Quotes about lottery (65 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“It's so overwhelming. It's almost better than winning the lottery, because you worked for it. It's like something you want all your life, but you never thought it would happen, and all of a sudden it did.”

Ronnie Coleman (1964) American bodybuilder

On his reaction being named the top professional bodybuilder in the world — reported in Nancy Kruh (October 3, 1999) "Ronnie Coleman- Nobody messes with this Arlington cop, a.k.a. Mr. Olympia", The Dallas Morning News, p. 1E.

Life

“It’s something very few actors really get to experience. When you’re a character actor or voiceover guy, it’s job to job. You’re like a migrant worker, almost. The longevity [of “SpongeBob”] is an unbelievable statistical anomaly. It’s like, I didn’t buy that many lottery tickets and I won the lottery. It’s a totally random, harmonic convergence of people you met and your agent getting you an audition. Actors have so little control over their own lives; it’s nice to have something you’re not in control of that’s actually positive. There was a point when “SpongeBob” was cancelled after the first few seasons and the first movie. We went to a wrap party that I thought was the season wrap party but was the series wrap party. Nobody knew. So I already feel like I dodged a bullet.”

Tom Kenny (1962) American actor

Interview: Tom Kenny talks voicing SpongeBob Squarepants and 'Mr. Show' http://www.metro.us/entertainment/interview-tom-kenny-talks-voicing-spongebob-squarepants-and-mr-show/zsJoba---UspN3mmMXb2BE (February 2, 2015)

People , Guy , Feeling , Season

“Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

People , Dreams , Thinking

“There comes a point when the confused or abused person hears a voice saying in his head, Oh well, might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and, depending on the particular situation in which he finds him he either spends his last bit of money on a lottery ticket, or places on the gaming table the watch he inherited from his father and silver cigarette case that was a gift from his mother, or bets everything he has on red even though he knows that red has come up five times in a row”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 14 (Vintage 2003)

Money , Game , Time , Dependency

“War is a lottery in which nations ought to risk nothing but small amounts.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

War

“At the mention of the name and offence of this degraded being a great sound went up from the entire multitude – a universal cry of execration, not greatly dissimilar from that which may be frequently heard in the crowded Temple of Impartiality when the one whose duty it is to take up, at a venture, the folded papers, announces that the sublime Emperor, or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold the winning number in the Annual State Lottery.”

Ernest Bramah book The Wallet of Kai Lung

The Vision of Yin, the Son of Yat Huang
The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900)

Universe , Cry

“How does America find its way in this new, global economy? What will our place in history be? Like so much of the American story, once again, we face a choice. Once again, there are those who believe that there isn’t much we can do about this as a nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on their government—divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it—Social Darwinism—every man or woman for him or herself. It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford—tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job—life isn’t fair. It let’s us say to the child who was born into poverty—pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life’s lottery, that we’re the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won’t be the chump who Donald Trump says: “You’re fired!” But there is a problem. It won’t work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that it’s been government research and investment that made the railways possible and the internet possible. It’s been the creation of a massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public schools that allowed us all to prosper. Our economic dependence depended on individual initiative. It depended on a belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we’re all in it together and everybody’s got a shot at opportunity. That’s what’s produced our unrivaled political stability.”

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

Knox College Commencement Address (4 June 2005)
2005

Life , Health , Education , School

“That [Lottery] ticket, of course, didn’t win. And neither would any of the tickets I buy after it, but they would give me hope.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 18, Hope

Hope

“The more time I spent in jail, the more I realized that the law isn’t rational at all. It’s a lottery. What color is your skin? How much money do you have? Who’s your lawyer? Who’s the judge?”

Trevor Noah book Born a Crime

page 238
Born a Crime

Money , Time , Color , Law

“They say people in your life are seasons
And anything that happens is for a reason The devil is alive, I feel him breathin'
Claiming money is the key, so keep on dreamin'
And put them lottery tickets just to tease us”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Heard 'Em Say
Lyrics, Late Registration (2005)

Money , People , Season , Life

“Son, if you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet! They're about to announce the lottery numbers.”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

Life , Funny

“Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

The Dilbert Principle (1995)

Religion

“There was Tyson moving into the Poseidon cabin, giggling to himself every fifteen seconds and saying, "Percy is my brother?" like he'd just won the lottery.

