“You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the fucking game.”

—  Harlan Ellison

Interview with Gary K. Wolfe (28 July 1987), quoted in Harlan Ellison : The Edge of Forever (2002), by Ellen Weil and Gary K. Wolfe
Borrowing a common scientific joke expressing the laws of thermodynamics.

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Harlan Ellison photo
Harlan Ellison 79
American writer 1934–2018

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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/
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