BETTING QUOTES

This is a selection of what different people have said on the subject of betting, the quotes are both entertaining and wise.

"A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to us than the 99 which we had to work for, and the money won at Faro or in the stock market snuggles into our hearts in the same way." Mark Twainbetting quotes
 
"A gambler is nothing but a man who makes his living out of hope." William Bolithobetting quotes
 
"A gambler's ace is his ability to think clearly under stress. That's very important, because, you see, fear is the basis of basis of all mankind. In cards, you psyche 'em out, you shark 'em, you put the fear of God in 'em. That's life. Everything's mental in life. The butt was made to lug the mind around. The most important thing in gamblin' is knowing the sixty-forty end of the proposition and knowing the human element. Some folks may know one of 'em, but ain't many know 'em both. I believe in logics. Cut and dried. Two and two ain't nothing in the world but four. But them suckers always think it's somethin' different... I play percentages in everything. Now, knowing the percentages perfectly, the kind of numbers you read in books, is all right, but the hidden percentages are more important. The real thing to know is that folks will stand to lose more than they will to win. That's the most important percentage there is. I mean, if they lose, they're willing to lose everything. If they win, they're usually satisfied to win enough to pay for dinner and a show. The best gamblers know that." Puggy Pearson, World Champion of 1973

"A number of moralists condemn lotteries and refuse to see anything noble in the passion of the ordinary gambler.  They judge gambling as some atheists judge religion, by its excesses."  Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia, 1832betting quotes
 
"A race track is a place where windows clean people."  Danny Thomasbetting quotes
 
"A racehorse is an animal that can take several thousand people for a ride at the same time."  Author Unknownbetting quotes
 
"A thousand meadows and cornfields are staked at every throw and as many villages are lost as in the earthquake that overwhelmed Herculaneum and Pompei." Horace Walpolebetting quotes

"At the gambling table, there are no fathers and sons." Chinese Proverbbetting quotes
 
"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 Twainbetting quotes
 
"Betting is the manure to which the enormous crop of horse-races and racehorse breeding in this and other countries is to a large extent due." Richard Blackmore, The Jockey Club and its Founders, 1891betting quotes
 
"By gaming we lose both our time and treasure - two things most precious to the life of man." Owen Fellthambetting quotes
 
"Casinos and prostitutes have the same thing in common; they are both trying to screw you out of your money and send you home with a smile on you face." VP Pappybetting quotes

"Dear Lord, help me to break even.  I need the money."  Author Unknown betting quotes

"Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit."  R.E. Shaybetting quotes
 
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

"A good gambler can get money out of a lamp post."  Author Unknown betting quotes

"Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing from something."  Wilson Miznerbetting quotes
 
"Games of chance are traps to catch school boy novies and gaping country squires, who begin with a guinea and end with a mortgage." Author Unknownbetting quotes
 
"Good poker is patience; great poker is courage." Rick Bennet, King of a Small Worldbetting quotes

"Horse racing is animated roulette." Roger Kahnbetting quotes
 
"Horse sense is a good judgment which keeps horses from betting on people."  W.C. Fields betting quotes

"I bet on a horse at ten-to-one.  It didn't come in until half-past five."  Henny Youngmanbetting quotes
 
"I met with an accident on the way to the track; I arrived safely."  Joe E. Lewis betting quotes

"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 

"If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time." Chinese Proverb
 
"In a bet there is a fool and a thief." Proverbbetting quotes
 
"In most betting shops you will see three windows marked Bet Here, but only one window with the legend Pay Out."  Jeffrey Bernard
 
"In order to play high-stakes poker, you need to have a total disregard for money. The only time you notice is when you run out." Doyle Brunson, Gran-Daddy of poker

"In poker, money is power." Titanic Thompson

"In the case of an earthquake hitting Las Vegas, be sure to go straight to the Keno Lounge. Nothing ever gets hit there."  Author Unknown
 