Aw, Tyson," I'd say. "It's not that simple.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

“Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature – all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and you’ll find out how big a prize you’ve won.”

Twyla Tharp (1941) American choreographer

Source: The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

Nature , Reading

“I've won Satan's lottery.”

Christopher Moore book Bloodsucking Fiends

Source: Bloodsucking Fiends

“He is annoyed with their lack of interest, their blithe ignorance of the arbitrary genetic lottery that has granted them their privileged lives.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Home

“Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

People

“You've won the evolutionary lottery: You're a vampire. Let's go to Disneyland!”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

“Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Life , Flowers , Despair

“She was staying. A little longer.
V smiled to himself. So this was what winning the lottery felt like.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

Smile

“Of all those expensive and uncertain projects, however, which bring bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in in them, there is none perhaps more perfectly ruinous than the search after new silver and gold mines. It is perhaps the most disadvantageous lottery in the world, or the one in which the gain of those who draw the prizes bears the least proportion to the loss of those who draw the blanks: for though the prizes are few and the blanks are many, the common price of a ticket is the whole fortune of a very rich man.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter VII, Part First, p. 610.

People , World , Search , Loss

“In England, and in all Roman Catholic countries, the lottery of the church is in reality much more advantageous than is necessary.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter X, Part II, p. 155.

Reality , Country

“From the lottery to raise the funds for the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 to the lottery used to pay the interest on Dutch loans to the United States during the Revolutionary War, the development of the United States was funded by gambling.”

Aaron C. Brown (1956) American financial analyst

Source: The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006), Chapter 4, A Brief History of Risk Denial, p. 86

War

“Marriage was a lottery, and you drew your lot in late adolescence or early adulthood at a point of maximum idiocy and confusion.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Komarr (1998)

Marriage , Adulthood

“People are always annoyed by men of letters who retreat from the world; they expect them to continue to show interest in society even though they gain little benefit from it. They would like to force them be present when lots are being drawn in a lottery for which they have no tickets.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

On se fâche souvent contre les Gens de Lettres qui se retirent du monde. On veut qu'ils prennent intérêt à la Société dont ils ne tirent presque point d'avantage. On veut les forcer d'assister éternellement aux tirages d'une loterie où ils n'ont point de billet.
Maximes et Pensées (Van Bever, Paris :1923), #447
Reflections

Men , People , World

“People say that knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Suppose you knew the winning numbers for the lottery? All of them? Not guessed them, not dreamed them, but really knew them? What would you do? You would run to the store. You would mark those numbers on the play card. And you would win…Same for killing people.”

Lee Child book Running Blind

Source: Running Blind (2000), Ch. 1.

People , Dreams , Knowledge

“The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Chapter X, Part I http://books.google.com/books?id=QItKAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+world+neither+ever+saw+nor+ever+will+see+a+perfectly+fair+lottery%22&pg=PA76#v=onepage.
(1776), Book I

World

“Stripped to its essentials, every decision in life amounts to choosing which lottery ticket to buy.... Most organisms don't buy lottery tickets, but they all choose between gambles every time their bodies can move in more than one way. They should be willing to 'pay' for information---in tissue, energy, and time---if the cost is lower than the expected payoff in food, safety, mating opportunities, and other resources, all ultimately valuated in the expected number of surviving offspring. In multicellular animals the information is gathered and translated into profitable decisions by the nervous system.”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works (1997), p. 175

Life , Food , Way , Decision

“It has appeared that from the inevitable laws of our nature, some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter X, paragraph 29, lines 12-15

