Gambler Quotes & Sayings

THE GAMBLER,THE NUN & THE RADIO

Do you have bad luck with all games?
With everything and with women. He smiled again, showng his bad teeth.
Truly? -Truly
And what is there to do?
-Continue, slowly, and wait for luck to change. — Ernest Hemingway,

'Short Term 12' was such a marathon. It's like trying to convey the same emotional depth as 'The Gambler' but with less time and a fingernail's worth of the budget. — Brie Larson

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

Pascal was even convinced that he could use his theories to justify a belief in God. He stated that 'the excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win multiplied by the probability of winning it'. He then argued that the possible prize of eternal happiness has an infinite value and that the probability of entering heaven by leading a virtuous life, no matter how small, is certainly finite. Therefore, according to Pascal's definition, religion was a game of infinite excitement and one worth playing, because multiplying an infinite prize by a finite probability results in infinity. — Simon Singh

A woman goes to the gynecologist but won't tell the receptionist what's wrong with her, just that she must see a doctor. After hours of waiting, she gets in. "Ma'am, what seems to be the problem?" the doctor asks. "Well," she says, "my husband is a compulsive gambler and every nickel he can get his hands on he gambles away. I had five hundred dollars and in order to hide it from him, I stuffed it in my vagina - but now I can't get it out." "Don't be nervous. I see this sort of thing all the time." He asks her to pull down her underwear, sits her down with her legs wide open, puts his gloves on and says, "I only have one question. What am I looking for? Bills or loose change? — Barry Dougherty

He hesitated till the last moment, but finally dropped them in the box, saying, "I shall win!"
the cry of a gambler, the cry of the great general, the compulsive cry that has ruined more men than it has ever saved. — Honore De Balzac

It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see one's own faults. One shows the faults of others like chaff winnowed in the wind, but one conceals one's own faults as a cunning gambler conceals his dice.5 — Jonathan Haidt

He loves her like a gambler loves a fast racehorse or a desperate man loves whiskey. That kind of love eats a man up. — Dorothy Allison

The true gambler plays for the thrill, the sheer ecstasy of taking part. And the purest thrill comes not from the idea of winning but from the fear of defeat, from there being something real and valuable on the line. If there's nothing to lose, then where's the thrill? The true gambler does the opposite.' Middle was gesturing with his fingers, letting them flutter here and there. 'Yes, the purest lover of the game bets the other way, he goes entirely against the grain. Doesn't he, Chad?' Chad gave Emilia a confused — Christopher J. Yates

A gambler must think of three main quantities, stake, odds, and prize. If the prize is very large, a gambler is prepared to risk a big stake. A gambler who risks his all on a single throw stands to gain a great deal. He also stands to lose a great deal, but on average high-stake gamblers are no better and no worse off than other players who play for low winnings with low stakes. An analogous comparison is that between speculative and safe investors on the stock market. In some ways the stock market is a better analogy than a casino, because casinos are deliberately rigged in the bank's favour (which means, strictly, the high-stakes players will on average end up poorer than low-stake players; and low-stake players poorer than those who don't gamble at all. — Richard Dawkins

see, this book isn't a murder mystery. It's not a heartwarming tale of overcoming massive brain trauma. It's about gamers. Not the suave, Telly Savalas kind of gamer that's just a euphemism for "gambler." The only thing our type of gamers gamble with is their own virginity, and much to their chagrin, they never lose. — Bob Defendi

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

I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in this world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. — Percival Everett

He awoke in the evening completely refreshed. After a cold shower, Bond walked over to the Casino. Since the night before he had lost the mood of the tables. He needed to re-establish that focus which is half mathematical and half intuitive and which, with a slow pulse and a sanguine temperament, Bond knew to be the essential equipment of any gambler who was set on winning. — Ian Fleming

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

You're a liar!"
He turned around, his black eyes snapping. "I'm also a thief, a gambler, a cheat, and a murdered. But this happens to be one of the rare times when I'm telling the truth. Go home. Consider yourself lucky. You've got a chance to start fresh. Not everyone can say the same. — Becca Fitzpatrick

