Quotes about cost
page 10

William F. Buckley Jr. photo

“Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

As quoted in The Cynic's Lexicon : A Dictionary of Amoral Advice (1984) by Jonathon Green, p. 34.

Heather Brooke photo

“It is costing much money here, a thing I regret. But you will get your money's worth. My legs curse you. But my heart says 'Thank you.”

Maynard Owen Williams (1888–1963) American journalist

from a letter to John Oliver la Gorce, the Geographic's assistant editor (1923)

Stanley Holloway photo
Mark Satin photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
Tom DeLay photo
John Ramsay McCulloch photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“Plowboy: In your opinion, what are mankind's prospects for the near future?
Asimov: To tell the truth, I don't think the odds are very good that we can solve our immediate problems. I think the chances that civilization will survive more than another 30 years—that it will still be flourishing in 2010—are less than 50 percent.
Plowboy: What sort of disaster do you foresee?
Asimov: I imagine that as population continues to increase—and as the available resources decrease—there will be less energy and food, so we'll all enter a stage of scrounging. The average person's only concerns will be where he or she can get the next meal, the next cigarette, the next means of transportation. In such a universal scramble, the Earth will be just plain desolated, because everyone will be striving merely to survive regardless of the cost to the environment. Put it this way: If I have to choose between saving myself and saving a tree, I'm going to choose me.
Terrorism will also become a way of life in a world marked by severe shortages. Finally, some government will be bound to decide that the only way to get what its people need is to destroy another nation and take its goods … by pushing the nuclear button.
And this absolute chaos is going to develop—even if nobody wants nuclear war and even if everybody sincerely wants peace and social justice—if the number of mouths to feed continues to grow. Nothing will be able to stand up against the pressure of the whole of humankind simply trying to stay alive!”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Yelena Bonner photo

“It cost Andrei Dmitrievich 10 months of complete isolation and two hunger strikes over two months, which had a terrible effect on his health. The effects are still felt to this day.”

Yelena Bonner (1923–2011) human rights activist in the former Soviet Union; wife of dissident Andrei Sakharov

Of the effort to get her to the USA for an operation. Washington Post November 16, 1989 http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-1223343.html

Seymour Papert photo
August-Wilhelm Scheer photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Elon Musk photo
Jean-François Lyotard photo
Richard Cobden photo
James Russell Lowell photo
Stephen Fry photo

“Knowing how to die costs a lifetime.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Voces (1943)

Mr. T photo
Henry Miller photo

“The frantic desire to Live, to live at any cost, is not a result of the life rhythm in us, but of the death rhythm.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

Michał Kalecki photo

“Generally speaking, changes in the prices of finished goods are "cost determined" while changes in the prices of raw materials inclusive of primary foodstuffs are "demand determined."”

Michał Kalecki (1899–1970) Polish economist

Source: Theory of Economic Dynamics (1965), Chapter 1, Cost and Prices, p. 11

Helmut Kohl photo

“Revenue and cost have to be in the right relation to each other.”

Helmut Kohl (1930–2017) former chancellor of West Germany (1982-1990) and then the united Germany (1990-1998)

Erträge und Kosten müssen im richtigen Verhältnis zueinander stehen.
In a speech in Düsseldorf in 1986

“Various perspectives exist in an enterprise, such as efficiency, quality, and cost. Any system for enterprise engineering must be capable of representing and managing these different perspectives in a well-defined way.”

Mark S. Fox (1952) Canadian computer scientist and Professor of Industrial Engineering

Michael Grüninger and Mark S. Fox (1995) " The role of competency questions in enterprise engineering http://www.eil.utoronto.ca/enterprise-modelling/papers/benchIFIP94.pdf." Benchmarking—Theory and Practice. Springer US, 1995. 22-31.

Herbert A. Simon photo

“Now the salient characteristic of the decision tools employed in management science is that they have to be capable of actually making or recommending decisions, taking as their inputs the kinds of empirical data that are available in the real world, and performing only such computations as can reasonably be performed by existing desk calculators or, a little later electronic computers. For these domains, idealized models of optimizing entrepreneurs, equipped with complete certainty about the world - or, a worst, having full probability distributions for uncertain events - are of little use. Models have to be fashioned with an eye to practical computability, no matter how severe the approximations and simplifications that are thereby imposed on them…
The first is to retain optimization, but to simplify sufficiently so that the optimum (in the simplified world!) is computable. The second is to construct satisficing models that provide good enough decisions with reasonable costs of computation. By giving up optimization, a richer set of properties of the real world can be retained in the models… Neither approach, in general, dominates the other, and both have continued to co-exist in the world of management science.”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Source: 1960s-1970s, "Rational decision making in business organizations", Nobel Memorial Lecture 1978, p. 498; As cited in: Arjang A. Assad, ‎Saul I. Gass (2011) Profiles in Operations Research: Pioneers and Innovators. p. 260-1.

