“Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will." by Jawaharlal Nehru?

Jawaharlal Nehru photo

Jawaharlal Nehru 110

Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister … 1889–1964

Related quotes

“Life isn't fair, so you have to play the best game you can with the cards you're dealt.”

Marta Acosta American novelist

Source: Dark Companion

“As in a game ov cards, so in the game ov life, we must play what is dealt tew us, and the glory consists, not so mutch in winning, as in playing a poor hand well.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

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.”

Louise Erdrich book Love Medicine

Source: Love Medicine

“Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I don't seem as depressed or morose as I should be, I'm sorry to disappoint you.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

“You got dealt some crappy cards. But you're the one who has to decide how to play them.”

Diane Chamberlain (1950) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes

“You don't have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you're holding.”

Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“It is no harder to explain than a game of cards. There are aces and kings and twos and threes in any deck of cards. A lucky player is dealt a high-scoring hand, but none of his cards is unique. Elsewhere in the room are others with the same kinds of cards in their hands. But even with just thirteen kinds of cards, every hand is different and some are spectacularly better than others. Sex is merely the dealer, generating unique hands from the same monotonous deck of genetic cards shared by the whole species.”

Matt Ridley (1958) economist

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

“They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“In the game of Dawn Card-Castles, fifty-two playing cards are stacked up into a castle in a draught-free space: the player can determine the dreams of the next night if he awakes before the castle collapses. Those players who wish to dream of Romance build their castle with the seven of hearts.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Drowning By Numbers

Related topics