Quotes about card

A collection of quotes on the topic of card, play, use, doing.

Quotes about card

Eminem photo
Charles Manson photo
Kanye West photo
Mia Khalifa photo
Jack London photo

“Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”

Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist

As quoted in Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior (1991) by Dan Millman, p. 78
Life’s not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.
As quoted in "They Came to Write in Hawai‘i" by Joseph Theroux, in Spirit of Aloha (March/April 2007)

Les Brown photo
Bon Scott photo
Marilyn Manson photo
Jawaharlal Nehru photo
Tennessee Williams photo
Louise Erdrich photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Max Ernst photo
Richard Henry Dana Jr. photo
Stefan Zweig photo
Aleksandr Pushkin photo
Edward Snowden photo

“Think of a hypothesis as a card. A theory is a house made of hypotheses.”

Marilyn vos Savant (1946) US American magazine columnist, author and lecturer

Attributed in Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (1991)

Margaret Fuller photo

“Men disappoint me so, I disappoint myself so, yet courage, patience, shuffle the cards …”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Letter to Reverend William Henry Channing http://web.csustan.edu:80/english/reuben/pal/chap4/channing_henry.html (21 February 1841) quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1898) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 112.

John McAfee photo

“If you have the winning cards, why cheat?”

John McAfee (1945) American computer programmer and businessman

Good Morning America (June 1991) when asked if he manipulated the results of his product’s virus detection percentage.

Karl Dönitz photo

“The enemy holds every trump card, covering all areas with long-range air patrols and using location methods against which we still have no warning…The enemy knows all our secrets and we know none of his.”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

1943, quoted in "World War II Almanac, 1931-1945: A Political and Military Record" - Page 293 by Robert Goralski - History - 1981.

John Scalzi photo
George Carlin photo

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, that we've enjoyed some good times this evening, and enjoyed some laughter together, I feel it is my obligation to remind you of some of the negative, depressing, dangerous, life-threatening things that life is really all about; things you have not been thinking about tonight, but which will be waiting for you as soon as you leave the theater or as soon as you turn off your television sets. Anal rape, quicksand, body lice, evil spirits, gridlock, acid rain, continental drift, labor violence, flash floods, rabies, torture, bad luck, calcium deficiency, falling rocks, cattle stampedes, bank failure, evil neighbors, killer bees, organ rejection, lynching, toxic waste, unstable dynamite, religious fanatics, prickly heat, price fixing, moral decay, hotel fires, loss of face, stink bombs, bubonic plague, neo-Nazis, friction, cereal weevils, failure of will, chain reaction, soil erosion, mail fraud, dry rot, voodoo curse, broken glass, snake bite, parasites, white slavery, public ridicule, faithless friends, random violence, breach of contract, family scandals, charlatans, transverse myelitis, structural defects, race riots, sunspots, rogue elephants, wax buildup, killer frost, jealous coworkers, root canals, metal fatigue, corporal punishment, sneak attacks, peer pressure, vigilantes, birth defects, false advertising, ungrateful children, financial ruin, mildew, loss of privileges, bad drugs, ill-fitting shoes, widespread chaos, Lou Gehrig's disease, stray bullets, runaway trains, chemical spills, locusts, airline food, shipwrecks, prowlers, bathtub accidents, faulty merchandise, terrorism, discrimination, wrongful cremation, carbon deposits, beef tapeworm, taxation without representation, escaped maniacs, sunburn, abandonment, threatening letters, entropy, nine-mile fever, poor workmanship, absentee landlords, solitary confinement, depletion of the ozone layer, unworthiness, intestinal bleeding, defrocked priests, loss of equilibrium, disgruntled employees, global warming, card sharks, poisoned meat, nuclear accidents, broken promises, contamination of the water supply, obscene phone calls, nuclear winter, wayward girls, mutual assured destruction, rampaging moose, the greenhouse effect, cluster headaches, social isolation, Dutch elm disease, the contraction of the universe, paper cuts, eternal damnation, the wrath of God, and PARANOIAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Playing With Your Head (1986)

Fergie photo

“We'll play jacks and Uno cards
I'll be your best friend
And you'll be mine”

Fergie (1975) singer from the United States

"Big Girls Don't Cry" (2006), from The Dutchess.

