. In life I've learned one thing; if you want to be good you have to connect with the best people. So I got very close to the high-stakes players here. I get to watch them and play with them a little bit.
Guy Laliberte
#2. The last element in drama is high stakes. War, of course, is life and death - survival, not only for the story's characters, but often for the society itself. That's why I'm drawn to stories that are built around wars, even if they're not technically "war stories."
Steven Pressfield
#3. The world of high-stakes international diplomacy can be rough and tumble, but it's more often than not a procession of suits and summits, protocol sessions and photo ops.
Douglas Brinkley
#4. If you take real-life circumstances and take out all the pauses then you have a thriller. It has to be non-stop, high stakes and fascinating all the time. Real life is like that from time to time.
Hank Phillippi Ryan
#5. The reason why I hate working in theatre is the tedium of memorisation. But once that is done, then you feast on this never-ending meal. If you play it correctly, every night is fraught with very high stakes that are very difficult to find in everyday life.
Christopher Meloni
#6. These days, it seems like you can't throw a fish in a bookstore without hitting a high-stakes love triangle
not that I recommend the throwing of fish in bookstores, mind you, as it certainly annoys the booksellers, not to mention the fish ...
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#7. We live vicariously through stories, because our own lives provide so few opportunities for high-stakes adventure and noble sacrifice.
Sarah Cross
#8. We heads of state really prefer to have some sort of an agenda before we sit down at the high-stakes table, you know. All bad novelists notwithstanding, surprise and improvisation are not the best basis for successful diplomacy!
David Weber
#9. He loved that anxiety, that terrible and oppressive anxiety which he experienced during the game of dice, during the suspense of high stakes.
Hermann Hesse
#10. Miami drivers have long ago take the simple chore of going from one place to another and turned it into a kind of high-speed, heavily armed game of high-stakes bumper cars.
Jeff Lindsay
#11. When you are 15, everything is such high stakes, even tiny things. I think because of that, it is funny but sad at the same time.
Sophie Wu
#12. I play for high stakes and given an audience - there is no act too daring or too noble.
Winston Churchill
#13. Xenophobia doesn't benefit anybody unless you're playing high-stakes Scrabble.
Dennis Miller
#14. I see Macbeth as a young, open-faced warrior, who is gradually sucked into a whirpool of events because of his ambition. When he meets the weird sisters and hears their prophecy, he's like the man who hopes to win a million - a gamble for high stakes.
Roman Polanski
#15. 'High Stakes' was a very bad movie that I was cast in as a lead.
Dave Foley
#16. To the truly driven (which one has to be to survive in the high stakes, competitive world of show business), lack of opportunity means nothing. The TDs always think numbers are for everyone else and don't involve them.
K Callan
#17. I'm urging NASA to foster the development of what I call 'runway landers.' No, that's not the name of a high stakes gambler from Vegas. It's a type of spacecraft that flies to orbit like the retiring Shuttles but then glides to a landing like an airplane on a runway. Just like the Shuttles do.
Buzz Aldrin
#19. Bon Iver: Way too emotionally high stakes for casual listening in the sense that it makes every single part of your life feel like the part of a TV show where you are in a hospital saying goodbye for the very last time
Jesse Andrews
#20. In his student days he was known for a sharp slanderous tongue, for irreverance to his seniors, for drinking and gaming for high stakes. But who would hold up his head, if people judged us by what we were like at twenty?
Hilary Mantel
#21. Hence [through No Child Left Behind] the state has been given power...to fire all teachers and principles. So here we have an unusual case in which the students are engaged in the performances, but the high stakes have been displaced onto the teachers who are preparing their charges for the exams.
James M. Lang
#22. That's one of the difficult things of being an actor that I'm still not used to. You have to go, you have to show up at these places where you know nobody, and sometimes with really impressive, high stakes people like Roman Polanski.