Life , Law , Nature , Suffering

“Better than big business is clean business.
To an honest man the most satisfactory reflection after he has amassed his dollars is not that they are many but that they are all clean.
What constitutes clean business? The answer is obvious enough, but the obvious needs restating every once in a while.
"A clean profit is one that has also made a profit for the other fellow."
This is fundamental moral axiom in business. Any gain that arises from another's loss is dirty.
Any business whose prosperity depends upon damage to any other business is a menace to the general welfare.
That is why gambling, direct or indirect, is criminal, why lotteries are prohibited by law, and why even gambling slot-machine devices are not tolerated in civilized countries. When a farmer sells a housekeeper a barrel of apples, when a milkman sells her a quart of milk, or the butcher a pound of steak, or the dry-goods man a yard of muslin, the housekeeper is benefited quite as much as those who get her money.
That is the type of honest, clean business, the kind that helps everybody and hurts nobody. Of course as business becomes more complicated it grows more difficult to tell so clearly whether both sides are equally prospered. No principle is automatic. It requires sense, judgment, and conscience to keep clean; but it can be done, nevertheless, if one is determined to maintain his self-respect. A man that makes a habit, every deal he goes into, of asking himself, "What is there in it for the other fellow?" and who refuses to enter into any transaction where his own gain will mean disaster to some one else, cannot go for wrong.
And no matter how many memorial churches he builds, nor how much he gives to charity, or how many monuments he erects in his native town, any man who has made his money by ruining other people is not entitled to be called decent. A factory where many workmen are given employment, paid living wages, and where health and life are conserved, is doing more real good in the world than ten eleemosynary institutions.
The only really charitable dollar is the clean dollar. And the nasty dollar, wrung from wronged workmen or gotten by unfair methods from competitors, is never nastier than when it pretends to serve the Lord by being given to the poor, to education, or to religion. In the long run all such dollars tend to corrupt and disrupt society.
Of all vile money, that which is the most unspeakably vile is the money spent for war; for war is conceived by the blundering ignorance and selfishness of rulers, is fanned to flame by the very lowest passions of humanity, and prostitutes the highest ideal of men; zeal for the common good; to the business of killing human beings and destroying the results of their collective work.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), Clean Business

Life , Men , Money , War

“The center will not hold if it has been spot-welded by an operator whose deepest concern is not with the weld but with his lottery ticket.”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

"At The End Of The Mechanical Age".
Sixty Stories (1981)

“Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools, he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery," he added petulantly.”

Shirley Jackson book The Lottery

The Lottery (1948)

Fools , Way

“You know, if you're an American and you're born at this time in history especially, you're lucky. We all are. We won the world history Powerball lottery, but a little modesty about it might keep the heat off of us. I can't stand the people who say things like, "We built this country!" You built nothing. I think the railroads were pretty much up by 1980.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Victory Begins at Home (20 January 2004)

People , World , History , Thinking

“…the question of civil equality. We have not yet attained to it in this country—far from it. You will not have established it in this land until the child of the poorest parent shall have the same opportunity for receiving the best education as the child of the richest. … It will never established so long as you have 500 men nominated by the lottery of birth to exercise the right of thwarting the wishes of the majority of 40 millions of their countrymen in the determination of the best way of governing the country.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Swansea (1 October 1908), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 50.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Men , Education , Way , Exercises

“The American Dream can come in many different ways for many different people. It doesn't have to come in the way they explain it to you. Now, the American Dream can come if a guy hits the lottery. Who in the world thought he would hit a lottery? That's the American Dream for him. But I look at it from day one, moving up the ladder, and moving up the ladder. Now you get to the top of the ladder and you have to look back. How did you get to that ladder? To me, that's the American Dream.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

Academy of Achievement Interview (1996)

