Quotes about cost
page 13

“We have now reached a point in the twenty-first century in which the externalities of this irrational system, such as the costs of war, the depletion of natural resources, the waste of human lives, and the disruption of the planetary environment, now far exceed any future economic benefits that capitalism offers to society as a whole. The accumulation of capital and the amassing of wealth are increasingly occurring at the expense of an irrevocable rift in the social and environmental conditions governing human life on earth.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Capitalism Has Failed—What Next?, 2019

War, Future, Wealth, Nature

“Our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War & arms race, costing us trillions of our hard earned tax payer dollars & countless lives. This insanity must end.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

Twitter post https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard, (27 Jun 2019) Twitter account, June 2019

War, Change

“We are in Afghanistan & Iraq where we have lost so many lives and spent so much $ that should be going into our communities here at home. This is why it’s so important to have a commander in chief who knows the cost of war.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

Twitter post https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard, (27 Jun 2019) Twitter account, June 2019

War, Home, Communication

“Very often the things that cost nothing cost us the most heavily; I can show you many objects the quest and acquisition of which have wrested freedom from our hands.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLII: On Values

Freedom

“But the weird thing is that many of the people who are outraged by benign nationalism or the benign pan-nationalism that is pride in Western civilization take no umbrage when someone from Iran or China says they think their civilization is best. This of course is a manifestation of the ancient cult of identitarianism, which the best traditions of the West have battled internally at great cost for thousands of years. Saying Western civilization is great hurts the feelings of some people invested in some other source of identity. And it hurts the feelings of some Westerners because they think it’s a sign of enlightenment to get offended on other people’s behalf or to denigrate the society that gave them their soap box.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2019, What's So Great About Western Civilization (2019)

Hurt, Box, People, Thinking

“We need to be free to do deals with the rest of the world. We must be out of the protectionist common external tariff which mainly protects inefficient EU industries at the cost to British consumers.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg (1969) British politician

Jacob Rees-Mogg says Treasury 'fiddling figures' on Brexit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42929071 BBC News (3 February 2018) 2018

World

“I have already accepted the policy of Imperial preference…to the effect that a preference will be given on existing duties and on any duties which may subsequently be imposed. On this subject I think there is no difference of opinion between us. … I am prepared to say that the key industries on which the life of the nation depends must be preserved. I am prepared to say also that, in order to keep up the present standard of production and develop it to the utmost extent possible, it is necessary that security should be give against the unfair competition to which our industries have been in the past subjected by the dumping of goods below the actual cost of production. … I shall look at every problem simply from the point of view of what is the best method of securing the objects at which we are aiming without any regard to theoretical opinions about Free Trade or Tariff Reform.”

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

Letter to Andrew Bonar Law (2 November 1918), quoted in The Times (18 November 1918), p. 4
Prime Minister

Dependency, Past, Problem, Thinking

“Dumping is the exporting to this country of goods from a foreign land under the cost—beneath the price at which they are sold in their own country. There could be only one object in doing that, and that is to make war upon a particular industry in our country. That is unfair. … In the interests of fairness, as well as in the interests of British industry as a whole, the Government have decided to submit to Parliament proposals which will effectively deal with dumping in the sense in which I have defined it.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1919/aug/18/dumping in the House of Commons (18 August 1919) Prime Minister

Sense, War, Making love, Country

“Recipe idea: take on fire extinguisher and pour out all the contents. Mix down a nice bright emulsion paint to the consistency of full fat milk, stirring constantly to remove any lumps. Pour into the extinguisher, screw on cap tightly and write on things up to 50 feet high. Re-use by swapping over the CO2 charged canister (costs about one pound). The perfect accompaniment to a night out drinking heavily with friends.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Cut It Out (2004)

Drink, Night, Painting, Perfection

“Ramnath Goenka was a Man of many parts, freedom fighter, Gandhian Worker, politician, merchant, industrialist and newspaper magnate. But more than anything else he was an indomitable warrior for the Freedom Of the Press, whose frontiers he fearlessly defended and pushed, Often at enormous cost to himself. His mission as a newspaper publisher was to empower the citizen, uphold his right to know, and to make all those in power and authority accountable To the people a mission that he carried out with unflagging, if sometimes excessive zeal.”

