Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things https://archive.org/details/joshbillingsoni00billgoog (1868), Chapter XXIV: "Perkussion Caps", p. 89; republished in The Complete Works of Josh Billings http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36556 (1876), Chapter 141: "Ods and Ens", p. 248. Often paraphrased as "Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well."
“Society is like this card game here, cousin. We got dealt our hand before we were even born, and as we grow we have to play as best as we can.”
Source: Love Medicine
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Louise Erdrich 25
writer from the United States 1954Related quotes
“Life isn't fair, so you have to play the best game you can with the cards you're dealt.”
Source: Dark Companion
2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)
In a letter to Otto Juliusburger, September 29, 1942. Available in Einstein Archives 38-238
1940s
Variant: Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.
Context: People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live... [We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.
The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: No one can say what would result from unleashing the creative power stultified by work. Anything can happen. The tiresome debater's problem of freedom vs. necessity, with its theological overtones, resolves itself practically once the production of use-values is co-extensive with the consumption of delightful play activity. Life will become a game, or rather many games, but not—as it is now — a zero/sum game. An optimal sexual encounter is the paradigm of productive play. The participants potentiate each other's pleasures, nobody keeps score, and everybody wins. The more you give, the more you get. In the ludic life, the best of sex will diffuse into the better part of daily life. Generalized play leads to the libidinization of life. Sex, in turn, can become less urgent and desperate, more playful.
If we play our cards right, we can all get more out of life than we put into it; but only if we play for keeps.
No one should ever work.
Workers of the world... relax! </center
Source: 12 November 2020 interview with Defense One https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/11/outgoing-syria-envoy-admits-hiding-us-troop-numbers-praises-trumps-mideast-record/170012/ affirmed 13 November 2020 by Washington Examiner https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/pentagon-shake-up-to-help-cement-trumps-legacy-bringing-troops-home-and-taking-out-enemies-white-house-source-says