Life is like a poker game. You deal or are dealt to. Your
success depends on skill, luck, and
creativity. You bet, check, bluff, and
raise. Your education comes from those you play with.
Sometimes, you win with a pair or lose with a full house. But whatever happens, it pays to keep a sense
of humor.
— Anon
The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor
hand well.
— H. T. Leslie
It’s interesting and somewhat dismaying how many people will look up to
anyone who wins a multimillion-dollar lottery — but will deride anyone who has worked either hard or smart
to attain prosperity and real success.
— from 101 Really
Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting
Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.
— Gracian
When a man tells me he's going to put all his cards on the table, I always
look up his sleeve.
— Lord Leslie Hore-Belisha
Las Vegas is a place where people go
broke trying to get rich.
— Unknown wise ex-gambler
Never gamble in heavy traffic. The cars may be stacked against
you.
— Unknown wise person
Alimony: A gambling debt.
— Unknown former gambling person
Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the common-sensical reply
that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct
for gambling is satisfied by marriage.
— Gloria Steinem
The three biggest dreams of many men is to outsmart women, casinos, and
reality.
— Anonymous observant gambling man
It may be that the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong-but that's the way to
bet.
— Damon Runyon
No horse can go as fast as the money you put on it.
— Earl Wilson
I know a little bit about handicapping. If the horse has an IV, you want to stay
— away from it.
— Paula Poundstone
When your opponent's sittin' there holdin' all the aces, there's only one
thing to do: kick over the table.
— Dean Martin
If you want to cure a compulsive gambler, give him the Atlanta Falcons and four points.
— Paul Lynde
If you think that going to the casino is the only interesting thing to do in your
retirement, you haven't read How
to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free, which has not only a lot of retirement quotes but incredible
retirement wisdom that you won't receive from your financial advisor.
— Wise retiree
Trust everybody, but cut the cards.
— Finley Peter Dunne
It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.
— Grantland Rice
Grantland Rice can go to hell as far as I'm concerned.
— Gene Autry
It is not whether you win or lose, but who gets the blame.
— Blaine Nye
"How you play the game" is for college boys. When you're playing for
money, winning is the only thing that counts.
— Leo Durocher
Don't play for safety — it's the most dangerous thing in the world.
— Hugh Walpole
There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he
can't afford it, and when he can.
— Mark Twain
This [gambling revenue] raises a serious ethical question for government and charities that collect and
use this money . . . .
50 percent of all gambling revenue that charities and goverment get comes from problem gamblers. The
purpose of government is to serve the vulnerable, not exploit them.
— Prof. Robert Williams, Gambling Research Institute
If all gambling were illegal, we would all have to stop driving cars and
getting married.
— Unknown wise person
Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never play cards with a man named Doc.
And never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you.
— Nelson Algren
Make a bet every day, otherwise you might walk around lucky and never know it.
— Jimmy Jones
Gambling is like diving into an empty swimming pool. The chances that
you'll hit bottom are about the same.
— Unknown wise person
A gambler is nothing but a man who makes his living out of hope.
— William Bolitho
Winning
a Lottery: The Retirement
Plan with the Most Bugs to Be Worked Out
— Retirement Advice
on The Retirement Cafe
No wife can endure a gambling hu
sband — unless he's a steady winner.
— Thomas Robert Dewar
The gambling know as business looks with austere disfavor upon the
business known as gambling
— Ambrose Bierce
Most amusements only mean trying to win another person's money.
— Rudyard Kipling
Man is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to get the better in
something or other.
— Charles Lamb
To play billiards well was a sign of an ill—spent youth.
— Herbert Spencer
In the fight between you and the world, bet on the world.
— Frank Zappa
I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as most people — being always excited.
— Lord Byron
Two-up is Australia's very own way of parting a fool and his money.
— Germaine Greer
A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far
beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.
— Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821-81), Russian novelist. The Gambler, ch. 2 (1866).
Nothing is sacred to a gamester.
— Bernard Joseph Saurin
Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be
thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honoured by the name of "speculation"; but which
ought to be called Gambling.
— William Cobbett, Advice to Young Men and to Young Women, Letter 2 in To a Young Man
Of all mechanics, of all servile handycrafts-men, a gamester is the vilest. But yet, as many of the
quality are of the profession, he is admitted amongst the politest company.
— John Gay
To get it right, be born with luck or else make it. Never give up. A little money helps, but what
really gets it right is to never face the facts.
— Ruth Gordon
The world is the house of the strong. I shall not know
until the end what I have lost or won in this place, in this vast gambling den where I have spent more
than sixty years, dicebox in hand, shaking the dice.
— Denis Diderot
The better the gambler, the worse the man.
— Publius Syrus
There is in Hollywood, as in all cultures in which gambling is the central activity, a lowered sexual
energy, an inability to devote more than token attention to the preoccupations of the society outside. The
action is everything, more consuming than sex, more immediate than politics; more important always than the
acquisition of money, which is never, for the gambler, the true point of the exercise.
