Quotes & Sayings About Gambling

the only things that came from the practice were foolhardy acts, ill-advised liaisons, and gambling debts. — Amor Towles

Everyone has addictions and my problem is that I have 5,000 of them. If it's not drinking, it's gambling; if it's not gambling, it's eating anything from burgers, doughnuts to M&Ms. The only addiction I don't suffer from is chasing women. — John Daly

I lie in a bathtub of cold water, still sweating and singing love songs to myself. I put the gun to my head and cock it.
I think of my Grandma and remember that old feeling of being so in love that nothing matters except seeing and being seen by her. I drop the gun to my chest. I'm so sad and I can't really see a way out of what I'm feeling but I'm leaning on memory for help. Faster. Slower. I think I want to hurt myself more than I'm already hurting. I'm not the smartest boy in the world by a long shot, but even in my funk I know that easy remedies like eating your way out of sad, or fucking your way out of sad, or lying your way out of sad, or slanging your way out of sad, or robbing your way out of sad, or gambling your way out of sad, or shooting your way out of sad, are just slower, more acceptable ways for desperate folks, and especially paroled black boys in our country, to kill ourselves and others close to us in America. — Kiese Laymon

From this day, you are no longer children. If you have to fight, even if it is a friend, put him down as fast and hard as you possibly can. Kill if you have to, or spare him - but beware putting any man in your debt. Of all things, that causes resentment. Any warrior who raises his fist to you must know he is gambling with his life and that he will lose. If you cannot win at first, take revenge if it is the last thing you do. You are traveling with men who respect only strength greater than theirs, men harder than themselves. Above everything else, they respect success. Remember it. — Conn Iggulden

It is true that the Puritans banned all recreation on Sundays and all games of chance, gambling, bear baiting, horse racing, and bowling in or around taverns at all times. They did so, not because they were opposed to fun, but because they judged these activities to be inherently harmful or immoral. — Leland Ryken

The first thing he noticed was that Las Vegas seemed to have invented a new school of functional architecture, 'The Gilded Mousetrap School' he thought it might be called, whose main purpose was to channel the customer-mouse into the central gambling trap whether he wanted the cheese or not. — Ian Fleming

Gaming is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality. — Charles Caleb Colton

Hold'em is to stud what chess is to checkers. — Johnny Moss

It is a bad business, dealing in lottery tickets ... Riches got in such a hasty manner never wear well. — Sarah Josepha Hale

With spots quadrangular of diamond form, ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife, and spades, the emblems of untimely graves. — William Cowper

Whenever you see a gaming table be sure to know fortune is not there. Rather she is always in the company of industry. — Oliver Goldsmith

I blew the lot on vodka and tonic, gambling and fags. Looking back, I think I overdid it on the tonic. — Stan Bowles

But I also think that it does create a lot of revenue, but to me it's a temporary revenue stream because it's an industry that, if suddenly gambling started in Massachusetts, then a lot of our patrons who would gamble in New Hampshire if we had it, would disappear. — Craig Benson

Baccarat is a game whereby the croupier gathers in money with a flexible sculling oar, then rakes it home. If I could have borrowed his oar I would have stayed. — Mark Twain

Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. It's getting money without giving an equivalent for it. — Henry Ward Beecher

Curst is the wretch enslaved to such a vice,
Who ventures life and soul upon the dice. — Horace

Then Childermass related to Mr Norrell what he had discovered about Drawlight: how he belonged to a certain breed of gentlemen, only to be met with in London, whose main occupation is the wearing of expensive and fashionable clothes; how they pass their lives in ostentatious idleness, gambling and drinking to excess and spending months at a time in Brighton and other fashionable watering places; how in recent years this breed seemed to have reached a sort of perfection in Christopher Drawlight. Even his dearest friends would have admitted that he possessed not a single good quality. — Susanna Clarke

I don't see how you have the nerve to oppose this bill when you run the biggest gambling business in the world - gambling on the hereafter. — Loring M. Black Jr.

