Gamblers Quotes

Successful gamblers - and successful forecasters of any kind - do not think of the future in terms of no-lose bets, unimpeachable theories, and infinitely precise measurements. These are the illusions of the sucker, the sirens of his overconfidence. ~ Nate Silver

Everybody knows that England is the world of betting men, who are of a higher class than mere gamblers: to bet is in the English temperament. ~ Jules Verne

But basically courage is risking the known for the unknown, the familiar for the unfamiliar, the comfortable for the uncomfortable, arduous pilgrimage to some unknown destination. One never knows whether one will be able to make it or not. It is gambling, but only the gamblers know what life is. THE ~ Osho

A murderer is always a gambler. And, like many gamblers, a murderer often does not know when to stop. With each crime his opinion of his own abilities is strengthened. His sense of proportion is warped. He does not say, 'I have been clever and lucky!' No, he says only, 'l have been clever!' And his opinion of his cleverness grows... and then, roes amis, the ball spins ~ Agatha Christie

Fiction writers are fully ten times more likely to be bipolar than the general population, and poets are an amazing forty times more likely to struggle with the disorder. Based on statistics like these, psychologist Daniel Nettle writes, "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that most of the canon of Western culture was produced by people with a touch of madness." Essayist Brooke Allen does Nettle one better: "The Western literary tradition, it seems, has been dominated by a sorry collection of alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, manic-depressives, sexual predators, and various unfortunate combinations of two, three, or even all of the above. ~ Jonathan Gottschall

Artists of all times are like the gamblers of Monte Carlo, and this blind lottery allows some to succeed and ruins others. In my opinion, neither the winners nor the losers are worth worrying about. ~ Marcel Duchamp

Ersken gathered the dice, put them in the cup they had used for play, and tucked it inside one bound Rat's shirt.
"Let that be a lesson to you not to gamble," he told the Rat soberly. "The trickster asks you pay for any luck you may have, one way or another."
"Bless the boy, he's a priest with it," one of the Goddess warriors said with a grin. "After this, laddie, what's say I take you home and rub some of that off yez?"
Ersken actually winked at her! "Forgive me, gracious warrior, but my woman would turn me into something unnatural if I took you up on your kind offer," he replied as if he truly regretted it. "She's a mage and I'd best stay devoted. ~ Tamora Pierce

Some mechanism in my sub-consciousness took the dominant characteristics of various prize-fighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers, and honest workmen I had come in contact with, and combining them all, produced the amalgamation I call Conan the Cimmerian. ~ Robert E. Howard

God rewards gamblers and fools. The crucial thing, when you win, is knowing which you were. ~ Mark Twain

I miss the personalization that Vegas was - there were showroom captains and all the dealers knew the gamblers by their first names. ~ Wayne Newton

Everyone except gamblers knows that gambling never pays ... Losing, like winning, only increased his determination to play. ~ Firoozeh Dumas

So the story goes, so I'm told
The people he knew were
Less than golden hearted
Gamblers and robbers
Drinkers and jokers, all soul searchers
Like you and me ~ Dave Matthews

Say farewell to luck when winning. It is the way of the gamblers of reputation. Quite as important as a gallant advance is a well-planned retreat. Lock up your winnings when they are enough, or when great. Continuous luck is always suspect; more secure is that which changes. Though half bitter and half sweet, it is more satisfying to the taste. The more luck pyramids, the greater the danger of slip and collapse. For luck always compensates her intensity by her brevity. Fortune wearies of carrying anyone long upon her shoulders. ~ Baltasar Gracian

Lucinda might sneak from her own house at midnight to place a wager somewhere else, but she dared not touch the pack that lay in her own sideboard. She knew how passionate he had become about his 'weakness.' She dared not even ask him how it was he had reversed his opinions on the matter. But, oh, how she yearned to discuss it with him, how much she wished to deal a hand on a grey wool blanket. There would be no headaches then, only this sweet consummation of their comradeship.

But she said not a word. And although she might have her 'dainty' shoes tossed to the floor, have her bare toes quite visible through her stockings, have a draught of sherry in her hand, in short appear quite radical, she was too timid, she thought, too much a mouse, to reveal her gambler's heart to him. She did not like this mouselike quality. As usual, she found herself too careful, too held in.

Once she said: 'I wish I had ten sisters and a big kitchen to laugh in.'

Her lodger frowned and dusted his knees.

She thought: He is as near to a sister as I am likely to get, but he does not understand.

She would have had a woman friend so they could brush each other's hair, and just, please God, put aside this great clanking suit of ugly armor.