Bruce Palmer Jr. photo
James Meade photo
Mr. T photo

“You gonna lose a deal over $35? Thats chump change! My lunch cost $35!”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

Quotes from acting

Norman Thomas photo
Doug Stanhope photo

“Whether the reasoning for these laws is insurance costs, more opportunities for random taxation through traffic stops, curbing lost production or any other justification that could be offered, the bottom line is that it isn't governments place. You own your body. No legislation should infringe on that.”

Doug Stanhope (1967) American stand-up comedian, actor, and author

On legislation against drug use, driving without a seatbelt, and motorcycling without a helmet. Doug Stanhope interview http://markprindle.com/stanhope-i.htm, MarkPrindle.com, 2007
Miscellaneous

John McCain photo
George H. W. Bush photo
Peter Greenaway photo

“French Cuisine. By Guillaume Rosart. Publisher Henri Simonel. In 1950 it cost me twenty francs -- about 2 pounds -- about 15 pounds now.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Derryn Hinch photo

“Recently, I was evicted of contempt of court over my online editorial about (bleep). I was sentenced to pay a $100,000 fine, or go to jail for 50 days. I believe this was the highest personal fine ever issued in Australia. Other websites, newspapers, and radio stations were not charged for similar or even more controversial material. Yet the judge attacked me for portraying myself as a scapegoat — a whipping boy — and he punished me accordingly. Now it is true, I have prior convictions. In 1987, I was fined $15,000 and jailed for exposing a paedophile priest Michael Glennon. Glennon had already been to jail for raping a 10-year-old girl, but was still running a camp for kids in country Victoria. And he was still a Catholic priest. He eventually went to jail, and he died behind bars several weeks ago. And to be honest, I feel good about that — he was an evil, evil man. I also spent five months under house arrest in 2011 for breaching court suppression orders, revealing the names of two serial sex offenders at a rally outside Victoria's Parliament House. About 4000 other people also shouted their names. That one cost me my radio job at 3AW. And I was fined and did 250 hours of community service for naming a judge who ruled that a man could not be charged for raping his wife under a 300-year-old British law. In Victoria, that law has since been changed. Now, here we go again. I have made a decision not taken lightly. On principle, I will not pay the $100,000 fine, which was due today. Instead, I'll go to jail. I'll go to jail for 50 days; to draw attention to all the suspended sentences for crimes of violence and child pornography; for the obscenely short sentences given to king hit killers; to draw attention to my campaign for a national register of convicted sex offenders. Already, 30,000 of you have signed up. I'm happy to serve just 50 days of the many years that the convicted paedophile ex-magistrate should be serving. That pervert, Simon Cooper, wasn't even put on the sex offenders register. If my going to jail draws attention to the judges and magistrates, out of touch with community expectations and your safety, then every one of my 50 days behind bars will be worth it. And so I'll go to jail.”

Derryn Hinch (1944) New Zealand–Australian media personality

Today Tonight, 16 January 2014.

John F. Kennedy photo
Louis Brandeis photo
Noam Chomsky photo
James Russell Lowell photo
Franklin Pierce Adams photo

“There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country really needs is a good five-cent nickel”

Franklin Pierce Adams (1881–1960) United States humor writer

Reported in Jacob Morton Braude, Complete Speaker's and Toastmaster's Library: Remarks of famous people (1965), p. 53.

Robert P. George photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Hillary Clinton photo
W. Richard Scott photo

“Documents and records can seldom be taken for what they purport to be. They are not neutral and objective accounts of organizational purposes and activities but reflect the biases and interests of those who compile and use them. To take at face value reports of such complex and sensitive matters as costs, productivity, or hiring priorities is naive.”

W. Richard Scott (1932) American sociologist

W Richard Scott. "Some Problems in the Study of Organization Structure," Mid-American Review of Sociology, 2 (1977):3 as cited in: Arthur G. Bedeian (1980). Organizations: Theory and Analysis : Text and Cases. p. 42.