Ramnath Goenka (1904–1991) Indian politician

By B. G. Verghese in [B. G. Verghese, Warrior of the Fourth Estate: Ramnath Goenka of the Express, http://books.google.com/books?id=jPZkAAAAMAAJ, 2005, Viking, 978-0-670-05842-6]

Making love, People, Parting, Freedom

“The design of a digital system starts with the specification of the architecture of the system and continues with its implementation and its subsequent realisation… the purpose of architecture is to provide a function. Once that function is established, the purpose of implementation is to give a proper cost-performance and the purpose of realisation is to build and maintain the appropriate logical organisation.”

Gerrit Blaauw (1924–2018) Dutch computer scientist

Source: Specification of Digital Systems (1978), p. 29

“Thomas Eakins was a man of great character. He was a man of iron will and his will to paint and to carry out his life as he thought it should go. This he did. It cost him heavily but in his works we have the precious result of his independence, his generous heart and his big mind. Eakins was a deep student of life, and with a great love he studied humanity frankly. He was not afraid of what his study revealed to him.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Robert Henri, open letter to the Art Students League, (1917-10-29).

Study, Painting, Heart, Love

“I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”

Karl Rove (1950) American political consultant and policy advisor

Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October 2002); referencing the positions of former Pentagon policy adviser Richard Perle, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and chief Bush political adviser Karl Rove.

Passion, War

“Hey, you’re getting to be almost worth how much it costs to feed you.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

“Good thing, ’cause I got no plan to eat less.”
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 3 “Fever” (p. 48).

“Lazy, and would cost you a morning. I never started a day with Clint Eastwood in the first scene, because you knew he was gonna be late, at least a half hour or an hour.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

Rawhide director Thomas Carr on Eastwood
McGilligan, Patrick (1999). Clint: The Life and Legend. p. 111. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0006383548.

“Recourse to God, so infinitely good, is all the more necessary because, far from abating, the struggle grows fiercer and expands unceasingly. It is no longer only the Christian faith that they would uproot at all costs from the hearts of the people; it is any belief which lifting man above the horizon of this world would supernaturally bring back his wearied eyes to heaven. Illusion on the subject is no longer possible. War has been declared against everything supernatural, because behind the supernatural stands God, and because it is God that they want to tear out of the mind and heart of man.”

Pope Pius X (1835–1914) Catholic Pope and saint

Papal encyclical letter "Une foise encore" http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_06011907_une-fois-encore.html to the French people and clergy on the separation of Church and State, Rome, 6 January 1907.

God, Faith, War, People

“The pride comes from accomplishment. I have done what I wanted to do more than any other thing in life. I have become a writer, published two books of integrity and worth. I did not know what those two books would cost me, how very difficult it would be to write them, to survive the opposition to them.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

"A Battered Wife Survives", (1978)
Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976-1987

Life, Books

“The pharmaceutical industry must be told in no uncertain terms that the medicines that they manufacture for this crisis will be sold at cost. This is not the time for profiteering or price gouging.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2020

Time

“The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law. The Church is not to be a national community like the old Israel, but a community of believers without political or national ties. The old Israel had been both — the chosen people of God and a national community, and it was therefore his will that they should meet force with force. But with the Church it is different: it has abandoned political and national status, and therefore it must patiently endure aggression. Otherwise evil will be heaped upon evil. Only thus can fellowship be established and maintained.
At this point it becomes evident that when a Christian meets with injustice, he no longer clings to his rights and defends them at all costs. He is absolutely free from possessions and bound to Christ alone. Again, his witness to this exclusive adherence to Jesus creates the only workable basis for fellowship, and leaves the aggressor for him to deal with.
The only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a stand-still because it does not find the resistance it is looking for. Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames. But when evil meets no opposition and encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance, its sting is drawn, and at last it meets an opponent which is more than its match. Of course this can only happen when the last ounce of resistance is abandoned, and the renunciation of revenge is complete. Then evil cannot find its mark, it can breed no further evil, and is left barren.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 141

God, Law, People, Revenge

“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.
Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Costly Grace (1937), p. 45

Life, Christ

“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

p 43
Costly Grace (1937)

Fight, Religion, Forgiveness, Question

“If it could be shown that men or women who are the parents of many children have thereby lost something of individual power, we might then be forced to admit that the greater cost related to the reproductive system in women must be at their personal expense, not at the expense of the nutriment which they assimilate and eliminate.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 607
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

Personality, Children, Parent, Relation ships

“Legal intervention costs money; legal intervention opens up new avenues for abuse, including totalitarian excesses by government officials who seek to determine preferences on personal matters.”