John C. Reilly
#23. Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and can look forward to more high-stakes shadow-boxing in the netherworld of the world's most elaborate system of censorship.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#24. Over time, you realize that even the things that are most high stakes kind of resolve themselves.
Natasha Lyonne
#25. Public education is so important - resisting privatization and charterization, high-stakes testing, and defunding. It's important for New York, but it's also important for the country.
Zephyr Teachout
#26. Beat me, hurt me, fight me and I'll bounce back, but be nice to me? I folded quicker than a banker in a high-stakes poker game.
Pippa DaCosta
#27. My workday is non-stop break-neck high stakes and high pressure. Every day.
Hank Phillippi Ryan
#28. I think if you're in this business, like any high-stakes business, the highs and lows can make you a manic-depressive person, if you weren't that way to start with. 'Cause it's just so crazy on your psyche. A lot of it has to do with people thinking they're greater than someone else.
Joan Cusack
#29. Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.
William Landay
#30. Precious souls are at high stakes when this world turns over with feet that quake. The timeless hearts of souls that make, beautiful music at no mistake. Peace love and light too all who demand, and together forever in on this earth we we will stand.
Peace Gypsy
#31. Your work isn't a high stakes, nail-biting professional challenge. It's a form of play. Lighten up and have fun with it.
Sol LeWitt
#32. I love things where I can be physical and I so love high stakes, and you usually don't get that unless you're doing a play or an action movie.
Will Patton
#33. The less people present in an urgent situation that a moderately high stakes recording session can create - the less people there are in the room - the more openness there can be. These songs share that as well, in addition to just the obvious, basic starkness.
Will Oldham
#34. We're reducing the number of high-stakes tests from fifteen to five.
Ken Robinson
#35. The most volatile current debate among American school administrators, teachers, parents, and students concerns "high-stakes" testing. The stakes are considered high because instead of simply testing students to measure their progress, schools are increasingly held accountable for the results.
Anonymous
#36. The stakes were suddenly so high that we wanted out of the game. When you're playing poker with the devil, however, no one leaves the table before he does.
Dean Koontz
#37. In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
Douglas Adams
#38. I can't let that happen again. The stakes are way too high. I know that, now more than ever. If there's anything good that came from my failure on First Earth, it's that I have now totally given myself over to being a Traveler.
D.J. MacHale
#39. When a sports movie really works, it gets you on all levels, because the stakes are high. It's black and white. It's win or lose.
Carla Gugino
#41. As far as I'm concerned, the stakes are always very high. Whether it's playing at the White House or playing for a group in my own house - you know, one of those soirees I play in. Once I start playing, the stakes are somehow higher, in a way, than any of the context.
Joshua Bell
#42. The times call for courage. The times call for hard work. But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even higher. They are nothing less than the future of human liberty, which means the future of civilization.
Henry Hazlitt
#43. The stakes in my books tend to be kind of ridiculously high. In 'Kid vs. Squid,' the question is whether or not the California coast will be subsumed by the ocean in favor of the creation of a new Atlantis. In 'The Boy at the End of the World,' what's at stake is the survival of the human species.
Greg Van Eekhout
#44. I think all villains have something in common: they have something that they need or want very, very badly. The stakes are very high and they are not bound by moral codes or being ethical, so they can do anything and will do anything to get what they want.
Donna Murphy
#45. The stakes are so high because auditions are make or break. You get the job or you don't. The stakes are about as high as they get, for yourself and your own self-esteem.
Madeline Zima
#46. When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do.
Sam Harris
#47. [Before being burned at the stake for her faith:] Hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames.
Joan Of Arc
#48. The stakes are too high for us to die with a small vision.
Louie Giglio
#49. Jumping to conclusions is efficient if the conclusions are likely to be correct and the costs of an occasional mistake acceptable. Jumping to conclusions is risky when the situation is unfamiliar, the stakes are high and there is no time to collect more information.
Daniel Kahneman
#50. The real stakes in the theater are high - they are life stakes. That's what I love about it. You gamble with your life, and that's a gamble worth taking.