She kept her glass dreams from him, even whilst she appeared to talk about them. He was an admiring listener, but she only showed him the opaque skin of her dreams--window glass, the price of transport ~ Peter Carey

As nighttime turned into dawn, the mountain seemed to travel down the street. It advanced on tiptoe, fully prepared to be shooed away. Lucy understood the mountain's wish to listen at the window of a den of gamblers and be warmed by all that free-floating hope and desolation. Her wish for the mountain was that it would one day shrink to a pebble, crash in through the glass, and roll into a corner to happily absorb tavern life as long as the place stayed standing. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

Growing up in a family of gamblers, daredevils and practical jokers, I've learned a lot about timing and its first cousin, dumb luck, concepts I was introduced to while still in the womb. ~ Toby Speed

I started out as a teenager I was a snooker player, or pool player. Through that I met some other teenagers that were gamblers, if you will, who started basement games. I was just sort of learning on the go, losing my $10. ~ Daniel Negreanu

and gamblers are dry and empty souls, their hearts have been sucked dry, there's no music in their walk, they are colorless and condemned. ~ Charles Bukowski

Contemplatives are not likely to become gamblers, or procurers, or drunkards; they do not as a rule preach intolerance, or make war; do not find it necessary to rob, swindle or grind the faces of the poor. ~ Aldous Huxley

I had, of course, witnessed hundreds of people in a casino before, mindlessly dropping coins into slot machines. They don't play for money in America. It's true. The big payout is incidental to most gamblers. It's the numbness they're after. Not so in China. No one had that look of glazed stupor often found in American casinos. ~ J. Maarten Troost

The pressure to reduce health care costs is aimed only at the treatment of real diseases. There is no pressure to reduce the costs of treating fictitious diseases. On the contrary, there is pressure to define ever more types of undesirable behaviors as mental disorders or addictions and to spend ever more tax dollars on developing new psychiatric diagnoses and facilities for storing and treating the victims of such diseases, whose members now include alcoholics, drug abusers, smokers, overeaters, self-starvers, gamblers, etc. ~ Thomas Szasz

Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst, and perhaps as many suicides as despair. ~ Gautama Buddha

The town was full of murderers, gamblers and whores, few of whom might be called upon to set aside their differences and fight against the supernatural forces of evil. ~ Robert Davis

[Cannery Row's] inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing. ~ John Steinbeck

Like gamblers, baseball fans and television networks, fishermen are enamored of statistics. The adoration of statistics is a trait so deeply embedded in their nature that even those rarefied anglers the disciples of Jesus couldn't resist backing their yarns with arithmetic: when the resurrected Christ appears on the morning shore of the Sea of Galilee and directs his forlorn and skunked disciples to the famous catch of John 21, we learn that the net contained not "a boatload" of fish, nor "about a hundred and a half," nor "over a gross," but precisely "a hundred and fifty three." This is, it seems to me, one of the most remarkable statistics ever computed. Consider the circumstances: this is after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection; Jesus is standing on the beach newly risen from the dead, and it is only the third time the disciples have seen him since the nightmare of Calvary. And yet we learn that in the net there were "great fishes" numbering precisely "a hundred and fifty three." How was this digit discovered? Mustn't it have happened thus: upon hauling the net to shore, the disciples squatted down by that immense, writhing fish pile and started tossing them into a second pile, painstakingly counting "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven... " all the way up to a hundred and fifty three, while the newly risen Lord of Creation, the Sustainer of all their beings, He who died for them and for Whom they would gladly die, stood waiting, ignored, till the heap of fish was q ~ David James Duncan

By the spring of 1963, Las Vegas was made up of an odd convergence of gamblers, gangsters, and government. All three forces, intentionally or unintentionally, catered to every kind of human weakness. Although the aboveground nuclear blasts were gone, the town was still full of glitzy, beckoning casinos; flamboyant, roguish celebrities; down-and-out and entrepreneurial prostitutes; and notorious, brutal criminals. By now it had gained its much deserved reputation as "Sin City" - universally considered a town where "just about anything goes." And surrounding it were the infamous "holes in the desert." Many of Las Vegas's problems were known to be buried in those same holes.
So, naturally, as a woman who relished audacity, this would be the place to which my mother would move my sister and me. As it turned out, that was the other part of her telephone call's "exciting news. ~ Gary Spetz

If I'd been a cowboy, it might've ended well.
Somewhere on the ramble, I'm sure I'd have to sell
My guns along the highway. My coins to the table
To make a gambler's double, I'd double debts to pay.
Prob'ly shrink and slink away, It mightn't've ended well.

