“Last hopeless chances have got to work. Nothing makes sense otherwise. You might as well not be alive.”

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

In an obituary, Canada Law Journal, January 1, 1881, p. 11. According to the journal: "[Cockburn] subsequently acquired a large practice in London in railway and election cases. Although he did his best for his clients, he was careful that they should do their duty by him, and the story is told that on one occasion, when an election committee met, Mr. Cockburn, the counsel for one of the parties, was absent because his fee had not accompanied the brief and the only message left was that he had gone to the Derby, with the remark that 'A man might as well play for nothing as work for nothing'".
Attributed

Source: The Other Queen

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Ch. 6
Context: It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dugout I might have been smashed to atoms, and in the open survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed. No soldier survives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

Source: For a Few Demons More

in 2014, Going Down Swinging

Source: Absolute Power

To Leon Goldensohn, February 4, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 322.