Quotes about luck

A collection of quotes on the topic of luck, good, goodness, bad luck.

Quotes about luck

Jordan Peterson photo
Rick Riordan photo
Denzel Washington photo
Bob Dylan photo

“They’ll stone ya and then they’ll say, “good luck””

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Rainy Day Women #12 & 35

Avril Lavigne photo
Stephen King photo
Christopher Paolini photo
Joseph Merrick photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Daniel Radcliffe photo
David Lloyd George photo

“The centuries rarely produce a genius. It is our bad luck that the great genius of our era was granted to the Turkish nation. We could not beat Mustafa Kemal.”

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

Lloyd George is portrayed as saying this, as George Nathaniel Curzon was making a complaint against Raymond Poincaré in the Turkish TV series, Kurtuluş (1994), but no prior citation of such a statement has yet been found.
Misattributed

Jordan Peterson photo
Richard Bach photo

“Nothing happens by chance, my friend… No such thing as luck.”

Nothing by Chance: A Gypsy Pilot's Adventures in Modern America (1969)
Context: Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck. A meaning behind every little thing, and such a meaning behind this. Part for you, part for me, we may not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long.

Lucille Ball photo
Richelle Mead photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Erich Maria Remarque photo
Colette photo
Tom Waits photo
Julia Quinn photo

“It's only through sheer force and luck that she's yet to take over the world.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Romancing Mister Bridgerton: The Epilogue II

Oscar Wilde photo
Orison Swett Marden photo
Tamora Pierce photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Eduardo Galeano photo
Karl Marx photo
Emil M. Cioran photo

“Never unreal, Pain is a challenge to the universal fiction. What luck to be the only sensation granted a content, if not a meaning!”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Jean De La Fontaine photo

“In short, luck's always to blame.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

Bref, la fortune a toujours tort.
Book V (1688), fable 11 ( Luck and the Young Child http://books.google.com/books?id=onoa71F7TJ4C&q=%22bref+la+fortune+a+toujours+tort%22&pg=PA141#v=onepage)
Fables (1668–1679)

Anne Frank photo

“I trust to luck and do nothing but work, hoping that all will end well.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

3 February 1944
(1942 - 1944)

Seneca the Younger photo

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Has been attributed to Seneca since the 1990s (eg. Gregory K. Ericksen, (1999), Women entrepreneurs only: 12 women entrepreneurs tell the stories of their success, page ix.). Other books ascribe the saying to either Darrell K. Royal (former American football player, born 1924) or Elmer G. Letterman (Insurance salesman and writer, 1897-1982). However, it is unlikely either man originated the saying. A version that reads "He is lucky who realizes that luck is the point where preparation meets opportunity" can be found (unattributed) in the 1912 The Youth's Companion: Volume 86. The quote might be a distortion of the following passage by Seneca (who makes no mention of "luck" and is in fact quoting his friend Demetrius the Cynic):<blockquote>"The best wrestler," he would say, "is not he who has learned thoroughly all the tricks and twists of the art, which are seldom met with in actual wrestling, but he who has well and carefully trained himself in one or two of them, and watches keenly for an opportunity of practising them." — Seneca, On Benefits, vii. 1 http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Benefits4.html</blockquote>
Disputed

Miguel de Cervantes photo

“As ill-luck would have it.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book I, Ch. 2.

Orson Welles photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Yoshijirō Umezu photo
Mark Twain photo

“Persons who think there is no such thing as luck—good or bad—are entitled to their opinion, although I think they ought to be shot for it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 380

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)