Richard Epstein (1943) American legal scholar

[Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism, https://books.google.com/books?id=B36vxZZ4cLcC, June 2003, University of Chicago Press, 978-0-226-21304-0] (quote from p. 157)

Money, Personality

“The Trump administration has, for good measure, rewritten the eligibility rules for such programs in order to lower the number of people who qualify. The supposed goal: to cut costs by reducing dependence on government.”

Rajan Menon (1953) political scientist

Never mind the subsidies and tax loopholes Trump’s crew has created for corporations and the super wealthy, which add up to many billions of dollars in spending and lost revenue.
Trump’s War on the Poor Includes Our Children (February 4, 2020)

People, Dependency

“I made a conscious decision not to date actors, but not because I hate actors. That’s a nasty generalization to make, and that’s not the case… People take such an interest in your love life when you have a profile, it puts a lot of stress on a relationship. So two people with profiles, I figure it’s just double the amount of scrutiny, and I’d like to avoid that at all costs.”

Margot Robbie (1990) Australian actress

Marie Claire, "Exclusive Sneak Peek: Marie Claire March Cover Star Margot Robbie" https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/news/a13235/exclusive-sneak-peek-margot-robbie/, February 6, 2015.

Hate, People, Decision, Love

“Even the toughest politicians sometimes wonder whether political life is worth the personal cost.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Source: Leader of the Opposition (2009-2015), Battlelines book, (2013), p. 4.

Personality, Life

“I should say that when people talk about capitalism it's a bit of a joke. There's no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. That's right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. That's very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995–1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999

History, Country, Business, War

“Suppose that we could arrange the gradual extinction of carnivorous species, replacing them with new herbivorous ones. Or suppose that we could intervene genetically, so that currently carnivorous species would gradually evolve into herbivorous ones, thereby fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy. If we could bring about the end of predation by one or the other of these means at little cost to ourselves, ought we to do it?”

Jeff McMahan (philosopher) (1954) American philosopher

" The Meat Eaters http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/", The New York Times, 19 Sept. 2010

“The third reason capitalism gets blame here is that alternative systems—those not driven by a profit-first logic—could manage viruses better. While not profitable to produce and stockpile everything needed for a viral pandemic, it is efficient. The wealth already lost in this pandemic far exceeds the cost to have produced and stockpiled the tests and ventilators, the lack of which is contributing so much to today's disaster. Capitalism often pursues profit at the expense of more urgent social needs and values. In this, capitalism is grossly inefficient. This pandemic is now bringing that truth home to people.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Truth, Home, Wealth, People

“The problem of policies aimed to return the economy to what it was before the virus hit is this: Global capitalism, by 2019, was itself a major cause of the collapse in 2020. Capitalism's scars from the crashes of 2000 and 2008-2009 had not healed. Years of low interest rates had enabled corporations and governments to "solve" all their problems by borrowing limitlessly at almost zero interest rate cost. All the new money pumped into economies by central banks had indeed caused the feared inflation, but chiefly in stock markets whose prices consequently spiraled dangerously far away from underlying economic values and realities. Inequalities of income and wealth reached historic highs. In short, capitalism had built up vulnerabilities to another crash that any number of possible triggers could unleash. The trigger this time was not the dot.com meltdown of 2000 or the sub-prime meltdown of 2008/9; it was a virus. And of course, mainstream ideology requires focusing on the trigger, not the vulnerability. Thus mainstream policies aim to reestablish pre-virus capitalism. Even if they succeed, that will return us to a capitalist system whose accumulated vulnerabilities will soon again collapse from yet another trigger.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Money, Time, Wealth, Problem

