"Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can and surely will at times fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying, too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk"
About this Quote
Her real target is the respectable kind of fear: the fear of social exposure. "Embarrassed" sits beside "risking love" on purpose, collapsing the hierarchy between the small humiliations and the big emotional gambles. In the culture Brothers worked in - midcentury and late-20th-century America, when self-help was becoming mass media and "keeping it together" was a virtue - embarrassment wasn't trivial. It was social punishment, especially for women taught to be pleasing and unrumpled. She names it as vulnerability, not weakness, which reframes shame as a predictable price tag rather than a verdict.
The line "if we can take the worst, take the risk" is classic therapeutic rhetoric: a rule of thumb that smuggles cognitive restructuring into everyday language. It invites a quick internal audit: what's the worst-case scenario, and would it actually break me? The subtext is agency. You don't control outcomes, but you can train for impact, then live less defensively. It's not optimism; it's stress inoculation with a humane edge.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Brothers, Joyce. (2026, January 17). Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can and surely will at times fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying, too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/accept-that-all-of-us-can-be-hurt-that-all-of-us-52509/
Chicago Style
Brothers, Joyce. "Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can and surely will at times fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying, too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/accept-that-all-of-us-can-be-hurt-that-all-of-us-52509/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can and surely will at times fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying, too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/accept-that-all-of-us-can-be-hurt-that-all-of-us-52509/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2026.