Jim Butcher photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Claude Monet photo
José Saramago photo
Babur photo
Aleksandr Pushkin photo
Tim Powers photo
Leonard Cohen photo

“O you've seen that man before
his golden arm dispatching cards
but now it's rusted from the elbow to the finger”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"The Stranger Song"
Alludes to the dealer in Nelson Algren's 1949 novel The Man with the Golden Arm.
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Context: O you've seen that man before
his golden arm dispatching cards
but now it's rusted from the elbow to the finger
And he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter

Barack Obama photo

“When families have less to spend, that means businesses have fewer customers, and households rack up greater mortgage and credit card debt; meanwhile, concentrated wealth at the top is less likely to result in the kind of broadly based consumer spending that drives our economy, and together with lax regulation, may contribute to risky speculative bubbles.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Remarks on Economic Mobility (December 2013)
Context: So let me repeat: The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe. And it is not simply a moral claim that I’m making here. There are practical consequences to rising inequality and reduced mobility. For one thing, these trends are bad for our economy. One study finds that growth is more fragile and recessions are more frequent in countries with greater inequality. And that makes sense. When families have less to spend, that means businesses have fewer customers, and households rack up greater mortgage and credit card debt; meanwhile, concentrated wealth at the top is less likely to result in the kind of broadly based consumer spending that drives our economy, and together with lax regulation, may contribute to risky speculative bubbles.

Haruki Murakami photo
Jennifer Weiner photo
Anne Rice photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Rick Riordan photo
Rick Riordan photo
David Levithan photo

“If you play your cards right, the next generation will have so much more than you did.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

Holly Black photo

“Every plan is a house of cards.”

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

David Levithan photo
Rick Riordan photo
Jeannette Walls photo
Firoozeh Dumas photo

“Ever since we had arrived in the United States, my classmates kept asking me about magic carpets.
- They don't exist-I always said. I was wrong. Magic carpets do exist. But they are called library cards.”

Firoozeh Dumas (1965) Iranian-American memoirist

Source: Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad

Richelle Mead photo
Kay Redfield Jamison photo

“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

Cinda Williams Chima photo
Henry Rollins photo
Jeanette Winterson photo
Sophie Kinsella photo
Rick Riordan photo
Richelle Mead photo
James Patterson photo
Steven Wright photo
Joyce Carol Oates photo
Nelson Algren photo

“Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”

In jail, Cross-Country Kline to Dove Linkhorn.
Source: A Walk on the Wild Side (1956)
Context: But blow wise to this, buddy, blow wise to this: Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. Never let nobody talk you into shaking another man's jolt. And never you cop another man's plea. I've tried 'em all and I know. They don't work. / Life is hard by the yard, son. But you don't have to do it by the yard. By the inch it's a cinch. And money can't buy everything. For example: poverty.

Maya Angelou photo
Jim Butcher photo
Markus Zusak photo

“One wild card was yet to be played.”

Source: The Book Thief

“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

Warren Buffett photo
Steven Wright photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Jerry Spinelli photo

“Crooked cards and straight whiskey,
Slow horses and fast women.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector
Cheryl Strayed photo
Zadie Smith photo

“Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”

Source: White Teeth (2000)
Context: You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, 'Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me.' Now how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll—then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.

Markus Zusak photo
Lisa Scottoline photo
Cheryl Strayed photo
Stephen R. Covey photo

“We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Source: The 3rd Alternative: Solving Life's Most Difficult Problems

A. R. Rahman photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo

“Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards! This is your life and mine! I've spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I'm in charge, nobody is going to knock it down.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Rally in 1980, related to the then-ongoing Singapore Airlines pilot strikes due to salary issue http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32012346
1980s

Jorge Luis Borges photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots!”

Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Not yet placed by volume, chapter or section

Thomas Kuhn photo

“In science, as in the playing card experiment, novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.”

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries, p. 64 (2012 ed.)

Anthony Trollope photo

“A thorough understanding of game theory, should dim these greedy hopes. Knowledge of game theory does not make one a better card player, businessman or military strategist.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Source: 1960s, "The Use and Misuse of Game Theory," 1962, p. 108

Leonid Brezhnev photo

“Of late, attempts have been made in the USA — at a high level and in a rather cynical form — to play the "Chinese card" against the USSR. This is a shortsighted and dangerous policy.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in Peace, Détente, and Soviet-American Relations : A Collection of Public Statements (1979), p. 222

Francisco Varela photo
Menina Fortunato photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Dancing, the theatre, society, card-playing, games of chance, horses, women, drinking, traveling, and so on … are not enough to ward off boredom where intellectual pleasures are rendered impossible by lack of intellectual needs. Thus a peculiar characteristic of the Philistine is a dull, dry seriousness akin to that of animals.”

Ball, Theater, Gesellschaft, Kartenspiel, Hasardspiel, Pferde, Weiber, Trinken, Reisen, … reicht dies Alles gegen die Langeweile nicht aus, wo Mangel an geistigen Bedürfnissen die geistigen Genüsse unmöglich macht. Daher auch ist dem Philister ein dumpfer, trockener Ernst, der sich dem thierischen nähert, eigen und charakteristisch.
E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 344
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Isa Genzken photo
Lee Child photo