“We have a lot of employment, but the quality of the jobs has collapsed over the last 10 years. The people who work now used to be people who had a job with good income, good benefits and good security. The jobs, overwhelmingly, created have none of those things: low wages—that’s why our wages have gone nowhere; bad benefits—those are shrinking, pensions and so on; and the security is virtually gone. One of our biggest problems in America is people don’t know one week to the next what hours they’re working, what income they’ll get. You can’t have a life like this. So, what we’ve done is we’ve ratcheted down the quality of jobs. We’ve made people use up their savings since the great crash of 2008, so they’re in a bind. They have really no choice but to offer themselves at lower wages or at less benefit or at less security than before, which is why there’s the anger, which is why there was the vote for Mr. Trump in the first place, because this talk of recovery really is about that stock market with the funny money that the Fed Reserve pumped in, but is not about the real lives of people, which are in serious trouble, hence the numbers, like a average American family can’t get a $400 emergency cost because it doesn’t have that kind of money in the background. So, you’ve undone the underlying economy, you have this frothy stock market for the 1 percent, and this is an impossible tension tearing the country apart.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

We Need a More Humane Economic System—Not One That Only Benefits the Rich (December 26, 2018)

Money, Family, Anger, Country

“We have been alienated by costs that soared beyond the means of all but the well-insured or wealthy; by specialization and the cold, quantifying approach that brushes past human concerns, and by the growing despair that comes from spending without regaining health.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eight, Healing Ourselves, p. 244

Despair, Past, Health

“I ask... What would they do if every nation had unlimited electrical power-power for the taking-power costing nothing to obtain and available to all men equally?”

Desmond Leslie (1921–2001) British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician

The Amazing Mr. Lutterworth (1958)

Men

“A country that can afford a $738 billion defense budget but will not ensure its school children a more healthy diet is a country whose moral values are spiraling down and whose future health care costs will be spiraling up.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (18 Jan 20) Williamson's quotes in social media

School, Country, Future, Children

“The military has more than 130 bands with more than 6000 musicians, costing about a half-billion dollars a year. Meanwhile the National Endowment for the Arts gets $155M, a paltry amount compared to other advanced democracies. Arts & artists should be robustly funded & supported!”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (24 Oct 2019) Williamson's quotes in social media

Democracy, Support, Art

“I propose hermeneutic communism: non-dogmatic communism, weak communism. Only this can save us. [Is is] without essences, without absolutes to be realized at all costs. It is only an ideal of equitable society, a society that progressively weakens violence like dialectics.”

Gianni Vattimo (1936–2023) Italian philosopher, politician

"Only Weak Communism Can Save Us" (2013)

Communication

“What is perceived as a cost by some will turn out to be the competitive advantage of Europe by helping maintain a well-trained, secure workforce, open to change.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Speech to a Trades Union Congress conference in London (31 August 1994), quoted in The Times (1 September 1994), p. 25
President of the European Commission

Training, Help, Change

“On my view there is no net benefit to coming into existence and thus coming into existence is never worth its costs.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

Source: Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (2006), Introduction, p. 13

“If there is to be support for trade globalization in the developed world, we must make sure that the benefits and costs are more evenly shared, which will entail more progressive income taxation.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz book Making Globalization Work

§3, p. 100
Making globalization work (2006)

World, Support, Making love

“There are information asymmetries in this story. Health insurance is limping along. It's limited in scope, and then you other consequences. Insurance companies have high premiums to protect themselves. The ones who come to the insurance company are sicker and the people have to pay more. You have adverse selection. You have moral hazard. And the doctor does what's on the safe side -- defensive medicine -- without regard to cost. These are fundamental conditions that make health insurance difficult. You have some things that help. Some doctors understand that they shouldn't abuse the system. But you still see problems in the way doctors behave towards patients. They goof off. Sometimes it's too much work. Some things are difficult and risky to diagnose.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

quoted in Conor Clarke, An Interview with Kenneth Arrow, Part Two https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/07/an-interview-with-kenneth-arrow-part-two/22279/ (2009) New millennium