One thing it was not: love at first sight. He didn't believe in such. He wasn't a believer in romance, sentimental coincidences, "meanings" snatched out of the air. He certainly didn't believe in destiny, he was a gambler by nature and you know that destiny is just chance you try to manipulate for your own profit. Yet — Joyce Carol Oates

But like a gambler at a slot machine, hoping the next spin would change her life for the better, she closed in before she lost her nerve. Taking his hand, she pulled him toward her, near enough to feel his body against her. She looked up at him, tilting her head slightly as she leaned in. Mike, recognizing what was happening but still having trouble believing it, tilted his head and closed his eyes, their faces drawing near. — Nicholas Sparks

The Doc Holliday of legend is a gambler and gunman who appears out of nowhere in 1881, arriving in Tombstone with a bad reputation and a hooker named Big Nose Kate. — Mary Doria Russell

My father was an insurance man and a small-time gambler. He was a good man, but he had an eye for the racehorses, and I saw how it used to bother my mother. I've never gambled a dime. Never, in all those years in Vegas. — Don Rickles

She was dangerous. I'd heard the rumors, that she had a history as a wild woman, that she'd been married to a gambler, maybe even been one herself, that her past was scandalous at best. But who was I to judge? My past was littered with scandal. — Margaret Madigan

Harvard Medical School, the University of South Florida and the American Psychiatric Association have all conducted studies showing that the earlier one begins gambling, the more likely it is he or she will become an addicted, problem gambler. — Spencer Bachus

The practical joker despises his victims, but at the same time he envies them because their desires, however childish and mistaken, are real to them, whereas he has no desire which he can call his own. His goal, to make game of others, makes his existence absolutely dependent upon theirs; when he is alone, he is a nullity. Iago's self-description, I am not what I am, is correct and the negation of the Divine I am that I am. If the word motive is given its normal meaning of a positive purpose of the self like sex, money, glory, etc., then the practical joker is without motive. Yet the professional practical joker is certainly driven, like a gambler, to his activity, but the drive is negative, a fear of lacking concrete self, of being nobody. — W. H. Auden

You see, John, unless you reduce your needs, you will never be fulfilled. You will always be like that gambler in Las Vegas, staying at the roulette wheel for 'just one more spin' in the hope that your lucky number will come up. You will always want more than you have. How can you ever be happy? — Robin S. Sharma

Gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse. Inej — Leigh Bardugo

Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window. — Honore De Balzac

I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave. — Robert Capa

I had my Boswell, once," Mason tells Boswell, "Dixon and I. We had a joint Boswell. Preacher nam'd Cherrycoke. Scribbling ev'rything down, just like you, Sir. Have you," twirling his Hand in Ellipses, - "you know, ever . . . had one yourself? If I'm not prying." "Had one what?" "Hum . . . a Boswell, Sir, - I mean, of your own. Well you couldn't very well call him that, being one yourself, - say, a sort of Shadow ever in the Room who has haunted you, preserving your ev'ry spoken remark, - " "Which else would have been lost forever to the great Wind of Oblivion, - think," armsweep south, "as all civiliz'd Britain gathers at this hour, how much shapely Expression, from the titl'd Gambler, the Barmaid's Suitor, the offended Fopling, the gratified Toss-Pot, is simply fading away upon the Air, out under the Door, into the Evening and the Silence beyond. All those voices. Why not pluck a few words from the multitudes rushing toward the Void of forgetfulness? — Thomas Pynchon

Gillian had bought the table and chairs and beds, the whole of the family furniture second-hand weekly down in the open air second hand stalls on Dublin quay. The women who ran these stalls were called the Shawlie Maggies and they saw her bruises and heard the stories of her husband the local drunk and gambler, the husband from hell and gave her cheaply some second hand clothes and some fruit and vegetables for the kids and herself. It was for Gillian and the kids a tough life with many disappointments. Despite this Gillian had a solid head on her shoulders and a great sense of humour and this got her through the worst of times. — Annette J. Dunlea