People , World , Dreams , Way

“It would be tedious to dwell upon every striking mark of national decline: some, however, will press themselves forward to particular notice; and amongst them are: that Italian-like effeminacy, which has, at last, descended to the yeomanry of the country, who are now found turning up their silly eyes in ecstacy at a music-meeting, while they should be cheering the hounds, or measuring their strength at the ring; the discouragement of all the athletic sports and modes of strife amongst the common people, and the consequent and fearful increase of those cuttings and stabbings, those assassin-like ways of taking vengeance, formerly heard of in England only as the vices of the most base and cowardly foreigners, but now become so frequent amongst ourselves as to render necessary a law to punish such practices with death; the prevalence and encouragement of a hypocritical religion, a canting morality, and an affected humanity; the daily increasing poverty of the national church, and the daily increasing disposition still to fleece the more than half-shorne clergy, who are compelled to be, in various ways, the mere dependants of the upstarts of trade; the almost entire extinction of the ancient country gentry, whose estates are swallowed up by loan-jobbers, contractors, and nabobs, who, for the far greater part not Englishmen themselves, exercise in England that sort of insolent sway, which, by the means of taxes raised from English labour, they have been enabled to exercise over the slaves of India or elsewhere; the bestowing of honours upon the mere possessors of wealth, without any regard to birth, character, or talents, or to the manner in which that wealth has been acquired; the familiar intercourse of but too many of the ancient nobility with persons of low birth and servile occupations, with exchange and insurance-brokers, loan and lottery contractors, agents and usurers, in short, with all the Jew-like race of money-changers.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (27 October 1804).

Death , Money , People , Fear

“Winning the lottery is like slipping your hand into the bra of the most beautiful woman in the world, then getting it stuck and having to saw it off at the wrist.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Source: Fullyramblomatic Novels, Articulate Jim: A Search For Something, Chapter Eight

World , Beauty

“Life…is an enormous lottery: the prizes are few, the failures innumerable. Out of the sighs of one generation are kneaded the hopes of the next. That's life.”

Machado de Assis (1839–1908) Brazilian writer

A vida...é uma enorme loteria; os prêmios são poucos, os malogrados inúmeros, e com os suspiros de uma geração é que se amassam as esperanças de outra. Isto é a vida.
"Teoria do medalhão" (1881), first collected in Papéis avulses (1882); Jack Schmitt and Lorie Ishimatsu (trans.) The Devil's Church, and Other Stories (London: Grafton, 1987) p. 113.

Life , Hope , Failure

“Lotteries are a tax on ignorance.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,581090,00.html
Attributed

“… you are an Englishman, and have subsequently drawn the greatest prize in the lottery of life.”

Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) British businessman, mining magnate and politician in South Africa

said by Rhodes to Lord Grey. [Lewis, Michell, The Life and Times of the Right Honourable Cecil John Rhodes 1853-1902, Volume 2, 178, New York and London, Mitchell Kennerly, 1910, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t5m90j14v?urlappend=%3Bseq=194]
Often quoted in variant forms such as "To be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life".

Life

“If you were part of a group there was always the chance that the predator would take the next guy, not you. It was a cold-blooded lottery that paid off often enough to be worthwhile adapting for.
But there were disadvantages to group living: mainly, if there were large numbers of you, there was increased competition for food. As that competition resolved itself, the inevitable result was social complexity—and the size of the adapids’ brains had increased so that they were capable of handling that complexity. Then, of course, they were forced to become even more efficient at searching for food to fuel those big brains.
It was the way of the future. As primate societies became ever more complex, a kind of cognitive arms race would continue, increasing smartness fueled by increasing social complications.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 5 “The Time of Long Shadows” section I (p. 113)

Food , Way , Guy , Search

“Okay, look at it this way: if the evening news has a very high probability of being accurate, then it's highly improbable that they would inaccurately report the numbers chosen in the lottery. That counterbalances any improbability in the choosing of those numbers, so you're quite rational to believe in this highly improbable event.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

[2000, The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity, Lee, Strobel, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 9780310565703, http://books.google.com/books?id=5kgb7v1qlF4C]

Way

“You were asking my opinion on your work of art, my dear Jean [= Duchamp's brother-in-law Jean Crotti, who asked Duchamp his comment on an art-work he made]... Artists throughout the ages are like Monte Carlo gamblers and the blind lottery pulls some of them through and ruin others... I do not believe in painting per se – A painting is made not by the artist but by those who look at it and grant it their favors. In other words, no painters knows himself or what he is doing – There is no outward sign explaining why a Fra Angelico and a Leonardo [da Vinci] are equally 'recognized.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