Donald A. Norman photo
Albert Barnes photo
Edgar Guest photo
Dick Cheney photo
Neil Peart photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“SWA Magazine: Talking about spacecraft, what do you think about the shuttle program?
Asimov: Well, I hope it does get off the ground. And I hope they expand it, because the shuttle program is the gateway to everything else. By means of the shuttle, we will be able to build space stations and power stations, laboratory facilities and habitations, and everything else in space.
SWA Magazine: How about orbital space colonies? Do you see these facilities being built or is the government going to cut back on projects like this?
Asimov: Well, now you've put your finger right on it. In order to have all of these wonderful things in space, we don't have to wait for technology - we've got the technology, and we don't have to wait for the know-how - we've got that too. All we need is the political go-ahead and the economic willingness to spend the money that is necessary. It is a little frustrating to think that if people concentrate on how much it is going to cost they will realize the great amount of profit they will get for their investment. Although they are reluctant to spend a few billions of dollars to get back an infinite quantity of money, the world doesn't mind spending $400 billion every years on arms and armaments, never getting anything back from it except a chance to commit suicide.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

An Interview with Isaac Asimov (1979)

Richard III of England photo
George William Curtis photo

“The country does want rest, we all want rest. Our very civilization wants it — and we mean that it shall have it. It shall have rest — repose — refreshment of soul and re-invigoration of faculty. And that rest shall be of life and not of death. It shall not be a poison that pacifies restlessness in death, nor shall it be any kind of anodyne or patting or propping or bolstering — as if a man with a cancer in his breast would be well if he only said he was so and wore a clean shirt and kept his shoes tied. We want the rest of a real Union, not of a name, not of a great transparent sham, which good old gentlemen must coddle and pat and dandle, and declare wheedlingly is the dearest Union that ever was, SO it is; and naughty, ugly old fanatics shan't frighten the pretty precious — no, they sha'n't. Are we babies or men? This is not the Union our fathers framed — and when slavery says that it will tolerate a Union on condition that freedom holds its tongue and consents that the Constitution means first slavery at all costs and then liberty, if you can get it, it speaks plainly and manfully, and says what it means. There are not wanting men enough to fall on their knees and cry: 'Certainly, certainly, stay on those terms. Don't go out of the Union — please don't go out; we'll promise to take great care in future that you have everything you want. Hold our tongues? Certainly. These people who talk about liberty are only a few fanatics — they are tolerably educated, but most of 'em are crazy; we don't speak to them in the street; we don't ask them to dinner; really, they are of no account, and if you'll really consent to stay in the Union, we'll see if we can't turn Plymouth Rock into a lump of dough'. I don't believe the Southern gentlemen want to be fed on dough. I believe they see quite as clearly as we do that this is not the sentiment of the North, because they can read the election returns as well as we. The thoughtful men among them see and feel that there is a hearty abhorrence of slavery among us, and a hearty desire to prevent its increase and expansion, and a constantly deepening conviction that the two systems of society are incompatible. When they want to know the sentiment of the North, they do not open their ears to speeches, they open their eyes, and go and look in the ballot-box, and they see there a constantly growing resolution that the Union of the United States shall no longer be a pretty name for the extension of slavery and the subversion of the Constitution. Both parties stand front to front. Each claims that the other is aggressive, that its rights have been outraged, and that the Constitution is on its side. Who shall decide? Shall it be the Supreme Court? But that is only a co-ordinate branch of the government. Its right to decide is not mutually acknowledged. There is no universally recognized official expounder of the meaning of the Constitution. Such an instrument, written or unwritten, always means in a crisis what the people choose. The people of the United States will always interpret the Constitution for themselves, because that is the nature of popular governments, and because they have learned that judges are sometimes appointed to do partisan service.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Calvin Coolidge photo

“Anybody can reduce taxes, but it is not so easy to stand in the gap and resist the passage of increasing appropriation bills which would make tax reduction impossible. It will be very easy to measure the strength of the attachment to reduced taxation by the power with which increased appropriations are resisted. If at the close of the present session the Congress has kept within the budget which I propose to present, it will then be possible to have a moderate amount of tax reduction and all the tax reform that the Congress may wish for during the next fiscal year. The country is now feeling the direct stimulus which came from the passage of the last revenue bill, and under the assurance of a reasonable system of taxation there is every prospect of an era of prosperity of unprecedented proportions. But it would be idle to expect any such results unless business can continue free from excess profits taxation and be accorded a system of surtaxes at rates which have for their object not the punishment of success or the discouragement of business, but the production of the greatest amount of revenue from large incomes. I am convinced that the larger incomes of the country would actually yield more revenue to the Government if the basis of taxation were scientifically revised downward. Moreover the effect of the present method of this taxation is to increase the cost of interest. on productive enterprise and to increase the burden of rent. It is altogether likely that such reduction would so encourage and stimulate investment that it would firmly establish our country in the economic leadership of the world.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Francis Escudero photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Wisława Szymborska photo
Stafford Cripps photo
Chris Anderson photo

“The ultimate cost reduction is eliminating atoms entirely and dealing only in bits.”