Understanding, Help, Health, People

“The natural effect of unfettered market competition is socialism. For a short time the innovator receives a large profit, as a reward for being first to the market. Then, as competitors adopt the innovation, competition drives these profits down to zero and the price gravitates toward the new, lower cost of production made possible by this innovation (that price including, of course, the cost of the producer’s maintenance and the amortization of her capital outlays). So in a free market, the cost savings in labor required to produce any given commodity would quickly be socialized in the form of reduced labor cost to purchase it.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

"Who Owns the Benefit? The Free Market as Full Communism" https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kevin-carson-who-owns-the-benefit-the-free-market-as-full-communism (2012)

Time, Nature

“When business executives are making the artistic decisions and don't understand animation, things can go awry. Now they call in all of the authority figures they can find and hire them – the cost has gone up. The picture may or may not get better, but definitely, it gets more cumbersome. It's like trying to turn around an army of tanks, instead of being able to move lightly on your feet or being able to listen to what's going on inside of you – because that's what's telling you what to do. It gets bogged down.”

Don Bluth (1937) American animator

Interview with Don Bluth https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/13/interview-with-don-bluth-part-1-of-3 (June 13, 2000)

Understanding, Business, Animals, Decision

“When I announced in April of 1961 that this kind of comprehensive tax reform would follow the bill enacted this year, I had hoped to present it in an atmosphere of a balanced budget. But it has been necessary to augment sharply our nuclear and conventional forces, to step up our efforts in space, to meet the increased cost of servicing the national debt and meeting our obligations, established by law, to veterans. These expenditure increases, let me stress, constitute practically all of the increases which have occurred under this administration, the remainder having gone to fight the recession we found in industry--mostly through the supplemental employment bill-and in agriculture. We shall, therefore, neither postpone our tax cut plans nor cut into essential national security programs. This administration is determined to protect America's security and survival and we are also determined to step up its economic growth. I think we must do both.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Law, Hope, Thinking, Fight

“The new tax bill should improve both the equity and the simplicity of our present tax system. This means the enactment of long-needed tax reforms, a broadening of the tax base and the elimination or modification of many special tax privileges. These steps are not only needed to recover lost revenue and thus make possible a larger cut in present rates; they are also tied directly to our goal of greater growth. For the present patchwork of special provisions and preferences lightens the tax load of some only at the cost of placing a heavier burden on others. It distorts economic judgments and channels an undue amount of energy into efforts to avoid tax liabilities. It makes certain types of less productive activity more profitable than other more valuable undertakings. All this inhibits our growth and efficiency, as well as considerably complicating the work of both the taxpayer and the Internal Revenue Service. These various exclusions and concessions have been justified in part as a means of overcoming oppressively high rates in the upper brackets--and a sharp reduction in those rates, accompanied by base-broadening, loophole-closing measures, would properly make the new rates not only lower but also more widely applicable. Surely this is more equitable on both counts.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Making love, Parting, Effort

“Never quit. You can’t wait for yourself to happen, you have to go out there and make it happen. If you truly believe in something you can make it happen. Get a good agent. They cost money, but that’s your first step. Your first film opportunities will most likely not be big, but that’s how you’re discovered by others. Eventually a director or a casting director will see you in a minor film/commercial/broadway, etc. and you’ll get your big break. Always be polite and professional. There are often many, many other people auditioning for the same part as you. If you’re not polite or professional they won’t even waste their time with you.”

Mackenzie Rosman (1989) American actress

Source: Mack’s Fan’s Questions & Answers http://mackrosman.net/press-release (March 19, 2008)

Money, Time, Waiting, People

“I had always said that when I could see the holes in the hands and feet of Jesus myself then I would consider believing. It was very much a standard line – I wouldn’t take anything on belief, I wanted to see the evidence. On that hillside I looked up at the crucifix and Our Lord was there with the holes in his hands and his feet and in that instant – I wouldn’t say I believed, I wouldn’t say I decided to start believing – in that instant, I knew. I knew that I had been looking all these years without seeing Christ crucified. There he was in front of me and I then knew that God and Jesus Christ were true. My life has been upside down ever since. All my original views were turned upside down. It has cost me quite a few friendships and has probably cost me a political career but I cannot un-know what I now know.”