It all takes place at the level of our old friend luck.
Quote from Duchamp's letter to Jean Crotti (Duchamp's brother-in-law) and his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York 17 Augustus 1952; as cited in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 167
1951 - 1968

Happiness , Age , Law , Art

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)

Way , Science

“Another lottery mystery that raised many eyebrows occurred in Germany on June 21, 1995. The freak event happened in a lottery called Lotto 6/49, which means that the winning six numbers are drawn from 1 to 49. On the day in question the winning numbers were 15-25-27-30-42-48. The very same sequence had been drawn previously, on December 20, 1986. It was the first time in 3,016 drawings that a winning sequence had been repeated. What were the chances of that? Not as bad as you'd think. When you do the math, the chance of a repeat at some point over the years comes out to around 28 percent.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 4, Tracking The Pathways To Success, p. 65

Question , Thinking , Chance , Time

“I'd rather be working for a paycheck, than waiting to win the lottery.
Besides, maybe this time it's different, I mean,
I really think you like me.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

First Day of my Life
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Thinking , Time , Waiting

“I have a form of ESP that allows me to consistently pick losing lottery numbers, and generally make poor life choices.”

Joey Comeau book Overqualified

Letter to Nova Magnetics, pg 59.
Overqualified

Life

“The first-known public lottery was sponsored by Augustus Caesar to raise funds for repairing the city of Rome; the first public lottery awarding money prizes, the Lotto de Firenze, was established in Florence in 1530.”

Richard Arnold Epstein (1927) American physicist

Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter Four, Coins, Wheels, And Oddments, p. 119

Money

“Writing is all a lottery -- I have been a loser by the works of the greatest men of the age.”

Tobias Smollett book The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771).

Men , Age

“Drug abuse is a lottery. I have never taken drugs and it is only by the grace of God that I did not turn to them. Their prohibition gives them a taboo quality and makes them attractive. I am just so disappointed and deeply unimpressed by this government. They are driven by pragmatism rather than taking a stand on the issue, having the confidence to do what needs to be done. They must be legalised. I believe that passionately.”

Ivor Tiefenbrun (1946) Scottish businessman

Cited from The Scotsman http://www.scotsman.com/news/scotland/top-stories/legalise-all-drugs-says-millionaire-tiefenbrun-1-1371780, 31 March 2002.
2002

God , Disappointment , Confidence , Passion

“Certainly there are songs out there that are massively popular, and you can use some reverse analysis to see how they're put together, but it's difficult to reliably engineer a "hit". Add to this the constantly swirling winds of cultural taste, and you can see that the music industry is more akin to playing the lottery than anything else. Having some talent or taste can give you a bit of an edge, but it's still a huge roulette wheel..”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

Music

“"Some places have already quit lotteries." Mrs. Adams said.
"Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly. "Pack of young fools."”

Shirley Jackson book The Lottery

The Lottery (1948)

Fools

“[about how people in the 90's used "awesome" wrongly]
Webster's dictionary defines awesome as "anything that leaves you in awe and wonder." Like winning the lottery—twice. That's awesome. Getting a call from the IRS saying you've been audited and they owe you $50,000—that would be awesome. Ladies, you wake up tomorrow morning and the newspaper reads, "Scientists have discovered a way for men to experience childbirth." That would be awesome. Getting invited to the Playboy Mansion—on trampoline night, that would be awesome. And I started thinking, ladies and gentlemen, what would be awesome for Bill Engvall? What would leave me in awe and wonder? And it would have to be, if I left this stage tonight and I went back to my hotel room, and Shania Twain met me at my door, wearing nothing but a fur coat, holding a note from my wife that said, "Have a good time!"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

THAT would be AWESOME! It ain't gonna happen—but that would be awesome.
Now That's Awesome (2000)

Men , People , Way , Thinking

“All marriage is such a lottery -- the happiness is always an exchange -- though it may be a very happy one -- still the poor woman is bodily and morally the husband's slave. That always sticks in my throat. When I think of a merry, happy, and free young girl -- and look at the ailing aching state a young wife is generally doomed to -- which you can't deny is the penalty of marriage.”