— Joan Didion
Treat a horse like a woman and a woman like a horse. And they'll both win
for you.
— Elizabeth Arden
Insurance. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable
conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.
— Ambrose Bierce
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and
win one another's money. Idiots!
— Arthur Schopenhauer
He was . . . a degenerate gambler. That is, a man who gambled simply to gamble and must lose. As a hero
who goes to war must die. Show me a gambler and I'll show you a loser, show me a hero and I'll show you a
corpse.
— Mario Puzo
The safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in
your pocket.
— Kin Hubbard
I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as most people, being always
excited; women, wine, fame, the table, even ambition, sate now &
then, but every turn of the card & cast of the dice keeps the gambler alive — besides one can
game ten times longer than one can do any thing else.
— Lord Byron
I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of
touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more
emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.
— Charles Baudelaire
It [gambling] is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the
father of mischief.
— George Washington
The most dangerous wheel of chance is the steering wheel.
— Unknown wise individual
A racehorse is an animal that can take several thousand people for a ride
at the same time.
— Unknown wise person
Gambling is pretty much like liquor; you can make it illegal but you can't make it unpopular.
— Unknown wise person
Every prosperous person who does not work has a
creative scheme that does.
— John Otway
Some people will gamble on anything. Now they're saving money with the hope that it'll be worth
something someday.
— Unknown wise individual
In a bet there is a fool and a thief.
— Unknown wise former gambler
The best throw of the dice is to throw them away.
— Unknown wise ex-gambler
Gambling is just plain stealing by mutual consent.
— Unknown wise person
You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it.
— Albert Einstein
Las Vegas has all kinds of gambling devices, such as dice, roulette, slot machines — and wedding
chapels.
— Unknown wise person
It is hard to decide whether gambling is a means of getting something for nothing or nothing for
something.
— Unknown wise person
The first time a man bets he bets to win. The rest of the time he's trying
to get even.
— Unknown wise person
Gamblers are like toilets — broke one day and flush the next.
— Unknown wise person
Many people are violently opposed to gambling for the simple reason that they can never win anything at
it.
— Unknown wise person
I had always been facinated by the bizarre world of cards. It was a world of pure power politics where
rewards and punishments were meted out immediately.
— Ely Culbertson
Drunks are rarely amusing unless they know some good songs and lose a lot
at poker.
— Karl Roosevelt
Playing with dice is a shaky business.
— Unknown wise person
The young people of the United States squander over ten billion dollars a year on games of chance. This
does not include weddings, starting a business, passing cars on a hill, or buying a television set.
— Unknown wise person
There is no thrill in gambling unless you are betting more than you can
afford to lose.
— Unknown not-so-wise gambler
You do not really make money in the stock market.
You merely take it from somebody who guessed wrong.
— Unknown wise person
Horse sense is what keeps' horses from betting on what people will do.
— Unknown wise person
Gambling is frequently a means of getting nothing for your money.
— Unknown wise person
All forms of gambling are frowned upon by preachers — except marriage.
— Unknown wise person
A casino slot machine is a steel trap for catching dumb animals.
— Unknown wise non-gambler
The worst evil of gambling is that the odds are always with the house or the horse.
— Unknown wise person
If it weren't for betting on horses, some people wouldn't contribute to anything.
— Unknown gambling man
Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsocial
man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate
good.
— Samuel Johnson
A visitor to Las Vegas received the "cook's tour" — he was baked in the sun, stewed at the bar, and
burned at the crap tables.
— Unknown wise person
The dumbest criminal on earth is the one who would hold up a group of tourists on their way home from
Las Vegas after their first encounter with casinos.
— Unknown wise person
Las Vegas has all kinds of gambling devices, such as dice, roulette, slot machines — and wedding
chapels.
— Unknown wise person
A Texas man reports he had terrible luck in Las Vegas. He lost everything he had but his cold.
— Unknown wise person
Visitors to Las Vegas are divided into two groups — the haves and the hads.
— Unknown wise person
Las Vegas is where you go the first time for fun — and the second time for revenge.
— Unknown wise person
A gentleman in Nashville described his last Las Vegas vacation, "Out by jet. Back in debt."
— Unknown wise person
Almost everybody gets married while they're in Las Vegas. They figure as
long as they're on a losing streak they might as well go all the way.
— Unknown observant wise person
In case of an air raid, go to the nearest slot machine. It hasn't been hit in years.
— Unknown wise person
Why not spend your vacation in Las Vegas? You can't beat the sunshine, the climate, or the slot
machines.
— Unknown wise person
A Texan, just back home from a Nevada vacation, says he underwent a bit of "Las Vegas Surgery". He had
his bankroll painlessly removed.
— Unknown wise person
Life is a gamble at terrible odds — if it was a bet you wouldn't take
it.
— Tom Stoppard
Life is a game at which everybody loses.
— Leo Sarkadi-Schuller
