"Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them"
About this Quote
Leadership, Jarvik suggests, is less a merit badge than a neurological glitch: the ability to look straight at a wall of risk and see a door. The line is a backhanded compliment that works because it refuses the usual romance of “courage.” Instead, it frames the leader as someone whose fear response is conveniently underpowered, whose internal calculator can’t quite tally the ways things can fail. That’s not pure praise; it’s a warning label.
Coming from an inventor best known for the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, the subtext is especially pointed. Innovation isn’t guided by tidy spreadsheets. It’s guided by people willing to stake reputation, capital, and sometimes lives on prototypes that probably won’t work the first time. Jarvik’s world is regulated, litigious, and ethically fraught; “the odds” are not metaphorical. In that context, a leader’s superpower may be their capacity to keep moving while everyone else is doing responsible math.
The quote also smuggles in a critique of how we narrate success. We celebrate the visionary after the breakthrough, then retroactively pretend the outcome was inevitable. Jarvik flips that: the leader’s defining feature is not foresight but selective blindness to discouraging probabilities. That blindness can be productive, even necessary, because fear is often indistinguishable from wisdom in the moment.
It leaves a bracing ambiguity: are leaders admirable, reckless, or just wired differently? Jarvik doesn’t resolve it. He’s telling you why breakthroughs happen - and why they so often scare the people who understand the stakes best.
Coming from an inventor best known for the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, the subtext is especially pointed. Innovation isn’t guided by tidy spreadsheets. It’s guided by people willing to stake reputation, capital, and sometimes lives on prototypes that probably won’t work the first time. Jarvik’s world is regulated, litigious, and ethically fraught; “the odds” are not metaphorical. In that context, a leader’s superpower may be their capacity to keep moving while everyone else is doing responsible math.
The quote also smuggles in a critique of how we narrate success. We celebrate the visionary after the breakthrough, then retroactively pretend the outcome was inevitable. Jarvik flips that: the leader’s defining feature is not foresight but selective blindness to discouraging probabilities. That blindness can be productive, even necessary, because fear is often indistinguishable from wisdom in the moment.
It leaves a bracing ambiguity: are leaders admirable, reckless, or just wired differently? Jarvik doesn’t resolve it. He’s telling you why breakthroughs happen - and why they so often scare the people who understand the stakes best.
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
|---|
More Quotes by Robert
Add to List