Rob Flello (1966) British politician (born 1966)

Source: The day my atheist convictions were shattered https://catholicherald.co.uk/rob-flello-the-day-my-atheist-convictions-were-shattered/ (October 16, 2020)

God, Life, Christ, Friendship

“You get a tax break for a racehorse, why in God's name couldn't we provide an $8,000 tax credit for everybody who has childcare costs? It would put 720 million women back in the workforce. It would increase the GDP, to sound like a wonk here, by about eight-tenths of one percent. It would grow the economy.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

17 September 2019
Biden vows tax credit will put '720 million women' back in workforce
Joseph Wulfsohn
Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-gaffe-put-720-million-women-in-workforce
2010s, 2019

God, Women

“No sooner was the Baltic open to our merchants, than corn was bought up there for importation into England; at the same time the continent was glutted with English goods, which, because the supply greatly exceeded the demand, were sold at less than their prime cost, and upon which the foreign governments soon laid new duties...to prevent the ruin of their own manufactures. This might have been a salutary lesson, if nations were ever rendered wise by experience; it might have taught us that, however willing one part of this nation might be to see the other ruined by the free admission of foreign grain, foreign governments would never consent to have their fabrics destroyed by the unrestricted introduction of British goods. It is a sound maxim in politics, whatever it may be in morals, that charity begins at home.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

'On the Corn-Laws', The Quarterly Review, Vol. LI. (March & June 1834), p. 231
1830s

Home, Time, Parting

“What good, what use, what aim?
What compensation for the throes of birth
And death in all its frame?
What conscious life hath ever paid its cost?
From Nothingness to Nothingness — all lost!”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

From a letter dated 19 October 1879, quoted by Bertram Dobell in The Laureate of Pessimism: A Sketch of the Life, and Character of James Thomson ("BV"); Author of the City of Dreadful Night (1910), p. 38

Life, Birth, Death

“Furs just as warm and beautiful as murderous sealskin may be made of plush; and vegetal silk as fine and lustrous as ever was spun by the oak-eating babes of Polyphemus can be made of wood. Vegetal leather has been manufactured in London with the polish and durability of calfskin. And when the demand becomes strong enough to turn human attention profitably to the task, foot-wear just as comely and lasting, and more sanitary and comfortable, will be made at even less cost from plant products.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Cost of a Skin, pp. 74–75

Strong, Beauty

“India has never cost England one centime. it paid back What it cost. India provides a livelihood for all benjamins of English families.”

Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) King of the Belgians

Source: https://klara.be/leopold-ii-aflevering-3 Leopold II, Het hele Verhaal, Johan Op De Beeck Horizon, 2020] ISBN 9789463962094 Prince Leopold II In Singapore in a letter to his father King Leopold I expressing admiration for British colonialism. note: Quotes related to the Belgian Colonial Empire

Family

“It is very curious to see how in China and Morocco the vanquished pay for the costs of the expedition that crushed them.
[https://klara.be/leopold-ii-aflevering-3 Leopold II, Het hele Verhaal, Johan Op De Beeck Horizon, 2020] ISBN 9789463962094 Prince Leopold II in a travel note after reading in the Spanish Archive "Archivo General de Indias" in Sevilla in 1862.”

Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) King of the Belgians

Travel, Reading

“When you subsidize anything, you get more of it. Paying teens even a pittance to have more children encourages them to do so. By the time they are old enough to vote, they finally realize that they will always be poor unless they can get into the work force. By then, however, it is almost too late. Unless a relative helps out, child care costs are prohibitive for someone starting in an entry level job. They find themselves forever stuck in the ‘Poverty Trap.’”

