Gambling Quotes

Poker is... a fascinating, wonderful, intricate adventure on the high seas of human nature.
David A Daniel, American Poet

I think one of the interesting things about poker is that once you let your ego in, you're done for.
Al Alvarez, English Poet

The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.
George Bernard Shaw, Irish Playwright

The rulers of the country generally believed that betting eliminates strikes. Men had to work in order to gamble.
Michael Ondaatje, Canadian Poet and Novelist

Losing as much money as I can get hold of is an instant solution to my economic problems.
Lucian Freud, British Painter

I wouldn't miss what I've lost so much, if I could only forget I ever had it
Ashleigh Brilliant, Artist & Writer

If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky?
Stanislaw J. Lec, Poet

I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as most people, being always excited; women, wine, fame, the table, even ambition, sate now and then, but every turn of the card and cast of the dice keeps the gambler alive – besides one can game ten times longer than one can do anything else.
Lord Byron, Romantic Poet

The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon.
Douglas William Jerrold, English Playwright

Yes, I think poker really isn’t gambling.
Al Alvarez, English Poet

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich - something for nothing.
George Bernard Shaw, Irish Playwright

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.
William Shakespeare, Playwright

Luck's always to blame.
Jean de la Fontaine, French Fabulist

Some folk want their luck buttered.
Thomas Hardy, Poet

Fortune favors the bold.
Terence, Ancient Roman Playwright

No dog can go as fast as the money you bet on him.
Bud Flanagan, Entertainer

If you eliminate smoking and gambling, you will be amazed to find that almost all an Englishman's pleasures can be, and mostly are, shared by his dog.
George Bernard Shaw, Playwright

Horse sense is a good judgment which keeps horses from betting on people.
W.C. Fields, Entertainer

It's like gambling somehow. You go out for a night of drinking and you don't know where you’re going to end up the next day. It could work out good or it could be disastrous. It's like the throw of the dice.
Jim Morrison, Entertainer

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

Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing from something.
Wilson Mizner, Playwright

The safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.
Kin Hubbard, Cartoonist

As for poker, I've stayed away from that, even though when I was in Vegas for Ocean's Eleven, I would get accosted by these guys begging me to play. They just want to take my money. They see me, think "actor" and see some easy money.
Matt Damon, American Actor

I've lost money so fast in these clubs it's left me reeling. I've read every poker book ever written, but the only way to get better at the game is to go out and play with people who are really good. The problem is, you stand to lose a lot of money doing it.
Matt Damon, American Actor

I'm absolutely gonna win it, because I'm ruthless. I sit at the poker table and my job is to destroy people.
James Woods, American Actor

Poker exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great.
Walter Matthau, American Actor

Craps is very visual, but it’s complicated, it’s about how you simplify it without bastardizing it.
Jack Webb, American Actor

I’ve always played cards. I can’t remember when there wasn’t a gambling game going on somewhere, even if it was a craps game in a wheelbarrow on the backside of the racetrack.
Wilford Brimley, American Actor

That’s not a wild goose chase. That’s bingo.
Edward MacMahon, American TV Personality

If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.
Paul Newman, Actor

You know horses are smarter than people. You never heard of a horse going broke betting on people.
Will Rogers, Actor

No, that’s poker. To win, you’ve gotta get damned lucky.
Wilford Brimley, American Actor

I've been in Vegas. That's where you get into the money thing. Boy, you get greedy in Vegas, you know. That's the only place that you can bet $25, get it up to $500 and refuse to quit.
Louie Anderson, Late Game Show Host and Comedian

If I lose today, I can look forward to winning tomorrow, and if I win today, I can expect to lose tomorrow. A sure thing is no fun.
Chico Marx, Actor and Comedian

Good luck needs no explanation.
Shirley Temple Black, Actress

A race track is a place where windows clean people.
Danny Thomas, Comedian/Actor

I don't gamble, because winning a hundred dollars doesn't give me great pleasure. But losing a hundred dollars pisses me off.
Alex Trebek, Host of "Jeopardy" Game Show

When your opponent's sittin' there holdin' all the aces, there's only one thing to do: kick over the table.
Dean Martin, Actor

Vegas is everything that's right with America. You can do whatever you want, 24 hours a day. They've effectively legalized everything there.
Drew Carey, Game Show Host and Comedian

Aces are larger than life and greater than mountains.
Mike Caro, Professional Poker Player

