“Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.”
Speech at Aylesbury, Royal and Central Bucks Agricultural Association (21 September 1865), cited in Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Collected from his Writings and Speeches (1881), p. 356
1860s
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Benjamin Disraeli 306
British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Pri… 1804–1881Related quotes
“4934. There is nothing more precious than Time, and nothing more prodigally wasted.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“The search for truth is more precious than its possession.”
Misattributed
“The search for truth is more precious than its possession.”
This quote does appear in Einstein's 1940 essay "The Fundaments of Physics" which can be found in his book Out of My Later Years (1950), but Einstein does not claim credit for it, instead calling it "Lessing's fine saying".
Misattributed
“Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.”
§ 70
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (480 AD)
“In war-time,’ I said, ‘truth is so precious she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
Discussion of Operation Overlord with Stalin at the Teheran Conference (November 30, 1943); in The Second World War, Volume V : Closing the Ring (1952), Chapter 21 (Teheran: The Crux), p. 338.
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Variant: In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
“Nothing is so dear and precious as time.”
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 5.
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903)
Context: Time is money — says the vulgarest saw known to any age or people. Turn it round about, and you get a precious truth —money is time. I think of it on these dark, mist-blinded mornings, as I come down to find a glorious fire crackling and leaping in my study. Suppose I were so poor that I could not afford that heartsome blaze, how different the whole day would be! Have I not lost many and many a day of my life for lack of the material comfort which was necessary to put my mind in tune? Money is time. With money I buy for cheerful use the hours which otherwise would not in any sense be mine; nay, which would make me their miserable bondsman. Money is time, and, heaven be thanked, there needs so little of it for this sort of purchase. He who has overmuch is wont to be as badly off in regard to the true use of money, as he who has not enough. What are we doing all our lives but purchasing, or trying to purchase, time? And most of us, having grasped it with one hand, throw it away with the other.
Winter, § 24, p. 287; in Conducting Effective Faculty Meetings (2008) by Sue Ellen Brandenburg, p. 12 this appears paraphrased in the form: "Time is money says the proverb, but turn it around and you get a precious truth. Money is time."
Source: Pearls of Lutra
“We're all snatching precious moments from the peaceful jaws of time.”