Lauren Bacall
#51. I've pretty much given up on the orange. I really have. I just don't even bother. It's just either sour, or woody, or the skin's too thick. It's very nice when you come across the perfect orange, because it's really a beautiful experience. But the stakes are too high.
Scott Thompson
#52. Jamie, when the stakes are high, I never cheat. I consider myself too important to do that.
E.L. Konigsburg
#53. There's a game out there, and the stakes are high. And the guy who runs it figures the averages all day long and all night long. Once in a while he lets you steal a pot. But if you stay in the game long enough, you've got to lose. And once you've lost there's no way back, no way at all.
Dalton Trumbo
#54. Cancer is such a wake-up call to remind us how high the cosmic stakes really are and how short and brief and frail life really is.
Joni Eareckson Tada
#55. I like to approach comedy from character, to have the stakes for the individuals in the story be very high.
Seth Gordon
#56. You know, parenting is so personal. And we're all afraid that we didn't quite get it right. And it feels like the stakes are so high. By we - what if we made a mistake?
Amy Chua
#57. I always prefer the character moments. For me, personally, whether I'm shooting the gun or not shooting the gun, I really don't care. I'm the guy who's like, "Whatever you want me to do." But, I really get excited about the character moments that are steeped in emotion when the stakes are high.
Brandon Jay McLaren
#58. The stakes are very high for us in Haiti. We have many important interests there. Perhaps the most important to me is our interest in the promotion of democracy in this hemisphere.
Warren Christopher
#59. Write every day. Don't ever stop. If you are unpublished, enjoy the act of writing - and if you are published, keep enjoying the act of writing. Don't become self-satisfied, don't stop moving ahead, growing, making it new. The stakes are high. Why else would we write?
Rick Bass
#60. I honestly think vulnerability is a beautiful thing: it's tenderness, authenticity, and risk-taking. It means you're living a life where the stakes are high and you are continuing to push your own boundaries and learn new things. It keeps you flexible and young.
Jaime Murray
#61. It doesn't work if the bad guys kill his mother's uncle's friend's neighbor's pet dog. You've got to make the stakes high.
Steven Seagal
#62. No Child Left Behind has diminished [teachers'] sense of control of their own classroom, narrowed the focus of their jobs, and stifled pedagogical innovation.
James M. Lang
#63. There was also a sense that if he [Obama] did not win in Iowa, that it was very unlikely that he would be able to come back and win the Democratic nomination and win the general election. It was sort of an all-or-nothing bet. The stakes were that high.
Josh Earnest
#64. For me, a great story is one in which the protagonist faces unimaginable odds; where the stakes are high that failure constitutes a disaster.
Michael Boatman
#65. My history is long, and not much of it is good. I can't erase it, but I'm determined not to make another mistake. Not when the stakes are high, not when it comes to you.
Becca Fitzpatrick
#66. An adversarial family law system raises the stakes unnecessarily high, exacerbates the antagonism of the couples concerned, and is directly responsible for making it impossible for couples who would otherwise have reconciled to do so.
Louis De Bernieres
#67. There is always a countermove, always an escape or way through. No one said it would be easy and of course the stakes are high, but the path is there for those ready to take it.
Ryan Holiday
#68. Any time you get into a presidential campaign and the stakes are so high, all candidates - they want to be in complete control whenever they can. And you can't blame them for that.
Bob Schieffer
#69. Sometimes a King has to do terrible things in order to protect those he has sworn to look after. When the stakes are so high, dreadful decisions have to be taken. It is the responsibility of a King to take on that burden, that guilt.
Cressida Cowell
#70. Baseball is a little bigger gamble than most, and the stakes are pretty high.
Jacob Ruppert
#71. With the parties at virtual parity and the ideological gulf between them never greater, the stakes of majority control of Congress are extremely high.
