#lottery

The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made their living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being nonexistent persons. ↗

— George Orwell

#false-hope #lottery #manipulation #men

I guess I think of lotteries as a tax on the mathematically challenged. ↗

— Roger Jones

#mathematics #statistics #mathematics

And then it was like, wait, you can go to college and study theater? And act in plays? This is almost a racket, you know. And then when the opportunity came along to do it professionally, I thought I'd won the lottery. ↗

— Tom Hanks

#almost #along #came #college #go

Lottery tickets are a surtax on desperation. ↗

— Doug Coupland

#lottery #tickets

I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not. ↗

— Fran Lebowitz

#chances #done #i #identical #lottery

I think the lottery changed everything for us. Once we got Sidney, it helped us turn this franchise around overnight. ↗

— Mario Lemeiux

#changed #everything #franchise #got #helped

If I won the lottery I'd start a charity that helped little family hardware stores, cobblers and fruit shops open in city centres. ↗

— Alexei Sayle

#charity #city #family #fruit #hardware

Some of today's athletes do not have that kind of pride. They left school at 16, have never had a job in their life and are getting Lottery funding, earning money as an athlete. ↗

— Linford Christie

#athletes #earning #funding #getting #had

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

— Bianca Jagger

#being #death #death penalty #fatal #lottery

May this plain statement of facts prevail on the friends of the rising generation to interpose for their welfare; that the education of children may no longer be to parent and master a lottery, in which the prizes bear no proportion to the enormous number of blanks. ↗

— Joseph Lancaster

#blanks #children #education #enormous #facts