No professional Wall Street tipster or plausible promoter can turn a sane person into a stock gambler as easily as his next-door neighbor bragging about his winnings. If all men profited by experience, the world would be peopled exclusively by the wise.... — Kenneth L. Fisher

I'm a gambler at heart. That's my life. — Kirk Kerkorian

Good morrow, High Lord Weiramon, and all you other High Lords and Ladies. I'm a gambler, a farmboy, and I'm here to take command of your bloody army! The bloody lord Dragon Reborn will be with us as soon as he flaming takes care of one bloody little matter! — Robert Jordan

I'm not a gambler, let's just say that, nor have I ever been a dealer at a casino. — Anna Gunn

How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary - but always whiskey! Such is the case. Look history over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey - I mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up an old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts up politics and a railroad; all hands turn to and build a church and a jail - and — Mark Twain

I'm not a gambler. — Jil Sander

The pioneer, the creator, the explorer is generally a single, lonely person rather than a group, struggling all alone with his inner conflicts, fears, defenses against arrogance and pride, even against paranoia. He has to be a courageous man, not afraid to stick his neck out, not afraid even to make mistakes, well aware that he is, as Polanyi has stressed, a kind of gambler who comes to tentative conclusions in the absence of facts and then spends some years trying to figure out if his hunch was correct. If he has any sense at all, he is of course scared of his own ideas, of his temerity, and is well aware that he is affirming what he cannot prove. — A.H. Maslow

My father was a gambler. My father could not resist a casino or a card game. He loved gambling. — Samuel Goldwyn Jr.

Until this moment, Wylan hadn't quite understood how much they meant to him. His father would have sneered at these thugs and thieves, a disgraced soldier, a gambler who couldn't keep out of the red. But they were his first friends, his only friends, and Wylan knew that even if he'd had his pick of a thousand companions, these would have been the people he chose. — Leigh Bardugo

You could be a gambler. A thief, for all I know. Besides - " He captured her hand and stopped
her from walking on, holding her in place.
"Besides what, you insufferable prude?"
"Prude, eh? Do you need another kiss to remind you what a prude I am?"
"Don't you dare."
"Then don't call me names."
"You started it. — Gaelen Foley

Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gambler and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. — John Steinbeck

There's a touch of the gambler in anybody really competitive and somebody that's willing to concede that to succeed, sometimes you need to cut corners and to make bold choices. — Josh Charles

March is a month without mercy for rabid basketball fans. There is no such thing as a 'gentleman gambler' when the Big Dance rolls around. All sheep will be fleeced, all fools will be punished severely ... There are no Rules when the deal goes down in the final weeks of March. Even your good friends will turn into monsters. — Hunter S. Thompson

I don't care what a man is as long as he treats me right. He can be a gambler, a hustler, someone everybody else thinks is obnoxious, I don't care so long as he's straight with me and our dealings are fair. — Joe Namath

A voracious gambler does not gamble until he wins, but until he loses everything, and a smart one knows when to quit. — M. T. Panchal

Who is he anyhow, an actor?"
"No."
"A dentist?"
" ... No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added cooly: "He's the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919."
"Fixed the World Series?" I repeated.
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as something that merely happened, the end of an inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people
with the singlemindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
"How did he happen to do that?" I asked after a minute.
"He just saw the opportunity."
"Why isn't he in jail?"
"They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man. — F Scott Fitzgerald

If I had known what it meant to love, I wouldn't have had children, because once we love, we love forever, like Uncle Two's wife, Step-aunt Two, who can't stop loving her gambler son, the son who is burning up the family fortune like a pyromaniac. — Kim Thuy

One thing I have learned in my painful career as a gambler is that bragging when you get lucky and win a few games will plunge you into gloom and unacceptable beatings very soon. It happens every time. — Hunter S. Thompson

Your dad wasn't just a lousy gambler. He was a disloyal sneak who spied on my grandpa at the bakery. - Sara Jane — T.M. Goeglein

There is no fool like a careless gambler who starts taking victory for granted. — Hunter S. Thompson