Mary Ruwart (1949) American scientist and libertarian activist

Source: Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked, (2012), p. 137

Children, Help, Time

“We can assure the English cabinet—presupposing its neutrality—that even in case of a victorious war, we will seek no territorial aggrandizement in Europe at the cost of France.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Note (29 July 1914), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), pp. 68–69

War, Victory

“The reason we feel alienated is because the society is infantile, trivial, and stupid. So the cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation. I grapple with this because I’m a parent. And I think anybody who has children, you come to this realization, you know—what’ll it be? Alienated, cynical intellectual? Or slack-jawed, half-wit consumer of the horseshit being handed down from on high? There is not much choice in there, you see. And we all want our children to be well adjusted; unfortunately, there’s nothing to be well adjusted to!”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Thinking, Parent, Children, Stupidity

“Being honest is difficult. Sincerity has its costs. This is why being honest, makes the difference.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Essere sinceri è difficile. La sincerità ha i suoi costi. Per questo, essere sinceri, fa la differenza.
Source: prevale.net

Sincerity

“Health care costs so darn much because we pay so darn little for it… So we have almost no incentive to care about how much it cost… Most of what we spend on health care is other people’s money. We never spend other people’s money as carefully as we spend our own.”

David R. Henderson (1950) American economist

Source: The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey (2002), p. 256

Money, People, Health

“Moreover, nobody gave us independence. We tried, we fought, and we achieved. We achieved it not only at the cost of our will and devotion but also at the expense of the lives of many of our compatriots.”

Armen Sarkissian (1953) 4th President of Armenia, Member of the Global Leadership Foundation, one of the directors of Eurasia House, phy…

"Address on Armenia's Independence Day" https://www.president.am/en/statements-and-messages/item/2021/09/21/President-Armen-Sarkissians-congratulatory-message-on-the-occasion-of-Armenias-Independence-Day-/ (21 September 2021)

“So many sacrifice other needs to pay for the cost of this Catholic education. It isn't always easy, and isn't always appreciated, yet the sacrifice is worth it.”

Paul J. Swain (1943–2022) Catholic bishop

Bishop stresses education during Catholic Schools Week Mass https://www.aberdeennews.com/story/lifestyle/faith/2018/02/01/bishop-stresses-education-during-catholic-schools-week-mass/116585660/ (February 1, 2018)

Education

“It seems that even the word ‘peace’ in general does not come at a free cost. Meaning that, peace can be obtained only when one is acknowledged as a master over the other.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Peace

“Skipping the basic methods will cost you more at the top than following the full process of doing things while you are still at the bottom of the ladder”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The ‘I’ is the ego that we must avoid at any cost, if we truly wish to be different from narcissists. Instead of using ‘I’ repeatedly, it would be wise to replace it with ‘we’.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“We must not, at any cost, behave like little children who are ready to take credit for good deeds but run away wherever evil ones appear.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Children, Appearance, Evil

“Which do you pay dearer for, lies or the truth?
The former costs you yourself, the latter at most your happiness.”

Christian Friedrich Hebbel (1813–1863) German poet and dramatist

"Epigrams" in Sämtliche Werke, volume 6, page 365
Original: (de) Was du teurer bezahlst, die Lüge oder die Wahrheit?
Jene kostet dein Ich, diese doch höchstens dein Glück.

Happiness, Truth

“There are so few times in life where you are passionate about anything. And I think that if you can find that, you should just hold on to it and protect it at all costs and just follow it, because it's so rare.”

Kelly Marie Tran (1989) American actress

As quoted in "Kelly Marie Tran thought she'd quit acting — then The Last Jedi put her dream into hyperdrive" in Entertainment Weekly (20 November 2017) https://ew.com/movies/2017/11/20/kelly-marie-tran-star-wars-the-last-jedi/

Time, Thinking, Passion, Life

“The benefit of knowledge is that it makes the world more predictable, but the cost is that a predictable world sometimes seems less delicious, less exciting, less poignant.”

Daniel T. Gilbert (1957) American psychologist

Daniel Gilbert, Timothy Wilson, David Centerbar, & Deborah Kermer, The Pleasures of Uncertainty: Prolonging Positive Moods in Ways People Do Not Anticipate, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(1): 5 (2005).

Knowledge, World

“The amazing thing about cities is that they're worth so much more than it costs to build them.”

