Famous Gambling Quotes From Film and Fiction

Famous Gambling Quotes from Fiction

Because gambling involves both certainty and risk, then it makes a great metaphor for life itself. That's why you find so many famous quotes dealing with gambling and casino games in works of fiction.

• “Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.” - Jack London, American Novelist

Furthermore, the use of famous gambling cities such as Las Vegas as the setting for stories is extremely common. For example, the stories from Hunter S Thompson and Chuck Palahniuk are set in the casinos of Sin City. The first novel from Ian Fleming's James Bond series, Casino Royale, as well as Fyodor Dostoevsky's, The Gambler, also feature casinos as an integral part of the storyline.

Below we've listed some of the most famous gambling quotations from popular fiction.

• “Bond didn't defend the practice. He simply maintained that the more effort and ingenuity you put into gambling, the more you took out.” – Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

One of the world's oldest casinos, Kurhaus Casino Baden-Baden is the setting for Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel, The Gambler.

• "Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition?" – Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Mark Twain is generally viewed as the father of American fiction. Not only was he a fine writer, but also a very talented poker player. As a result, he would often mention gambling in his novels. Probably his most famous quotes about gambling are mixed with his own sense of humour.

• "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

When it comes to contemporary fiction, there are many novels that utilise both casinos and gambling as the foundation of their narratives. Invisible Monsters was Chuck Palahniuk's first novel after the success of Fight Club. Published in 1999, it centres on the casinos of Las Vegas and features some great gambling quotes.

• "Las Vegas looks the way you’d imagine heaven looks like at night” – Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

It's impossible to talk about gambling sayings without bringing up Hunter S. Thompson's classic novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The main location featured is the Las Vegas casino, Circus Circus, and the action takes place during the 1960s. Thompson doesn't hold back in his descriptions of the darker side of life in the city that never sleeps.

• "The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos . . .but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space." – Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Big Screen Gambling Quotes

With movies being the modern evolution of literature, you’ll find that the love of gambling has inspired many great films. Through his love of gambling, and in particular baccarat, James Bond is one of the most often quoted fictional gamblers. Yet there are plenty of other famous gambling movie characters apart from 007.

Frank Sinatra gave a great performance in the 1957 movie, The Joker. He plays the part of a nightclub singer who, after losing his voice, decides to turn to the gambling tables.

• “Las Vegas is the only place I know where money really talks – It says, Goodbye.” - Frank Sinatra, The Joker Is Wild

The Colour of Money was a Martin Scorsese movie that starred Tom Cruise and Paul Newman and came out in 1986. It’s the story of two pool sharks and their shenanigans.

• "A dollar won is twice as sweet as a dollar earned." - Paul Newman, The Color of Money

Songs Featuring Famous Gambling Quotes

With good and bad fortune being such a major ingredient of all forms of gambling, it is no surprise that songwriters everywhere use gambling as a metaphor for life. There are many songs about professional gamblers and their wild times in Las Vegas.

• "You've got to play your hand. Sometimes your cards ain't worth a dime if you don't lay'em down.” - The Grateful Dead, Truckin’

Bob Dylan is regarded by many as one of the finest songwriters of his generation. He tells a story of a professional card player in the song "Ramblin', Gamblin' Willie."

• “Come around you rovin’ gamblers and a story I will tell about the greatest gambler, you all should know him well. His name was Will Conley and he gambled all his life. He had twenty-seven children, yet he never had a wife… He won a fortune from a man who folded his chair. The man, he left a diamond flush, Willie didn’t even have a pair.” - Bob Dylan, Ramblin’, Gamblin’ Willie

Without a doubt, the performer most synonymous with Las Vegas was Elvis Presley. Such was his popularity that the King sold out 837 consecutive shows. As a homage to his favourite city, in 1963 he wrote the song "Viva Las Vegas."

• “Oh there’s blackjack and poker and the roulette wheel, a fortune won and lost on every deal”. - Elvis, Viva Las Vegas

Assorted Famous Gambling Quotes

Away from fictional gambling quotes, you can find many famous sayings that use gambling to describe a perspective on everything from the universe to human life.

When the world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking was looking for a means to describe the universe, he used gambling to illustrate his point

• "All the evidence shows that God was actually quite a gambler, and the universe is a great casino, where dice are thrown, and roulette wheels spin on every occasion." - Stephen Hawking.

The Russian author of War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, describes a gentleman in the following manner:

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

The journalist and writer William Bolitho took a more optimistic view of the life of a gambling man.

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

Many might say that life itself is a bit of a gamble. On a day-to-day basis, you probably won't win every hand. Nevertheless, if you want to score a big payout in your life, then you're going to have to take a risk. Time and again, fictional gamblers in books and movies, reiterate this point.