To know when to quit. Whether to give up
this is often the question facing the gambler. No one is taught the art of walking away. And the anguish of deciding if I should keep playing is hardly unusual. Will I be able to quit honorably? or am I the type who waits stubbornly for something to happen? something like, for instance, the end of the world? or whatever it might be, maybe my own sudden death, in which case my decision to give up would be beside the point. — Clarice Lispector

I wouldn't see myself as a gambler. — Sean Quinn

(Ezekial saw the wheel
(Way up in the middle of the air
(O Ezekial saw the wheel
(Way in the middle of the air!
(Now the big wheel runs by faith
(And the little wheel runs by the grace of God
(The above made up by professional hope experts, you might say, because willful, voluntary, intentional hope was the only kind they had in anything like long supply. Faith is not, contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler's bet; it's an act, an intention, a project, something that makes you, in leaping into the future, go so far, far, far ahead that you shoot clean out of Time and right into Eternity, which is not the end of time or a whole lot of time or unending time, but timelessness, that old Eternal Now. So that you end up living not in the future ((in your intentional "act of faith")) but in the present. After all.
(Courage is willful hope.) — Joanna Russ

Yashvin, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely without moral principles, but of immoral principles, Yashvin was Vronsky's greatest friend in the regiment. — Leo Tolstoy

I'm not a crazy Vegas guy. I'm not a gambler. — Steve Carell

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

Danger is to a conqueror what excitement is to a gambler — Matshona Dhliwayo

He hired a stenographer, Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, from the only agency in St Petersburg and dictated The Gambler, before completing Crime and Punishment. A few months later, he married her, one of the smartest moves he ever made. She adored him, bore him four children, cured him of gambling and set his business affairs in order. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

THE GAMBLER,THE NUN,& THE RADIO

Tonight, sent by the police, they come to serenade me.He laughed, then tapped his stomach.-I cannot laugh yet. As musicians they are fatal — Ernest Hemingway,

Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours. It is present in the gambler, the Internet addict, the compulsive shopper and the workaholic. The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden - but it's there. As we'll see, the effects of early stress or adverse experiences directly shape both the psychology and the neurobiology of addiction in the brain. — Gabor Mate

You have no finesse," a gambler at the Silver Garter once said to him. "No technique."
"Sure I do," Kaz had responded. "I practice the art of 'pull his shirt over his head and punch till you see blood. — Leigh Bardugo

THE GAMBLER,THE NUN & THE RADIO

He was thinking well, a little too well — Ernest Hemingway,

But I am, personally, not a gambler. I wouldn't spend £1 on the lottery, let alone take a punt on a pregnancy. The stakes are far, far too high. I can't agree with a society that would force me to bet on how much I could love under duress. — Caitlin Moran

THE GAMBLER,THE NUN,& THE RADIO
I am a poor idealist. I am a victim of illusions. He laughed. — Ernest Hemingway,

It's like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time.
He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck. — Malcolm X

Can it be, I thought, can it actually be? ... could he be all of them: Rine the runner and Rine the gambler and Rine the briber and Rine the lover and Rinehart the Reverend? Could he himself be both rind and heart? ... Rinehart the rounder. It was true as I was true. His world was possibility and he knew it. He was years ahead of me and I was a fool. I must have been crazy and blind. The world in which we lived was without boundaries ... All boundaries down, freedom was not only the recognition of necessity, it was the recognition of possibility. And sitting there trembling I caught a brief glimpse of the possibilities posed by Rinehart's multiple personalities ... — Ralph Ellison

I have explained many times that I am, by Profession, a Gambler
not some jock-sniffing nerd or a hired human squawk-box with the brain of a one-cell animal. No. That would be your average career sportswriter
and, more specifically, a full-time Baseball writer. — Hunter S. Thompson

