Wise words that bettors can relate to from famous voices. While the end of one year and the start of another always bring about a measure of self-examination for the gambler, you don't have to wait for the flip of a calendar for reflection. It should be comforting to know that over the eons, other people, some of great fame, repute and disrepute, have pondered the complexities of sports betting, gambling and luck, as well. That's how we've gotten some of these famous gambling quotes.
Here, for your post – holiday consumption is a brief sampling:
Famous Gambling Quotes
“All pro sports, as well as the NCAA, should thank God every day we have sports betting here… We have the only agency in the world that regulates the honesty of the games.”
-Meyer Lansky
“The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice is so pleasurable, that I assume it must be evil.”
– Heywood Broun
“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
“A gambler is nothing but a man who makes his living out of hope.”
-William Bolitho
“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
“Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do and I gave the common – sense 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
“Marry me and I'll never look at another horse.”
-Groucho Marx
“No wife can endure a gambling husband, unless he is a steady winner.”
-Thomas Robert Dewar
“You're better off betting on a horse than betting on a man. A horse may not be able to hold you tight but he doesn't want to wander from the stable at night.”
-Betty Grable
“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps him from betting on people.”
-W.C. Fields
“I met with an accident on the way to the track; I arrived safely.”
-Joe E. Lewis
“A race track is a place where windows clean people.”
-Danny Thomas
“You know horses are smarter than people. You never heard of a horse going broke betting on people.”
-Will Rogers
“I bet on a horse at ten – to – one. It didn't come in until half past five.”
-Henny Youngman
“Sports betting is all about money management so the most money won on one event is not the most important thing.”
-Bruce Dern
“Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.”
-From the motion picture The Color of Money
“Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.”
-Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia, 1823
“Gambling is a pre – emptive attack on fate.”
-David Thompson, The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood
“The next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing.”
-Nick “The Greek”
“To win, you have to risk loss.”
-Jean Claude Killy
“Dear Lord, help me break even. I need the money.”
-Unknown
“If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.”
-Chinese proverb
“There is an easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one.”
-Jack Yelton
“You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it.”
-Albert Einstein
“In the case of an earthquake hitting Las Vegas, be sure to go straight to the keno lounge. Nothing ever hits there.”
-Unknown
“Is it a reasonable thing, I ask you, for a grown man to run about and hit a ball? Poker's the only game fit for a grown man. Then your hand is against every man's, and every man's is against yours. Teamwork? Who ever made a fortune by teamwork? There's only one way to make a fortune, and that's to down the fellow who's up against you.”
-Somerset Maugham, Cosmopolitans
“I once played poker with tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.”
-Steven Wright
“A dollar picked up on the road is more satisfaction to us than… which we had to work for and the money won at Faro… snuggles into our hearts in the same way.”
-Mark Twain
“Luck never gives; it only lends.”
-Swedish proverb
“Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Luck be a lady tonight.”
-Frank Loesser
“The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.”
-Damon Runyon, More Than Somewhat
“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… that is his privilege.”
-Jack Binion