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“We know today that nothing will restore the pre-machine condition of reasonably universal employment save an artificial allocation of working hours involving the use of more men than formerly to perform a given task.... The primary function of society, in spite of all the sophistries spurred of selfishness, is to give men better conditions than they could get without it; and the basic need today is jobs for all—not for "property" for a few of the luck and the acquisitive.... In view of the urgent need for change, there is something almost obscene in the chatter of the selfish about various psychological evils allegedly inherent in a New Deal promising decent economic security and humane leisure for all instead of for a few.... What is worth answering is the kindred outcry about "regimentation", "collective slavery", "violation of Anglo-Saxon freedom", "destruction of the right of the individual to make his own way" and so on; with liberal references to Stalin, Hitler, Mustapha Kemal, and other extremist dictators who have sought to control men's personal, intellectual, and artistic lives, and traditional habits and folkways, as well as their economic fortunes. Naturally the Anglo-Saxon balks at any programme calculated to limit his freedom as a man and a thinker or to disturb his inherited perspectives and daily customs—and need we say that no plan ever proposed in an Anglo-Saxon country would conceivably seek to limit such freedom or disturb such perspectives and customs? Here we have a deliberate smoke-screen—conscious and malicious confusion of terms. A decent planned society would indeed vary to some extent the existing regulations (for there are such) governing commercial and economic life. Yet who save a self-confessed Philistine or Marxist (the plutocrat can cite "Das Kapital" for his purpose!) would claim that the details and conditions of our merely economic activities form more than a trivial fraction of our whole lives and personalities? That which is essential and distinctive about a man is not the routine of material struggle he follows in his office; but the civilised way he lives, outside his office, the life whose maintenance is the object of his struggle. So long as his office work gains him a decently abundant and undisputedly free life, it matters little what that work is—what the ownership of the enterprise, and what and how distributed its profits, if profits there be. We have seen that no system proposes to deny skill and diligence an adequate remuneration. What more may skill and diligence legitimately ask? Nor is any lessening in the pride of achievement contemplated. Man will thrill just as much at the overcoming of vast obstacles, and the construction of great works, whether his deeds be performed for service or for profit. As it is, the greatest human achievements have never been for profit. Would Keats or Newton or Lucretius or Einstein or Santayana flourish less under a rationally planned society? Any intimation that a man's life is wholly his industrial life, and that a planned economic order means a suppression of his personality, is really both a piece of crass ignorance and an insult to human nature. Incidentally, it is curious that no one has yet pointed to the drastically regulated economic life of the early Mass. Bay colony as something "American!"”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Unpublished (and probably unsent) letter to the Providence Journal (13 April 1934), quoted in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy, edited by J. T. Joshi, pp. 115-116
Non-Fiction, Letters

Oscar Wilde photo
Livy photo

“Luck is of little moment to the great general, for it is under the control of his intellect and his judgment.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book XXII, sec. 25
History of Rome

Christopher Paolini photo
Barack Obama photo

“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

Françoise Sagan photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Robert Ardrey photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo

“It was in the nature of truly effective good-luck pieces that human beings never really owned them.”

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 12 “The Gentleman from Tralfamadore” (p. 301)

Napoleon I of France photo

“In war, luck is half in everything.”

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

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Cassandra Clare photo
Claude Monet photo
Paul Dirac photo
Pierre Joseph Proudhon photo
Matsushita Konosuke photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Woody Guthrie photo

“And these pleasures that you cannot ever forget are the yeast that always starts working in your mind again, and it gets in your thoughts again, and in your eyes again, and then, all at once, no matter what has happened to you, you are building a brand new world again, based and built on the mistakes, the wreck, the hard luck and trouble of the old one.”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

"Notes about Music" (29 March 1946) http://web.archive.org/19991001055247/www.geocities.com/Nashville/3448/music.html also quoted in A Race of Singers: Whitman's Working-Class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen (2000) by Bryan K. Garman, p. 244
Context: I have hoped as many hopes and dreamed so many dreams, seen them swept aside by weather, and blown away by men, washed away in my own mistakes, that — I use to wonder if it wouldn't be better just to haul off and quit hoping. Just protect my own inner brain, my own mind and heart, by drawing it up into a hard knot, and not having any more hopes or dreams at all. Pull in my feelings, and call back all of my sentiments — and not let any earthly event move me in either direction, either cause me to hate, to fear, to love, to care, to take sides, to argue the matter at all — and, yet … there are certain good times, and pleasures that I never can forget, no matter how much I want to, because the pleasures, and the displeasures, the good times and the bad, are really all there is to me.
And these pleasures that you cannot ever forget are the yeast that always starts working in your mind again, and it gets in your thoughts again, and in your eyes again, and then, all at once, no matter what has happened to you, you are building a brand new world again, based and built on the mistakes, the wreck, the hard luck and trouble of the old one.

Mark Twain photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Clive Cussler photo
Tom Waits photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Ernest Hemingway photo

“He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any man could have.”

Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Ch. 30

Donald J. Trump photo

“Everything in life is luck.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America
Sophie Kinsella photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo
David Foster Wallace photo

“I wish you way more than luck.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

Jon Ronson photo

“I wondered if sometimes the difference between a psychopath in Broadmoor and a psychopath on Wall Street was the luck of being born into a stable, rich family.”

Jon Ronson (1967) British journalist, documentary filmmaker, radio presenter and nonfiction author

Source: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

Meg Cabot photo
David Levithan photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Oprah Winfrey photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Woody Allen photo

“My luck is getting worse and worse. Last night, for instance, I was mugged by a Quaker.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
John Connolly photo
Groucho Marx photo
John Milton photo

“Luck is the residue of design.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet
Pat Conroy photo
John Flanagan photo

“It would be unthinkably bad luck to be betrayed by a rumbling stomach.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Burning Bridge

E.M. Forster photo