It gives a thrill to life," he explained to me, "when life is carried in one's hand. Man is a natural gambler, and life is the biggest stake he can lay. The greater the odds, the greater the thrill. Why should I deny myself the joy of exciting Leach's soul to fever-pitch? For that matter, I do him a kindness. The greatness of sensation is mutual. He is living more royally than any man for'ard, though he does not know it. For he has what they have not - purpose, something to do and be done, an all-absorbing end to strive to attain, the desire to kill me, the hope that he may kill me. Really, Hump, he is living deep and high. I doubt that he has ever lived so swiftly and keenly before, and I honestly envy him, sometimes, when I see him raging at the summit of passion and sensibility. — Jack London

Tell me about your master."
I nod. "He is eighth in line to the throne, the son of - "
"No, no," Caspida interrupts irritably. "Tell me what he is like."
"He is a gambler," I say. There is no point in lying about these things. "He is bold, but reckless. Brave, but impetuous. A man who . . . holds grudges." Pausing, I finish in a whisper, "He would risk his life to save someone else, without even thinking twice."
Caspida turns her head a bit, interest growing in her eyes. "And he sets out on a mad voyage and sails straight into a nest of jinn."
"My master is noble," I say with a smile, "but I made no suggestions as to his intelligence. — Jessica Khoury

THE GAMBLER,THE NUN & THE RADIO

I never carry a gun. With my luck, if i carried a gun I would be hanged ten times a year. — Ernest Hemingway,

Speculative joy, the joy derived from being right and being rewarded, may well be similar to the rush felt by a winning gambler. — Michael Steinhardt

Her own mother had died when Anna was twelve and since then father and daughter had faced the world like a pair of nineteenth-century adventurers, a riverboat gambler, say, and his alibi girl. — John Banville

And, pointing a trembling finger at Bonetti-Alderighi, with an expression of indignation and a quasi-castrato voice, he launched into the climax:
Ah, so you, Mr. Commissioner, actually believed such a groundless accusation? Ah, I feel so insulted and humiliated! You're accusing me of an act - no, indeed, a crime that, if true, would warrant a severe punishment! As if I were a common idiot or gambler! That journalist must be possessed to think of such a thing!
End of climax. The inspector inwardly congratulated himself. He had managed to utter a statement using only titles of novels by Dostoyevsky. Had the comissioner noticed? Of course not! The man was ignorant as a goat! — Andrea Camilleri

I used to be a heavy gambler. But now I just make mental bets. That's how I lost my mind. — Steve Allen

THE GAMBLER,THE NUN,& THE RADIO

I thought the pain alone would kill me — Ernest Hemingway,

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

THE GAMBLER,THE NUN & THE RADIO

If I live long enough the luck will change. — Ernest Hemingway,

At least in a casino, depending on the game, people have a slightly less than fifty percent chance of winning. In the long run, the house always wins, but a gambler can get lucky every once in a while. In the Tyranny's elections, both options play for the house. If someone outside of Party A or B tries to run for office, it becomes the house's mission to make sure everyone knows that only A and B are viable candidates. After being told this a hundred times, people believe it. After being told anything a hundred times, people will believe anything. — Chris Dietzel

there is nothing so bad as a reformed anything, be it gambler, drunkard, or lecher. They are aye harder on folks wi' their vices than someone without them would be." Sir — Marion Chesney

From the earliest days, videogame players were less interested in winning than in going to a new psychic place where things were always a bit different, but always the same. The gambler and the videogame player share a life of contradiction; you are overwhelmed, and so you disappear into the game. — Sherry Turkle

A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse. — Leigh Bardugo

A jolt of rage now forced him into her face, their noses almost touching. At once she was the one pulling back.
"Is this yours and Fricker's little game, Geline? To what purpose? Why not keep to the truth? It's disgusting enough." His voice was ragged with fury. "Why make up lies when it's so unnecessary? I was a gambler, a prodigious drinker. I whored my way through most of London's lower echelons. I am profoundly fortunate not to be riddled with disease."
Her mouth crimped with distaste.
"Yes, indeed. Don't want to mention that, do we? There's a price to be paid for treating this vessel," he tapped his chest, "without respect. As to that, we've both been fortunate. — Cynthia Wicklund