Paul Romer (1955) American economist

TED 2011 "The world's first charter city?" https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer_the_world_s_first_charter_city

“Climate change is already... costing our nations trillions of dollars and we know that none of us can escape the worse that’s yet to come if we fail to seize this moment.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, November 2021, US President's Statement on Day 2 of the 2021 UN Climate Conference

Change

“And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart,
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders.
So, don’t give up on love
when it seems that all is lost,
for there is always hope
if we’re prepared to pay the cost”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://twitter.com/AKarpouzos/status/1467166433176084481

Country, Hope, Heart, Love

“How can the cost of education be the cost of life? It is unacceptable; it is reprehensible that we have allowed it to fester.”

Oby Ezekwesili (1963) Nigerian accountant, politician, human rights activist, convener of bring back our girls (Chibok girls) and pres…

Source: [Talking about what education has become in Nigeria]

Education, Life

“To remain satisfied and grateful for the pleasure of the Beloved, at the cost of religion and heart is necessarily passionate love, which in Sufi terminology is called faithfulness.”

Bu Ali Shah Qalandar (1209–1324) Indian Sufi saint

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 271

Faith, Religion, Love, Heart

“The irony in medicine is that millions of patients are kept alive at exorbitant costs,
yet a small virus can wipe out, as many, in as short a period as a few months!
Boghos L. Artinian MD”

boghos

“Leaving the EU would be a win-win for all. The EU costs us a huge amount of money and subverts our democracy”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Source: Boris Johnson: EU exit 'win-win for us all' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35783049 BBC News (11 March 2016)

Money, Democracy

“Mass schooling damages children. We don’t need any more of it. And under the guise that it is the same thing as education, it has been picking our pockets just as Socrates predicted it would thousands of years ago. One of the surest ways to recognize real education is by the fact that it doesn’t cost very much, doesn’t depend on expensive toys or gadgets. The experiences that produce it and the Mass schooling that propels it are nearly free. It is hard to turn a dollar on education. But schooling is a wonderful hustle, getting sharper all the time.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 70

Dependency, Children, Education, School

“Flow: a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

The Psychology of optimal experience, Harper https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224927532_Flow_The_Psychology_of_Optimal_ExperienceFlow (1990)

People

“We have to kill one another just to satisfy that accursed madman. I wish he could burn in Hell for as many years as he is costing lives.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Statement (15 October 1939), quoted in Keith Feiling, Neville Chamberlain (1946; 1970), p. 419
Prime Minister

Hell

“I'd rather go to prison for the third time rather than let the current government [of Yulia Tymoshenko] assume power. It would cost the country less for one person to suffer than for the whole country to suffer.”

Viktor Yanukovych (1950) Ukrainian politician who was the President of Ukraine

2009
Source: [2020-10-27, Янукович пожалел, что в третий раз не сел в тюрьму - Украина - TCH.ua, https://tsn.ua/ru/ukrayina/yanukovich-pozhalel-chto-v-tretii-raz-ne-sel-v-tyurmu.html, https://web.archive.org/web/20201027065326/https://tsn.ua/ru/ukrayina/yanukovich-pozhalel-chto-v-tretii-raz-ne-sel-v-tyurmu.html, 2020-10-27, 2022-06-12, web.archive.org]

Personality, Suffering, Time, Country

“Every day, Ukrainians pay with their lives, and they fight along — and the atrocities that the Russians are engaging in are just beyond the pale. And the cost of the fight is not cheap, but caving to aggression is even more costly. That’s why we’re staying in this.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Remarks By President Biden at Signing of S. 3522, the “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act Of 2022” (May 9, 2022) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/05/09/remarks-by-president-biden-at-signing-of-s-3522-the-ukraine-democracy-defense-lend-lease-act-of-2022/ 2022, May 2022

Fight

“Doing good to others will make you feel like a better person: physically, psychologically and spiritually. Maybe gestures like this don't cost you anything, but for those who receive them… they have great value.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Fare del bene agli altri ti farà sentire una persona migliore: fisicamente, psicologicamente e spiritualmente. Magari gesti così non ti costano nulla, ma per chi li riceve... hanno un grande valore.
Source: prevale.net

Personality, Feeling

Quotes about cost page 13

Quotes about cost
page 13