You cannot survive without that intangible quality we call heart. The mark of a top player is not how much he wins when he is winning but how he handles his losses. If you win for thirty days in a row, that makes no difference if on the thirty-first you have a bad night, go crazy, and throw it all away.
Bobby Baldwin, Professional Poker Player

Every conscious act requires risk. Every conscious act requires decision. Put these two facts together and you realize that the secret to life is not to avoid gambling but to gamble well.
Mike Caro, Professional Poker Player

The most difficult aspects of playing poker professionally are coping emotionally with the losses and coping with the recurring idea that you’re not doing anything worthwhile.
Mike Caro, Professional Poker Player

In a backgammon match, anybody has a reasonable chance to beat anybody else. The player who doesn’t respect his opponent is likely to get greedy, to take risks when he shouldn’t and to fail to take risks when he should.
Walter Trice, Professional Backgammon Player

Show me a wealthy gambler and I'll show you someone who has made his money from something other than gambling.
VP Pappy

To be a poker champion, you must have a strong bladder.
Jack McClelland, Poker Pro

Poker pros should be a little less contemptuous of the amateur players, who they like to refer to as ‘fish,’ or ‘donkeys.’ Most of these so-called ‘fish’ and ‘donkeys’ probably hold down respectable jobs that contribute to society, unlike what the pros do for a living.
VP Pappy

Backgammon is a gambling game which requires both luck and skill. Luck keeps the game interesting, but skillfull play will always be rewarded.
Paul Magriel, Professional Backgammon Player

If you ain't just a little scared when you enter a casino, you are either very rich or you haven't studied the games enough.
VP Pappy

Nobody is always a winner, and anybody who says he is, is either a liar or doesn't play poker.
Amarillo Slim, Professional Gambler

Most casino patrons view gambling as a mix of witchery, mysticism, entertainment and dumb luck. Very few view it the deadly game that it is.
VP Pappy

The house doesn't beat the player. It just gives him the opportunity to beat himself.
Nick Dandalos

Blackjack was just me against the house, but poker came with personalities that ranged from racist scum bag to snake-like vermin
Cat Hulbert, Professional Gambler & Author

Don't get mad that you lost, get mad because you didn't win.
Michael Gersitz, Online Poker Player

Gambling is not about how well you play the games, it's really about how well you handle your money.
VP Pappy

I think of how many thousands of times I've played a slot machine with nothing to show for it
Barry Meadow

A major reason I haven't taken up live poker as a money making activity is because successful bluffing and identifying when others are doing it are not skills I'm particularly good at
Bob Dancer, Video Poker Expert

A gambler never makes the same mistake twice. It's usually three or more times.
VP Pappy

Poker: the art of civilized bushwhacking.
Nick Dandalos, Professional Poker Player

Lying, stealing, scheming and attempting to financially destroy your friends and loved ones is what makes poker such a friendly, sociable game
VP Pappy

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

I have always wondered if the results of the Versailles Conferences would have been different if Woodrow Wilson had been a poker player.
Clyde Brion Davis, American Author

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, Theological Writer

Next to the pleasure of winning is the pleasure of losing; only stagnation is unendurable.
Hubert Howe Bancroft, American Historian

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

The most fundamental principle of all in gambling is simply equal conditions...To the extent to which you depart from that equality, if it is in your opponent’s favor, you are a fool, and if in your own, you are unjust.
Gerolamo Cardano from “The Games of Chance” 1520

Gambling is neither an immoral nor a noble exercise; it is motivated by both foolish and rational considerations.
Alex Rubner, author of “Fringe Benefits: The Golden Chains” 1962

Most of the money you'll win at poker comes not from the brilliance of your own play, but from the ineptitude of your opponents.
Lou Krieger, Gambling Author

If you are trading after hours, you are basically playing craps with the market. So if you’re willing to do that, you might as well go to Vegas and play real craps, because at least you might have fun doing it.
Mark Brandon, Australian Author

In all gambling games there is a loser’s syndrome which keeps people to keep on when behind and to go further into the hole. The doubling feature in Backgammon makes this syndrome far more dangerous.
Oswald Jacoby & John Crawford, from “A History of Backgammon”

Fortune always will confer an aura - Of worth, unworthily; and in this world - The lucky person passes for a genius.
Euripides, Classical Greek Tragedian

A Gentleman is a man who will pay his gambling debts even when he knows he has been cheated.
Leo Tolstoy