What if history was a gambler, instead of a force in a laboratory experiment, and the boys his ace in the hole? What if history was not a reasonable citizen, but a madman full of paranoid guile and these boys his agents, his big surprise! His own revenge? — Ralph Ellison

I'm urging NASA to foster the development of what I call 'runway landers.' No, that's not the name of a high stakes gambler from Vegas. It's a type of spacecraft that flies to orbit like the retiring Shuttles but then glides to a landing like an airplane on a runway. Just like the Shuttles do. — Buzz Aldrin

On a strange and devious way, Siddhartha had gotten into this final and most base of all dependencies, by means of the game of dice. It was since that time, when he had stopped being a Samana in his heart, that Siddhartha began to play the game for money and precious things, which he at other times only joined with a smile and casually as a custom of the childlike people, with an increasing rage and passion. He was a feared gambler, few dared to take him on, so high and audacious were his stakes. He played the game due to a pain of his heart, losing and wasting his wretched money in the game brought him an angry joy, in no other way he could demonstrate his disdain for wealth, the merchants' false god, more clearly and more mockingly. — Hermann Hesse

From The Gambler:
You've got to know when to hold them, Know when to fold them, Know when to walk away, Know when to run, But you should never count your money,
Until the dealings done.

reworked...

You've got to know what you told them, Know when to be bold with them, Know when to have your say, Know when to have fun, But you should always count your blessings, Especially when any day you might be done. — Tony Marino

If you gamble long enough, you'll always lose
the gambler is always ruined. — Michael Crichton

Understand why casinos and racetracks stay in business - the gambler always loses over the long term. — Marilyn Vos Savant

Sometimes, I seem to be only able to actually move and get going with things on the razor edge of possibly still managing whatever it is I'm supposed to do. I think, secretly, I might even get a buzz out of it. Maybe I crave the adrenalin like some sort of crazy gambler high on risking everything on the turn of a card. — Steven Hall

THE GAMBLER,THE NUN & THE RADIO

I do not follow you.
Many times I do not follow myself with pleasure. — Ernest Hemingway,

He did not smile. I don't believe in anything, but I'm too much of a gambler not to be affected by a lot of things. — Dashiell Hammett

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

The reference point argument is as follows: do not compute odds from the vantage point of the winning gambler (or the lucky Casanova, or the endlessly bouncing back New York City, or the invincible Carthage), but from all those who started in the cohort. Consider — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Fort McNamara stood in the Arkansas River Valley near the Indian Territory border, its citizens declaring it to be the last white civilization for hundreds of miles. But civilization was an ironic choice of words for the place as far as Kit was concerned. — Sandra Jones

If I gamble, I'll play roulette. My wife and I will play roulette, and that's about it. I'm not a heavy gambler. — Tracy Morgan

Every gambler needs to hit that one morning, day or night when everything goes right. And you will talk about that run until you die. If you are a gambler and have not hit that run at least once in your life, keep going, it will appear just as sure as mathematics and probability. And you may think that mathematics and probability are boring, not a beautiful thing, lifeless, but when you hit that run it will be as magical and beautiful and empowering as anything you have ever experienced in your life. — Robert Black

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

You want something you can't have, Gurgeh. You enjoy your life in the Culture, but it can't provide you with sufficient threats; the true gambler needs the excitement of potential loss, even ruin, to feel wholly alive. — Anonymous

They always lost but he didn't blame me because to a gambler, a bad tip is better than no tip at all. — Phil Silvers

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

When a writer first begins to write, he or she feels the same
first thrill of achievement that the young gambler or oboe
player feels: winning a little, losing some, the gambler sees the
glorious possibilities, exactly as the young oboist feels an indescribable
thrill when he gets a few phrases to sound like real
music, phrases implying an infinite possibility for satisfaction
and self-expression. As long as the gambler or oboist is only
playing at being a gambler or oboist, everything seems possible.
But when the day comes that he sets his mind on becoming a professional, suddenly he realizes how much there is to learn, how little he knows. — John Gardner