Gaming is a kind of tacit confession that the company engaged therein do in general exceed the bounds of their respective fortunes, and therefore they cast lots to determine upon whom the ruin shall at present fall, that the rest may be saved a little longer. — William Blackstone

Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous. — Alexander Pushkin

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. — Charles Bukowski

There are no violent gangs fighting over aspirin territories. There are no violent gangs fighting over whisky territories or computer territories or anything else that's legal. There are only criminal gangs fighting over territories covering drugs, gambling, prostitution, and other victimless crimes. Making a non-violent activity a crime creates a black market, which attracts criminals and gangs, which turns what was once a relatively harmless activity affecting a small group of people into a widespread epidemic of drug use and gang warfare. — Harry Browne

In Louisiana, we don't bet on football games, we bet on whether a politician is going to be indicted or not. — Mark Duffy

There is a gambling element to being somebody who is going to take on the job of constantly trying to represent and prop up people who might be somewhat shady. That notion is probably part of how they got the rap. But, I have to find the balance of being colorful, being at times despicable, and also being somebody who does believe in something. — Greg Kinnear

Buying stock is exactly the same thing as going to a casino, only with no cocktail service. — Ted Allen

Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition? — Fyodor Dostoevsky

All gambling is the telling of a fortune, but of a monstrously depleted fortune, empty of everything save one numerical circumstance, shorn of all such richness as a voyage across the water, a fair man that loves you, a dark woman that means you harm. — Rebecca West

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

The only business in the world bigger than gambling is religion ... but gambling is not nearly so corrupt. — J.R. Miller

Why are you here?" he asked, staring around me at Mr. Kent.
Mr. Kent laughed uncomfortably. "Why does anyone go to a gambling house?"
"To gamble," Sebastian answered.
"To find information for our plan," I muttered, Mr. Kent's power inadvertently affecting me as well.
"What plan?" Sebastian asked.
I glared at Mr. Kent. "Nothing, nothing at all."
"No one seems to understand what a rhetorical question is these days," Mr. Kent said to the skies. — Tarun Shanker

Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general. He won for explaining a strange effect in quantum mechanics, the photoelectric effect. His solution provided the first real evidence that quantum mechanics wasn't a crude stopgap for justifying anomalous experiments, but actually corresponds to reality. And the fact that Einstein came up with it is ironic for two reasons. One, as he got older and crustier, Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that "God does not play dice with the universe." He was wrong, and it's too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: "Einstein! Stop telling God what to do. — Sam Kean

It felt wrong for me to push Lady Luck to the side and for me to choose who ought to be 'lucky'. It didn't seem right. It wasn't fair. — John-Talmage Mathis

The gambling industry actually generates more income than the music, sports, and movie industries combined. — William D. Willis

Gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness.
We gamble. Some do it at the gaming table, some do not.
You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. — Jeanette Winterson

She's a russian roulette queen, gambling in love with her heart and life on the line — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern ... Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. — George Orwell

They are the new breed of slot machine-colorful, fancy, exciting, wonderful ... and deadly. — Frank Scoblete

The world is more than a game of cards. History is more than a record of gambling operations. — Arthur Twining Hadley

He'd tried fishing, dancing, gambling and drink, allegedly four of life's greatest pleasures, and wasn't sure that he saw the point. Food he was happy with - Death liked a good meal as much as anyone else. — Anonymous

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air ... It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog's life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability. — George Bernard Shaw

Tell me, Theodore, were you playing against orphans, by any chance? — Sheri Cobb South

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

Nevada has a very dynamic economy, with gambling being the number-one industry, followed closely by blood donorship. — Dave Barry

European lotteries are the tax on fools. — Camillo Benso, Count Of Cavour

I am now eased in my finances and replenished in my wardrobe. — Andrew Jackson

Gambling makes boys selfish and cruel as well as men. — Thomas Hughes

If I have a handful of silver it is because I work and my wife works, and we do not, as some do, sit idling over a gambling table or gossiping on doorsteps never swept, letting the fields grow to weeds and our children go half-fed!" (Buck, 65) — Pearl S. Buck

SOCIETY AS COMPULSIVE AND ADDICTED Our society is highly addictive. We have sixty million sexual abuse victims. Possibly seventy-five million lives are seriously affected by alcoholism, with no telling how many more through other drugs. We have no idea of the actual impact on our economy of the billions of tax-free dollars that come from the illegal drug trade. Over fifteen million families are violent. Some 60 percent of women and 50 percent of men have eating disorders. We have no actual data on work addiction or sexual addictions. I saw a recent quotation that cited thirteen million gambling addicts. If toxic shame is the fuel of addiction, we have a massive problem of shame in our society. — John Bradshaw

Gambling undermines the moral fiber of society. — Gordon B. Hinckley

I like to play blackjack. I'm not addicted to gambling. I'm addicted to sitting in a semi-circle. — Mitch Hedberg