"It was better betting with a decent feller. Now it's better betting with a mobile phone or a computer." Carl Chinn, bookmaker turned historian

"Las Vegas is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted." Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

"Lottery:  A tax on people who are bad at math." Author Unknown
 
"Luck never gives; it only lends." Swedish Proverb
 
"Man is a gaming animal.  He must always be trying to get the better in something or other." Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia, 1823
 
"Money won is twice as sweet as money earned." From the movie The Color of Money

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

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

"One of the healthiest ways to gamble is with a spade and a package of garden seeds."  Dan Bennett
 
"Opposite the bankholder stood some of the smart speculators and specialists in gambling who, like old criminals, were no longer afraid of the galley, They came to play three stakes and disappeared immediately after having won their livelihood." Honore de Balzac, La peau de chagrin

"Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy. It can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and elusive, but ultimately it is fair, right, and just."   Lou Krieger

"Poker's the only game fit for a grown man. Then, your hand is against every man's, and every man's hand is against yours. Teamwork? Who ever made a fortune from teamwork? There's only one way to make a fortune, and that's to down the fellow who's up against you." Somerset Maugham, Cosmoplolitans

"Racing without gambling is like dancing without sex." Simon Barnes, sportswriter for The Times

"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
 
"Son, no matter how far you travel, or how smart you get, always remember this: some day, somewhere, a guy is going to come to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that the jack of spades will jump out this deck and squirt cider in your ears. But son, do not bet him, for as sure as you do, you are going to get an ear full of cider." Damon Runyon, The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown

"Son, we are sorry about the tuition funds...your mother and I did not know you are not supposed to split tens..." 

"The better the gambler, the worse the man."  Publius Syrus
 
"The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling."  Ambrose Bierce
 
"The greatest support for organised gambling once came from the bored and ill educated aristocracy; it comes today from the bored and ill educated proletariat." The Economist, 1947

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

"The knowledge of the character of our fellow citizens during play is a rack on which anger, joy, greed, honesty and dishonesty are made clear." Cardano, Liber de Ludo Aleae

"The Lottery, with its weekly payout of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant." George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

"The next best thing to gambling and winning is gambling and losing." Nick the Greek

"The odds are five to six that the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train." Paul Dickson, Washingtonian

"The plate of the hunter, the gambler, and the fisherman is nine times empty and one time full." Cretan Proverb

"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, in reference to Ecclesiastes 9:11, I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
 
"The safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket."  Kin Hubbard
 
"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 

"The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice is so pleasurable, that I assume it must be evil." Heywood Broun
 
"There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune:  go there with a large one." Jack Yelton 

"There is but one good throw upon the dice, which is, to throw them away."  Author Unknown 

"Trust everyone but always cut the cards." Benny Binion

"When I was young, people called me a gambler. As the scale of my operations increased, I became known as a speculator. Now I am called a banker. But I have been doing the same thing all the time." Sir Ernest Cassel, private banker to Edward VII

"Where is the sin? We bet. It has all been passed down that there is a God. We bet our life on it. We calculate the odds, the return that we shall sit with the Saints in Paradise. Our anxiety about our bet wakes us before dawn in a cold sweat and God sees us suffer. I cannot believe that such a God, whose fundamental requirement of us is that we gambler our mortal souls - it's true that we everything on the fact of his existence - I cannot believe that such a God can look unkindly on a chap wagering a few quid on the likelihood on a chap wagering a few quid on the likelihood of a dumb animal crossing the line first, unless it might be considered a blaspheme to apply to a common pleasure that which is divine. Shall we play?" Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda

"You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it." Albert Einstein
 
"You know horses are smarter than people.  You never heard of a horse going broke betting on people."  Will Rogers 

"You talk of your cricket and your baseball, your golf and tennis and football. You can have them. They're all very well - for boys. Is it a reasonable thing, I ask you, for a grown man to run about and hit a ball?"