“Better to have been a 'has-been' than a 'never was.”

White House press conference http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060802-3.html# (2 August 2006).
2000s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 22, 2020. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Better to have been a 'has-been' than a 'never was." by Sam Donaldson?
Sam Donaldson photo
Sam Donaldson 4
American journalist 1934

Related quotes

Ruhollah Khomeini photo

“In the world there is no democracy better than our democracy. Such a thing has never before been seen.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Clive Foss, The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption, London: Quercus Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1905204965, p. 195
Attributed

William Congreve photo

“Say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved.”

Act II, scene i. Precedent for Alfred Tennyson's more famous: "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"
The Way of the World (1700)

Heywood Broun photo

“The artist has never been a dictator, since he understands better than anybody else the variations in human personality.”

Heywood Broun (1888–1939) American sportswriter

"Bring on the Artist", New York World Telegram, June 19, 1933

Milton Berle photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Robert Higgs photo

“The world probably would have been much better off had macroeconomics never been devised.”

Robert Higgs (1944) economist

" Is Macroeconomics Really Economics? http://blog.independent.org/2013/08/14/is-macroeconomics-really-economics/," The Beacon (Independent Institute, 14 August 2014).
Context: The world probably would have been much better off had macroeconomics never been devised. Although I have in mind Keynesian macroeconomics above all, I include other types of macro models as well. I even include, somewhat reluctantly, the whole quantity theory approach descended from David Hume to the Friedmanites, now known as monetarism. … In short, among its many other deficiencies, as spelled out by Mises and his followers, monetarism’s most fundamental flaw is identical to the most fundamental flaw of Keynesian, Post-Keynesian, New Classical, and other theories advanced by macroeconomists during the past seventy or eighty years: not only does the theory leave out critical variables, but it is too simple, being expressed in huge, all-encompassing aggregates that conceal the real economic action taking place within the economic order.

Clifford D. Simak photo

“They are worse than the disinherited. They are not the has-beens, they are the never-weres.”

Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter II (p. 14)

Charles Dickens photo
Charles Bukowski photo

“I have been treated better than I should have been---not by life in general nor by the machinery of things but by women.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Ronald Reagan photo

“Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), First Inaugural address (1981)
Context: If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price.