The human mind has a tendency to observe unsystematic events and assign a pattern to the results. A habitual risk-taker reorganizes the stream of random events and retrospectively attributes the outcome of indiscriminate trials to their own gambling "strategies." We often hear people say that they are lucky or unlucky, when in actuality they can claim no ownership in the occurrence of chaotic outcomes. A false sense of the existence of luck can cause people to discount the value of their actual effort, skill, and training. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Suckers have no business with money anyway. — Canada Bill Jones

In most betting shops you will see three windows marked 'Bet Here', but only one window with the legend 'Pay Out'. — Jeffrey Bernard

Greyhound racing is a self-regulating gambling business that depends on the uncontrolled breeding and unaccountable disappearance of thousands of dogs every year. That is a situation that is unacceptable and indefensible — Annette Crosbie

Obesity is the result of a loss of self-control. Indeed, loss of self-control might be said to be the defining social (or anti-social) characteristic of our age: public drunkenness, excessive gambling, promiscuity and common-or-garden rudeness are all examples of our collective loss of self-control. — Theodore Dalrymple

Scobe's Fifth Law: All dealers wish they were doing something other than dealing. All dealers have plans to get out of dealing. Ten years later they have different plans to get out of dealing. — Frank Scoblete

Non-alcoholic ways in which parents may not 'be there' for the children can include:
- violence and sexual abuse
- workholism
- gambling
- transquilliser addiction-
- womanizing
- frequent journeys abroad
- death
- suicide
- being unemployed or unemployable
- frequent hospitalisation
- mental or physical handicap
- excessive religiosity
- rigid rules and regulations
- homes where children are never allowed to be themselves but must always be pleasing to adults — David Stafford

In gambling the many must lose in order that the few may win. — George Bernard Shaw

So much of the theatrical can leave you with a yearning for the real. The real is suddenly and starkly there right at the city's edge and extends for thousands of square miles of desert and mountain and canyon with which human beings can do almost nothing profitable other than to leave it be and just look at it. — Timothy O'Grady

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

But I used to have a bit of a gambling problem. And that would have been the answer to my prayers. It got worse when I started playing this character, too. — Fisher Stevens

Think of the things killing us as a nation: narcotic drugs, brainless competition, dishonesty, greed, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling, alcohol, and the worst pornography of all
lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a philosophy
all of these are addictions of dependent personalities. That is what our brand of schooling must inevitably produce. — John Taylor Gatto

Instead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general, why not think that a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible, and that all kinds of mutating, living machines conduct wars, are combined and trace out a plane of consistance which undermines the plane of organization of the World and the States? — Gilles Deleuze

Many players will not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge. — David Mamet

There is always room for losers in the football business. They are the mother's milk of gambling, and why not? Somebody has to do it, or there won't be any winners. — Hunter S. Thompson

I'm not going to go back to gambling; I mean, it's as simple as that. — Pete Rose

There are many harsh lessons to be learned from the gambling experience, but the harshest one of all is the difference between having Fun and being Smart. — Hunter S. Thompson

Most amusements only mean trying to win another person's money. — Rudyard Kipling

I used to go to Vegas and play the horses, and then I realised how ridiculous that was. There is no winning in gambling, but there is on the stock market. — Josh Brolin

It's a shame when other people's gambling habits change the meaning of paintings or when fluctuations of value start to dictate how people perceive art because it's too expensive to be interesting or moving. That's when I get bummed out. — Nate Lowman

Strange it was that the British commander-in-chief, known for his chronic gambling, seemed to give no thought to how his American opponent might play his hand. O — David McCullough

He had not been in El Paso for years, and they had developed it considerably since then, he'd heard, along the lines of sin and salvation. They had churches and a Republican or two and a smart of banks and a symphony orchestra and five railroads and a lumberyard and the makings of a library. So much for sin. On the side of salvation they had ninety-some saloons, just shy of one for every hundred citizens, although municipal goodyism had moved the gambling rooms out back or upstairs. — Glendon Swarthout

I know a little bit about handicapping. If the horse has an IV, you want to stay - away from it. — Paula Poundstone

The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit Heaven. — Charles Caleb Colton

Play not for gain, but sport. Who plays for more
Than he can lose with pleasure, stakes his heart;
Perhaps his wife's too, and whom she hath bore. — George Herbert

My problem is that my body acts before my brain thinks ... it sometimes brings me huge trouble, or also huge success. recently, my body and brain got come to an agreement. it may be far better to live this gambling life than living in boring average ... they at least make my art more interesting — Hiroko Sakai