Even in their wildest dreams, casino owners could not possibly have concocted anything to match a slot machine's raw capacity to generate revenue.
Lou Krieger and Arthur Reber, from “Strictly Slots”

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

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

He had the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.
Mark Twain

It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.
Joseph Conrad

I believe in luck. How else can you explain the success of those you dislike?
Jean Cocteau

People would be surprised to know how much I learned about prayer from playing poker.
Mary Austin

Luck is not chance - It's Toil - Fortune's expensive smile - Is earned.
Emily Dickinson

Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
Charles Lamb

Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
Charles Lamb

Horse racing is animated roulette.
Roger Kahn

Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The subject of gambling is all encompassing. It combines man's natural play instinct with his desire to know about his fate and his future.
Franz Rosenthal, Gambling in Islam, 1975

The typical gambler might not really understand the probabilistic nuances of the wheel or the dice, but such things seem a bit more tractable than, say, trying to raise a child in this lunatic society of ours.
Arthur S. Reber, The New Gambler's Bible

Wanting to win is actually a pretty superficial goal. It's like wanting to be rich...it's not enough
Larry W. Phillips, The Tao of Poker

Superstitions are the survivors in the battle waged by reason
Zolar, Zolar's Encyclopedia of Omens, Signs, & Superstitions

Many great poker players I've encountered will not win humanitarian awards or be nominated for Nobel prizes
Frank Scoblete

There are clubs that would have to close their doors without a slot machine
Mike Goodman, How to Win

A gambler is nothing but a man who makes his living out of hope.
William Bolitho

In the queer mess of human destiny the determining factor is luck. For every important place in life there are many men of fairly equal capacities. Among them luck decides who shall accomplish the great work, who shall be crowned with laurel, and who shall fall back into silence and obscurity.
William E. Woodward

I am sorry I have not learned to play cards. It is very useful in life. It generates kindness and consolidates society.
Samuel Johnson, English Author

I've often thought, if I got really hungry for a good milk shake, how much would I pay for one? People will pay a hundred dollars for a bottle of wine; to me that's not worth it. But I'm not going to say it is foolish or wrong to spend that kind of money, if that's what you want. So if a guy wants to bet twenty or thirty thousand dollars in a poker game that is his privilege.
Jack Binion, American Casino Operator

The most sensible advice that may be given to would-be gamblers, or inventors of systems to be used at Monte Carlo, may be summed up in a single word: ‘Don’t’.
Francois Blanc (1806) nineteenth-century entrepreneur who established the Monte Carlo Casino

As far as Poker goes, I really didn’t play Poker but a few times in high school.
Doyle Brunson, Professional Poker Player and Online Casino Owner

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of Poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
Vannevar Bush, American Engineer and Science Administrator

Gambling is the future on the internet. You can only look at so many dirty pictures.
Simon Noble

My advice to the unborn is, don't be born with a gambling instinct unless you have a good sense of probabilities.
Jack Dreyfus

They gambled in the Garden of Eden, and they will again if there's another one.
Richard Albert Canfield

No wife can endure a gambling husband, unless he is a steady winner.
Lord Thomas Robert Dewar, Distiller

When we put 50 machines in, I consider them 50 more mousetraps. You have to have a mousetrap to catch a mouse.
Bob Stupak, Las Vegas Casino Owner

We got an education when in 1992 Wolfgang Puck opened Spago in the Forum Shops in Caesars Palace and proved to us that people will line up to get good food.
Steve Wynn, Las Vegas Casino Owner

I believe in luck. The harder I work the luckier I get.
Sam Shoen, Founder U-Haul

Everything in life is luck.
Donald Trump, Real Estate Developer

The best part about poker is there's no down side.
Samantha Bee, Canadian Comedic Actress

In Vegas, I got into a long argument with the man at the roulette wheel over what I considered to be an odd number.
Stephen Wright, Comedian

Last year people won more than one billion dollars playing poker. And casinos made twenty-seven billion just by being around those people.
Samantha Bee, Comedian

A weekend in Vegas without gambling and drinking is just like being a born-again Christian.
Artie Lange, Comedian

I just did some real gambling. I went to Las Vegas. I was playing craps because I had a lot of money and I needed to lose it very quickly.
Greg Fitzsimmons, American Stand-Up Comedian

I bet on a horse at ten-to-one. It didn't come in until half-past five.
Henny Youngman, Comedian

I love blackjack. But I'm not addicted to gambling. I'm addicted to sitting in a semi circle.
Mitch Hedberg, Comedian

