1/ "Value at Risk (VAR) is one of the dumbest ideas ever put forward." Charlie Munger

"Life in financial markets has no relation to standard deviation." Warren Buffett

Hedge funds "love them some standard deviations" tho:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/a-reddit-army-descends-on-hedge-funds-chained-by-risk-models/ar-BB1deWOu

2/ The same false assumptions that underestimates stock-market risk, mis-price options, builds bad portfolios, and generally misconstrue the financial world are also built into the standard risk software used by the world's banks. The method is called Value at Risk." Mandelbrot

3/ "You have outlying phenomena you can't anticipate on the basis of previous experience." George Soros

"The precision that goes into saying this is two standard deviation or three and therefore we can afford to take this much risk and all that, it's totally crazy." Buffett

4/ "The defect of VaR alone is that it doesn't full account for the worst 5% of expected cases. But these extreme events are where ruin is found." Thorp

"The key hazard of quantative risk management is the illusion of control." Marks

"Beware of geeks bearing formulas." Buffett

5/ "A lot of the modern risk-management techniques created a totally false illusion of safety. The idea that by quantifying risk using a tool like Value at Risk that you can therefore control it is one of the slightly more ridiculous things to have come along in years." J Montier