What If I'd been a sailor? I think it might've ended well.
From August to May
For a searat of man drifting through eternal blue, aboard the finest Debris.
I might've called the shanties. From daybreak to storm's set, lines stay Taught, over rhythm unbroken.
But, oh, there's a schism unspoken, a mighty calling of the lee.
An absentminded Pirate, unaccustomed to the sea;
To the land, a traitor. I think it mightn't've ended well.

What might've worked for me? What might've ended well?
Soldier, to bloody sally forth through hell?
Teacher of glorious stories to tell?
Man of gold, or stores to sell?
Lover to a gentle belle?
Maybe a camel;
A seashell.
What mightn't've been a life where it mightn't've ended well? ~ Dylan Thomas

When you understand what's involved in winning, as do professional gamblers, you'll tend to bet more during a winning streak and less during a losing streak. However, the average person does exactly the opposite: he or she bets more after a series of losses and less after a series of wins. ~ Van K. Tharp

To make love last, you've got to treat it like the ultimate poker hand; you've got to go all in. ~ Max Hawthorne

Vinny was flying on Learjets all over the country to gamble. The fact is, Vinny Gorgeous was the mirror image of John Gotti. The two mob bosses were degenerate gamblers. Vinny even got himself barred from Atlantic City. ~ Dominick Cicale

Meanwhile, the state has grown as addicted to the lottery as its problem gamblers. Lottery proceeds now account for 13 percent of the state revenues in Massachusetts, making radical change all but unthinkable. No politician, however troubled by the lottery's harmful effects, would dare raise taxes or cut spending sufficiently to offset the revenue the lottery brings in. With states hooked on the money, they have no choice but to continue to bombard their citizens, especially the most vulnerable ones, with a message at odds with the ethic of work, sacrifice and moral responsibility that sustains democratic life. This civic corruption is the gravest harm that lotteries bring. It degrades the public realm by casting the government as the purveyor of a perverse civic education. To keep the money flowing, state governments across American must now use their authority and influence not to cultivate civic virtue but to peddle false hope. They must persuade their citizens that with a little luck they can escape the world of work to which only misfortune cosigns them. ~ Michael J. Sandel

I am not surprised that there are gambling houses, like so many snares laid for human avarice; like abysses where many a man's money is engulfed and swallowed up without any hope of return; like frightful rocks against which the gamblers are thrown and perish. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

Now, it has been independently shown that people hate to lose something more than they enjoy gaining it. For example, they don't mind paying for something with a credit card even when told there is a discount for cash, but they hate paying the same amount if they are told there is a surcharge for using credit. As a result, people will often refuse to gamble for an expected profit (they turn down bets such as "Heads, you win $120; tails, you pay $100), but they will gamble to avoid an expected loss (such as "Heads, you no longer owe $120; tails, you now owe an additional $100"). (This kind of behavior drives economists crazy, but is avidly studied by investment firms hoping to turn it to their advantage.) The combination of people's loss aversion with the effects of framing explains the paradoxical result: the "gain" metaphor made the doctors risk-averse; the "loss" metaphor made them gamblers. ~ Steven Pinker

What Nietzsche is describing is a kind of transcendence - a mental state of complete and utter absorption well known to artists, athletes, gamblers, musicians, dancers, soldiers in battle, mystics, meditators, and the devout during prayer. ~ Michael Pollan

He did not believe in luck at all, good or bad. Gamblers believed in luck, and he was not a gambler. Never had been, never would be. John Henry Holliday believed in mathematics, in statistics, in the computation of odds. Fifty-two cards in a deck. Make it easy. Say it's fifty. Any card has a 2 percent chance of being dealt from a full deck. Keep track of what's out. Adjust the probabilities as the hand progresses. ~ Mary Doria Russell

The men and women who rise to greatness are the risk takers, the gamblers. Those who take all or nothing. ~ Taran Matharu

They haven't given too many gamblers a second chances in the world of baseball. ~ Pete Rose

For those gamblers who know the secret to surviving Is knowing what to throw away And knowing what to keep ~ Karina Halle

Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?" Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. "This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problems with you, but don't make the mistake of bothering me. ~ John Kennedy Toole

The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars. ~ Max Weber

Any online gamblers here? Well, Congress is looking in shutting that down.There's going to be a massive congressional investigation of online gambling and they're going to shut it down. And when they get done with that, they're going to look into this North Korean thing. ~ David Letterman

All gamblers are paranoid, though they call it superstition. ~ Mario Puzo

Insofar as a purely transient construction of flesh and blood can remember (or foretell) what it is to be stone, Lucy understood the mountain's wish to listen at the window of a den of gamblers and be warmed by all that free-floating hope and desolation. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