Victoria of the United Kingdom (1819–1901) British monarch who reigned 1837–1901

Source: Letter (16 May 1860), published in Dearest Child: Letters Between Queen Victoria and the Princess Royal Previously Unpublished edited by Roger Fulfold (1964), p. 254. Also quoted in the article "Queen Victoria's Not So Victorian Writings" http://www.victoriana.com/doors/queenvictoria.htm by Heather Palmer (1997).

Marriage , Penalty , Girl , Thinking

“America should be choosing immigrants the way the New England Patriots choose players. They don’t have a lottery system for their draft picks. No one guilts them into taking a blind kid with one leg over an All American–much less the blind kid’s cousin, to keep him company.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2015, Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (2015)

Way

“When you buy a lottery ticket, you don't know how tickets have been sold. But sold they have been. And there is an underlying distribution for the game.”

Robert Haugen (1942–2013) American economist

Source: The Inefficient Stock Market - What Pays Off And Why (1999), Chapter 3, Estimating Portfolio Risk and Expected Return with Ad Hoc Factor Models, p. 29

Game

“Playing the lottery is gambling, and I'm not a gambler. I assessed my life, knew I wanted to become a successful writer, and believed that I had a winner for a story. All I imagined was getting a huge publishing deal and attending the premier of my movie. In fact, every time my wife and I went to the movies, I'd tell her that, one day, we'll be in a theater in Hollywood watching MEG. Does that mean that I wasn't scared? Of course not. The process is similar to crawling out on a limb of a very high tree. You know you're out there and that it's a huge drop if you fall. Out along the weakest branches grows the fruit. If you really intend on making it all the way out to the fruit, you can't hold onto the trunk, you have to let go. At the same time, you have to be smart enough not to look down (negatives), which, of course, everyone you know is screaming at you to do. If you don't want to fall, then keep looking at the fruit. This all may sound hooky, but it works and it's how I've chosen to live my life, ever since I was 13 years old.”

Steve Alten (1959) American writer

Interview with Steve Alten http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/article/d14867f2 (March 11th, 2004)

Life , Way , Imagination , Tree

“Aside from earning their livings, what did your people do, mostly? Games. Sports. Casinos. Loud machines that went fast. Shopping. Lawsuits blaming other for whatever went wrong. What did they believe in? Conspiracy theories. Racial superiority. Heroes with superpowers. Faith healers. God-loves-you religions. State-supported lotteries. All that enormous energy expended to conquer nothing at all, stadia full of people watching no conquering going on. For every scientist or person in government who really tried to conquer, there were a thousand people buying lottery tickets, drinking beer, watching football, and growing old.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

The Visitor in Ch. 44 : the visitor, pp. 460-461
The Visitor (2002)

Sport , God , Faith , Drink

“My administration has identified three major priorities for creating a safe, modern, and lawful immigration system: fully securing the border, ending chain migration, and canceling the visa lottery. Chain migration is a disaster, and very unfair to our country. The visa lottery is something that should have never been allowed in the first place. People enter a lottery to come into our country. What kind of a system is that? It is time for Congress to act and to protect Americans.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

10 February 2018 https://abcnews.go.com/US/times-trump-slammed-chain-migration-apparently-helped-wifes/story?id=57132429
2010s, 2018, February

Time , People , Law , Country

“The death penalty is being applied in the United States as a fatal lottery.”

Bianca Jagger (1945) Nicaraguan-born social and human rights advocate and a former actress

Penalty , Death

“Some places have already quit lotteries.”

Shirley Jackson book The Lottery

Mrs. Adams said.
"Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly. "Pack of young fools."
The Lottery (1948)

“Let’s keep in mind not just those beings who won the metaphysical lottery by being born as Homo sapiens, but also those who lie furthest outside our moral circle. They need us the most.”

Jacy Reese (1992) American social scientist

[Our treatment of animals is stalling human progress, February 19, 2018, Quartz, https://qz.com/1209936/our-treatment-of-animals-is-stalling-human-progress/]

Lie

“The lottery is similar to inheritance. The winner gets more than he deserves, plunging the economy into chaos.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author