One of the healthiest ways to gamble is with a spade and a package of garden seeds.
Dan Bennett, Comedian

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

Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.
Steven Wright, Comedian

In the absence of any mathematical explanation, one thing is for certain; if you engage in games of chance long enough, the experience is bound to affect the way you see God. Successfully draw to an inside straight three hands in a row, and you’ve got to be blessed. But if you’re the person drawn out on, the one whose trip aces just got snapped for the third time, you will go home feeling cursed.
Andy Bellin, Poker Journalist

The smarter you play, the luckier you'll be.
Mark Pilarski, American Gambling Journalist

A number of moralists condemn lotteries and refuse to see anything noble in the passion of the ordinary gambler. They judge gambling as some atheist’s judge religion, by its excesses.
Charles Lamb, English Essayist

Even as I approach the gambling hall, as soon as I hear, two rooms away, the jingle of money poured out on the table, I almost go into convulsions.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian Writer and Essayist

Eat, sleep and play bingo.
Blaine Selva, American Journalist

I’ve learned the lesson that the worst thing that can happen to a gambler is to let his recent losses or wins knock him off keel emotionally.
Andrew Beyer, Horse Racing Columnist

Sometimes a 3-1 favorite loses. That’s why they call it gambling, and that’s why they keep flipping over the cards.
Richard Roeper, American Columnist and Film Critic

The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice is so pleasurable, that I assume it must be evil.
Heywood Broun

He's an honest man - you could shoot craps with him over the telephone.
Earl Wilson, American Journalist

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

A winning hand is not assured, Until proceeds are secured. So you may find you're out of scratch, By counting chickens ere they hatch
Sumner A. Ingmark

A gambler with a system must be, to a greater or lesser extent, insane.
George Augustus Sala, English Journalist

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.
Grantland Rice, Sports Journalist

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.
Orson Welles, American Film Director

It can be argued that man's instinct to gamble is the only reason he is still not a monkey up in the trees.
Mario Puzo, American Author and Screenwriter

Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
From the film, Cool Hand Luke

To me, film right now is dormant. It's a sleeping giant. It's the plaything of corporations. The people who determine what American film is today are no different from high rollers who go to Las Vegas. They just want to take all the money and put it on one big number and roll the dice on that number and if it craps out, next number. Next case.
William Friedkin, Director “The French Connection and The Exorcist”

Luck is not a factor.
Lindsay Brigman from the film "The Abyss"

Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.
Paul Newman from "The Color of Money"

You know what luck is? Luck is believing you're lucky...to hold front position in this rat-race you've got to believe you're lucky.
Stanley Kowalski from "A Streetcar Named Desire"

There is no such thing as luck.
From "Star Wars"

Do you feel lucky?
Clint Eastwood from "Dirty Harry"

Memo to myself: Give up gambling. It's wrong... especially if you lose money.
Cruella de Vil from "101 Dalmations"

Captain, I'm beginning to understand why you Earthmen enjoy gambling. No matter how carefully one computes the odds of success, there is still a certain exhilaration in the risk.
Spock from "Star Trek"

A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
American Proverb

If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.
Chinese Proverb

Luck never gives; it only lends.
Swedish Proverb

At the gambling table, there are no fathers and sons.
Chinese Proverb

Gambling is the son of avarice and the father of despair.
French Proverb

When God throws the dice are loaded.
Greek Proverb

Nine gamblers could not feed a single rooster.
Yugoslavian Proverb

Just as outlawing alcohol did not work in the 1920s, current attempts to prohibit online gambling will not work, either.
John Conyers, American Politician

The attraction in this city is money, from gambling. What you are if you work here is a shill.
Joe Williams, American Politician

My luck at the gambling table was varied; sometimes I was fifty to a hundred dollars ahead, and at other times I had to borrow money from my fellow workmen to settle my room rent and pay for my meals.
James Weldon Johnson, American Politician

I don't attempt to be a poker player before this crowd.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, former US President

I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson, former US President

Diligence is the mother of good luck.
Benjamin Franklin, American Politician & Inventor

There is no gambling like politics.
Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minster

Gaming corrupts our disposition and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind.
Thomas Jefferson, American Politican & Inventor

Gambling is a principle inherent in nature.
Edmund Burke, Irish Politician & Statesman

A lottery is a salutary instrument and a tax…laid on the willing only, that is to say, on those who can risk the price of a ticket without sensible injury, for the possibility of a higher prize.
Thomas Jefferson, American Politician & Inventor