The greatest advantage in gambling lies in not playing at all. — Gerolamo Cardano

As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances. — Alfred Korzybski

Life is nothing but a bet that in the end everyone is doomed to lose. So you'd better get used! — William C. Brown

Putting a stop to internet gambling is a necessary reform that targets flagrant violations of state and federal laws. — John Shadegg

But Geology carries the day: it is like the pleasure of gambling, speculating, on first arriving, what the rocks may be; I often mentally cry out 3 to 1 Tertiary against primitive; but the latter have hitherto won all the bets. — Charles Darwin

Investment banking has, in recent years, resembled a casino, and the massive scale of gambling losses has dragged down traditional business and retail lending activities as banks try to rebuild their balance sheets. This was one aspect of modern financial liberalisation that had dire consequences. — Vince Cable

Gambling is entertainment. People go to casinos to be entertained. — Eric Schneiderman

There is one type of gambling which should always be encouraged. It is betting on goodness. When a person has wronged you, be good to him. If he adds insult to injury, double the bet. And keep on doubling it. You will surely win! — J.P. Vaswani

My last piece of advice to the degenerate slot player who thinks he can beat the one-armed bandit consists of four little words: It can't be done. — John Scarne

Gambling is not a vice, if you can afford to do it. — Hilary Mantel

When we reach our highest potential, we will find our highest love. — Jennifer Ott

The world over, give a guy money and it goes to drinking, gambling, and women. When you give a woman money, it goes to feeding, clothing, helping people. — Peter Buffett

They did a study and found that countless men would choose gambling over love if given the chance. Even more would choose pornography over love if given the chance. We are cavemen; and it seems like that will never change. I wonder if the men they
studied have ever really been in love? I wonder how corporations will use this information to their advantage? "Hallmark cards and boxes of Fanny May chocolates will save humanity," or something to the effect. It depresses me to think about it. — Pete Wentz

I had worked in politics with Johnson and Nixon before becoming a historian and biographer. I kept discovering these dirtier, murkier threads in American politics that led back to Vegas' gambling interests and criminal connections. — Roger Morris

Mom once snuck me into a casino. We were going on vacation to Crater Lake and we stopped at a resort on an Indian reservation for the buffet lunch. Mom decided to do a bit of gambling, and I went with her while Dad stayed with Teddy, who was napping in his stroller. Mom sat down at the dollar blackjack tables. The dealer looked at me, then at Mom, who returned his mildly suspicious glance with a look sharp enough to cut diamonds followed by a smile more brilliant that any gem. The dealer sheepishly smiled back and didn't say a word. I watched Mom play, mesmerized. It seemed like we were in there for fifteen minutes but then Dad and Teddy came in search of us, both of them grumpy. It turned out we'd been there for over an hour. The ICU is like that. — Gayle Forman

Writing, like gambling, was always a big part of my life," he used to say. "Both gave me sanctuary from the world. And you never really had to kill someone to get what you wanted. You just had to beat fate. — Mario Puzo

Bets at first were fool-traps, where the wise like spiders lay in ambush for the flies. — John Dryden

But Carol had not betrayed her. Carol loved her more than she loved her child. That was part of the reason why she had not promised.
She was gambling now as she had gambled on getting everything from the detective that day on the road, and she lost then, too. And now she saw Carol's face changing, saw the little signs of astonishment and shock so subtle that perhaps only she in the world could have noticed them, and Therese could not think for a moment. — Patricia Highsmith

If you ever go to Las Vegas, and you will, just go for a few days. I was there recently for seven days, seven days in Vegas. After I blew all my money on gambling and prostitution, I had six days to kill. — Doug Benson

As a close-up magician, I was using gambling cheating techniques. — Steve Truglia

You start doing the addictive behavior to feel good and then your receptors get overloaded with dopamine, then you stop doing the addictive thing and some of the receptors have shut down and you don't have enough dopamine to feel good. So then you feel bad and go back to the addictive behavior to get more dopamine. The strange thing is that it works with what we think of as uppers and downers and whatever you call gambling - sidewaysers. — Bill Nye

I do not have a problem, I enjoy gambling, but I think people are trying to make it seem like I have a problem, because people really don't know. — Michael Jordan

For although Claudius had been accused of gambling and drunkenness, not only were no worse sins laid to his charge, but he had successfully established some claim to being considered a learned man. — Frederic William Farrar

By gaming we lose both our time and treasure - two things most precious to the life of man. — Owen Feltham