“You can't just avoid the game by saying you don't want to play.”
Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer
Source: The Final Empire
“There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game. (Act 1, scene 4)”
— William Shakespeare, book Romeo and Juliet
Source: Romeo and Juliet
Last update Feb. 19, 2025. History
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Do you have more details about the quote "There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game. (Act 1, scene 4)" by William Shakespeare?
William Shakespeare699
English playwright and poet 1564–1616Related quotes
Barry Switzer (1937) American football player and coach
Switzer on Oklahoma 79-10 defeat of North Texas in 2007. [Another BCS nightmare may be brewing, http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-dufresne10sep10,0,4827957,full.column, LATimes.com, 2007-09-10, 2007-09-10, Chris, Dufresne]
Gary Gygax (1938–2008) American writer and game designer
GameSpy interview by Allen Rausch, Pt. 1 (15 August 2004) http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538817p2.html
“It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.”
Grantland Rice (1880–1954) American sportswriter
“1. You can't win. 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't even get out of the game.”
Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet
Several publications attribute the quote to Ginsberg, probably the first one is The Coevolution Quarterly in 1975 [Google books https://books.google.it/books?id=MylJAQAAIAAJ&q=%22ginsberg%27s+theorem%22&dq=%22ginsberg%27s+theorem%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y], but there's is no evidence whatsoever that he ever pronounced it. A more detailed analysis can be found in this post https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/you_cant_win_you_cant_break_even/ <br class="br">Misattributed, Ginsberg's theorem
Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter
I Don't Know.
Song lyrics, Blizzard of Ozz (1980)
“If you don't like vampire games, don't play”
Vivian Vande Velde (1951) American writer
Source: Companions of the Night
Judith McNaught (1944) American writer
Variant: You can't outwit fate by standing on the sidelines placing little side bets about the outcome of life. Either you wade in, risk everything you have to play the game or you don't play at all. And if you can't play, you can't win.
Source: Paradise