Source: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), Ch. 6, p. 96

Geoffrey Hodgson photo
John McCain photo

“The first telephones cost a thousand dollars and they were about that big! We all remember that!”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

As quoted in Albaquerque Town Hall Meeting http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/john-mccains-fake-town-ha_b_113041.html (15 July 2008)
2000s, 2008

Clement Attlee photo
Jack McDevitt photo

“If some of the current politicians had been around a few thousand years ago,” she’d said, “we never would have gotten out of Africa. Boats cost too much.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 4 (pp. 46-47)

J. C. R. Licklider photo
Andrew Tobias photo

“In short: Readily available low-cost life insurance would be a threat to the industry, and whatever threatens the life insurance industry threatens America.”

Andrew Tobias (1947) American journalist

Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 13, Gerber Life: Like Taking Candy From A Baby, p. 239.

Alfred P. Sloan photo
Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
Jopie Huisman photo

“As far as transience is concerned... You see the whole story in those shoes, that's why I paint them so accurate. The physical attitude; crooked legs, a lump. Those shoes were talking to me, and then I thought: I can see that you were so and so big, but did you also had a wife? Children? What were you doing? And what really mattered to me is my own place between them. Between those stories, that mystery. That pitch-black background [in Jopie's paintings, till c.1979-80] - I had found it. A cry for attention. Those pants, that shirt, that background, that was: here I am. But then it become mannerism. So I carried on realistically but avoiding the black background at all costs. It is as Rutger Kopland says: Whoever found it did not look well. Now I want to paint people like this, like they are made of colored mud. Color spiritualizes.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Wat de vergankelijkheid betreft.. .Je ziet het hele verhaal in die schoenen, daarom schilder ik ze zo scherp. De lichamelijke houding; kromme poten, een knobbel. Die schoenen praatten tegen me, en dan dacht ik: ik kan zien dat je zo en zo groot was, maar had je ook een vrouw? Kinderen? Wat deed je? En waar het me in wezen dan om ging is mijn plekkie daartussen. Tussen die verhalen, dat mysterie. Die pikzwarte achtergrond [in zijn schilderijen, tot c. 1979-80]; ik had het gevonden. Een schreeuw om aandacht. Die broek, dat hemd, die achtergrond, dat was: hier ben ik. Maar dan word je een maniërist. Dus ik ben realistisch doorgegaan, maar koste wat het kost die zwarte achtergrond vermijdend. Het is zoals nl:Rutger Kopland zegt: Wie het gevonden heeft, heeft niet goed gezocht. Nu wil ik de mensen zo schilderen, als zijn ze van gekleurde modder. De kleur die vergeestelijkt.
Mens & Gevoelens: Jopie Huisman', 1993

Kenneth N. Waltz photo
Heather Brooke photo
Ben Klassen photo
Adam Smith photo
Kage Baker photo
John Moffat photo
Mike Huckabee photo
Aleksandër Stavre Drenova photo

“Someone with an animal qarakter won't be replaced, on cost of the others he live and make himself happy.”

Aleksandër Stavre Drenova (1872–1947) Albanian poet

http://www.shekulli.com.al/2011/03/27/thenie-1.html

William Burges photo
Ann Druyan photo
Immanuel Wallerstein photo

“In the sixteenth century, Europe was like a bucking bronco. The attempt of some groups to establish a world-economy based on a particular division of labor, to create national states in the core areas as politico-economic guarantors of this system, and to get the workers to pay not only the profits but the costs of maintaining the system was not easy. It was to Europe's credit that it was done, since without the thrust of the sixteenth century the modern world would not have been born and, for all its cruelties, it is better that it was born than that it had not been.
It is also to Europe's credit that it was not easy, and particularly that it was not easy because the people who paid the short-run costs screamed lustily at the unfairness of it all. The peasants and workers in Poland and England and Brazil and Mexico were all rambunctious in their various ways. As R. H. Tawney says of the agrarian disturbances of sixteenth-century England: 'Such movements are a proof of blood and sinew and of a high and gallant spirit… Happy the nation whose people has not forgotten how to rebel.'
The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just constitute the continuing antinomy of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic which has far from reached its climax in the twentieth century.”

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) economic historian

Wallerstein (1974) The Modern World-System, vol. I, p. 233.

John Maynard Keynes photo
Fiona Apple photo
Antonio Negri photo
Alfred Denning, Baron Denning photo

“In June 1970, a big earth-moving machine got stuck in the mud. It sank so far as to be out of sight. It cost much money to get it out. Who is to pay the cost?”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

British Crane Hire Corporation Ltd v. Ipswich Plant Hire Ltd [1970] 1 All ER 1059.
Judgments

Emma Goldman photo