Artists, by nature, are gamblers. Gambling is a dangerous habit. But whenever you make art, you're always gambling. You're rolling the dice on the slim odds that your investment of time, energy, and resources now might pay off later in a big way - that somebody might buy your work, and that you might become successful. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

You mean something like 'truth or dare'? I haven't played that in a long time." She didn't think he would ever get himself entangled in a game like that, but it was addictive, a compromising icebreaker featuring all the strategy of Poker, minus the cards, mixed with a dash of danger from Russian Roulette, without the revolver. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

The concept of disease is fast replacing the concept of responsibility. With increasing zeal Americans use and interpret the assertion "I am sick" as equivalent to the assertion "I am not responsible": Smokers say they are not responsible for smoking, drinkers that they are not responsible for drinking, gamblers that they are not responsible for gambling, and mothers who murder their infants that they are not responsible for killing. To prove their point - and to capitalize on their self-destructive and destructive behavior - smokers, drinkers, gamblers, and insanity acquitees are suing tobacco companies, liquor companies, gambling casinos, and physicians. ~ Thomas Szasz

It was a gambler's action, but his whole life had probably been made up of gambles; it could hardly be otherwise in the outback. ~ Nevil Shute

After all, as Franco would dictate, everyone was going to lose their money at some point. You may as well do so half drunk and at the mercy of a pretty smile. ~ Christopher Byford

The problem is that to be a producer, one must be a gambler, and the greatest French producers were gamblers. ~ Marcel Carne

When I played the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve, I got to bring Wiley, my 85-pound black lab. He's responsible for my favorite New Year's memory of all: At the end of the show, he ran onstage and then out across all the tables in the showroom, sending champagne glasses and gamblers flying. ~ Elayne Boosler

Gamblers and lovers really play to lose. ~ Lawrence Durrell

Noble passions are like vices: the more they are satisfied, the greater they grow, Mothers and gamblers are insatiable. ~ Honore De Balzac

The system of banking have[for]ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Leaving out the gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement.
If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would put their trust in The Health Board ... ~ Mark Twain

At the risk of descending to unscientific generalizations, 90 percent of Texans give the other 10 percent a bad name." - Attributed to John H. "Doc" Holliday ~ Mary Doria Russell

Finding patterns is easy in any kind of data-rich environment; that's what mediocre gamblers do. The key is in determining whether the patterns represent noise or signal. ~ Nate Silver

A politician taking campaign money from gamblers in Nevada is like one taking campaign money from the auto people in Michigan. Gambling is our legal business. ~ Paul Laxalt

Another mistaken notion connected with the law of large numbers is the idea that an event is more or less likely to occur because it has or has not happened recently. The idea that the odds of an event with a fixed probability increase or decrease depending on recent occurrences of the event is called the gambler's fallacy. For example, if Kerrich landed, say, 44 heads in the first 100 tosses, the coin would not develop a bias towards the tails in order to catch up! That's what is at the root of such ideas as "her luck has run out" and "He is due." That does not happen. For what it's worth, a good streak doesn't jinx you, and a bad one, unfortunately , does not mean better luck is in store. ~ Leonard Mlodinow

Violet pulled a face. "Of course I have great ambition that my children marry well and happily, but I am not the sort who'd marry her daughter off to a seventy-year-old man just because he was a duke!"
"Did the dowager countess do that?" Benedict couldn't recall any seventy-year-old dukes making recent trips to the altar.
"No," Violet admitted, "but she would. Whereas I - "
Benedict bit back a smile as his mother pointed to herself with great flourish.
"I would allow my children to marry paupers if it would bring them happiness."
Benedict raised a brow.
"They would be well-principled and hardworking paupers, of course," Violet explained. "No gamblers need apply."
Benedict didn't want to laugh at his mother, so instead he coughed discreetly into his handkerchief. ~ Julia Quinn

It's different for every writer. It's not a career for anyone who needs security. It's a career for gamblers. It's a career of ups and downs. ~ George R R Martin

On, no. I hate those arty little places. I like dining in a hotel full of all sorts of people. Dining in a club means you're surrounded by people who're pretty much alike. Their membership in the club means they're there because they are all interested in gold, or because they're university graduates, or belong to the same political party or write, or paint, or have incomes of over fifty thousand a year, or something. I like 'em mixed up, higgledy-piggledy. A dining room full of gamblers, and insurance agents, and actors, and merchants, thieves, bootleggers, lawyers, kept ladies, wives, flaps, travelling men, millionaires  -  everything. That's what I call dining out. Unless one is dining at a friend's house, or course." A rarely long speech for her. ~ Edna Ferber