Thomas E. Mann
#72. The fish might well have disappeared already, but Brody wasn't willing to gamble lives on the possibility: the odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high.
Peter Benchley
#73. Some reviewers call my stories dark - and yes, there is violence and angst, and the stakes are high - but I like to think that the endings are satisfying and hopeful.
Carol Berg
#74. Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be.
Hillary Clinton
#75. When the stakes are high, bow down low.
Beth Moore
#76. But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.
Emily Giffin
#77. When characters have different goals and are intent on achieving them, conflict results. If the stakes are high and both sides are unyielding, you have the makings of high drama.
James N. Frey
#78. I don't care what the situation was, how high the stakes were - the bases could be loaded and the pennant riding on every pitch, it never bothered Whitey. He pitched his game. Cool. Craft. Nerves of steel.
Mickey Mantle
#79. You are a powerhouse of creativity; you were born magnificently expressive, available and aware. Before you had the words for it, you had an intrinsic sense of urgency because you knew down in your bones that the stakes are high.
Larry Silverberg
#80. Being loved is a good thing. A grand thing. The best damned thing of all.
Lori Wilde
#81. The best we can do is a compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high.
Daniel Kahneman
#82. Most of us are going through life without interrogating whether our decision-making processes are fit for purpose. And that's something we need to change - especially when the stakes are high and the decisions are of real import.
Noreena Hertz
#83. And then I thought that it wasn't fair that at seventeen you could make choices that you might regret for the rest of your life because you really had no idea what you were doing and the stakes were just too high.
Melissa Kantor
#84. How do I judge my own sincerity? The saving grace of salvation is located in a holy and electing God, and a sacrificing, suffering, and obedient Savior. Stakes this high can never rest on my sincerity.
Rosaria Champagne Butterfield
#85. Sometimes, proceeding in the dark and aiming an arrow at the elusive, mythical dragon trumps all the rational arguments for not proceeding. Sometimes, the stakes are so high and the status quo is so unacceptable that taking aim in any direction is better than not shooting at all.
Rebecca J. Anderson
#86. But I am, personally, not a gambler. I wouldn't spend £1 on the lottery, let alone take a punt on a pregnancy. The stakes are far, far too high. I can't agree with a society that would force me to bet on how much I could love under duress.
Caitlin Moran
#87. It was my proudest moment as a manager when England drew 0-0 with Italy in Rome to qualify for the World Cup finals. Fifteen years later, the stakes are equally high for both countries as they go head-to-head for a semi-final place at the European Championship.
Glenn Hoddle
#88. The reality is the stakes are very high. If your industry is targeted or your company is sued in a class action, your legal costs will soar.
Jonathan Friedman
#89. The stakes are high on every film now because there's the opening weekend. The first week is extremely crucial; increasingly, films are being judged in terms of opening day, opening weekend, then first week. People are going berserk promoting their films.
Vidya Balan
#90. odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high. He
Peter Benchley
#91. The stakes ... are too high for government to be a spectator sport.
Barbara Jordan
#92. The acceleration of the marketing process, the concentrating of manufacturing, greater diversification, increased international competition, have in turn speeded up product improvements, product innovations and new product introductions. The stakes are high, the failures costly.
Tom Sutton
#93. To regret fully is to appreciate how high the stakes are in even the average human life; fully experienced, it turns our eyes, attentive and alert, to a future possibly lived better than our past.
David Whyte
#94. The more comfortable you get, the more money you earn, the more successful you are, the harder it is to create situations where you have to prove yourself and make yourself not just want it, but need it. The stakes should always feel high. Stephen
Carrie Brownstein
#95. In New York the stakes are so high. In urban centers the stakes are so high. You marry the wrong person, you go to the wrong college, you take the wrong job. Any of these things could really get you in trouble down the road. Or in your mind anyway. You're afraid to make any move, it's paralyzing.
Meghan Daum
#96. I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high
to permit the customary passions of political debate.
John F. Kennedy