A life passed amid gangsters, thieves, smugglers, and gamblers had granted Amelia an unerring nose for greed, vanity, and other assorted venal characteristics, and in Miss Sparrow, she smelled rancid pride combined with the bitter char of unrequited love. She smelled the lemon tang of loneliness mingling with despair. Just under Priscilla Sparrow's skin, Amelia could tell, a rosemary blast of judiciousness rippled, followed by the must decay of jealousy and a lingering note of envy - in short (and in spite of all of Miss Sparrow's better attempts with Dick Crane), the odors of a lifelong spinster. ~ Tiffany Baker

what gamblers regret the most isn't the loss of their money so much as the loss of their insane hopes. But ~ Jules Verne

I actually went to some Gamblers Anonymous classes, and I sat there for three or four of them, and I'm trying to figure out what I have in similarities with these other people, and I could never find anything. It just seems like it wasn't the right place for me. ~ Pete Rose

It's not a career for anyone who needs or values security. It's a career for gamblers. Every time you write a book you roll the dice again. ~ George R R Martin

It is peculiar but a fact nevertheless, that the gamblers in chess have enthusiastic followers. ~ Mikhail Botvinnik

Virtually unable to attract new capital to the foundering enterprise, the company seized the next year on a novel approach to raising money to fund the embryonic British Empire: a lottery.
With the reluctant approval of King James and the Church of England, the Virginia Company sold lottery tickets to the public, discovering no shortage of gamers willing to hazard hard coinage for the chance to win the 01,000 grand prize, a fortune at a time when the typical working-class family scraped by on little more than a pound a month. Having begun as a corporation, Virginia had evolved into a gamblers' stake with a lively populist following back in England. ~ Bob Deans

Producers are not gamblers. They want a good return on their investment. ~ Max Von Sydow

On banks, I make no apology for attacking spivs and gamblers who did more harm to the British economy than Bob Crow could achieve in his wildest Trotskyite fantasies, while paying themselves outrageous bonuses underwritten by the taxpayer. There is much public anger about banks and it is well deserved. ~ Vince Cable

Trusting fate, especial to resolve anything is a pure gamble. ~ Steven Redhead

Faith is not contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler's bet. ~ Joanna Russ

The Terminal
I pace the Greyhound waiting room,
that famished void on the outskirts of Reno
between the Atavans and Ambiens,
filled with the stench of the homeless and
the suicide ticking of attoseconds.
It is a zombie casino with no clocks
partitioned with great walls of glass.
On the other side of the glass I see people
take tokens from Big Gulp sized cups
and feed them into the mute ears of bandits.
They are the gamblers whose tokens
are redeemed into winnings. They breathe
without conscious effort and board their buses.
On my side of the glass there are
no gamblers, no buses, no exits.
There are just Dixie cups of meds
to transport me through REMless dreams
to awaken another day
in the same terminal
waiting and breathing,
breathing and waiting
for the glass to shatter
so I may redeem
my fist full of tokens. ~ Beryl Dov

a decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler's throw, ~ Peter F. Drucker

It is no defense of superstition and pseudoscience to say that it brings solace and comfort to people ... If solace and comfort are how we judge the worth of something, then consider that tobacco brings solace and comfort to smokers; alcohol brings it to drinkers; drugs of all kinds bring it to addicts; the fall of cards and the run of horses bring it to gamblers; cruelty and violence bring it to sociopaths. Judge by solace and comfort only and there is no behavior we ought to interfere with. ~ Isaac Asimov

Bright young men of disheveled appearance, often with
sunken glowing eyes, can be seen sitting at computer consoles,
their arms tensed and waiting to fire their fingers, already poised
to strike, at the buttons and keys on which their attention seems
to be riveted as a gambler's on the rolling dice. When not so
transfixed, they often sit at tables strewn with computer printouts
over which they pore like possessed students of a cabbalistic
text. They work until they nearly drop, twenty, thirty hours
at a time. Their food, if they arrange it, is brought to them:
coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near
the printouts. Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and
unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they are
oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they move.
These are computer bums, compulsive programmers ... ~ Joseph Weizenbaum

Where were all the women gamblers? It wasn't as if being a woman wasn't a huge risk all by itself. Twenty-eight percent of female homocide victims were killed by husbands or lovers.
Which, come to think of it, was probably why there weren't any women gamblers. Living with men was enough of a gamble. ~ Jennifer Crusie

But gamblers know how a man can sit for almost twenty-four hours at cards, without looking to right, or to left. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Nations, like individuals, cannot become desperate gamblers with impunity. Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later. ~ Charles Mackay