Quotes about cost (1279 quotes, page 6)

“If the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be…. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers and actuaries, were born, and died. Still official routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies." In the reign of George III an inquiry was made by some revolutionary spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who live in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof, the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night…. The great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the sun, moon, and stars.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

"Administrative Reform" (June 27, 1855) Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Speeches Literary and Social by Charles Dickens https://books.google.com/books?id=bT5WAAAAcAAJ (1870) pp. 133-134

Wisdom , People , Books , Age

“Gabriel scowled through his glasses. Why were ghosts such imbeciles? Who could be blamed for striving, at any cost, to avoid forever the decay-of-self that death was?”

Tim Powers (1952) American writer

Part 1, Chapter 4 (p. 71)
Hide Me Among the Graves (2012)

Death

“Perhaps she was not really so perfect, but he had made her so in his mind. People did this; he had seen it. As though the world of humans was created from their desires as much as their perception—an issue the empiricists tried to deal with in their natural philosophy.
Although he realized this was a trivial truth, still, trying to comprehend the reality of a situation was his constant activity. He could not necessarily trust the word of ministers, who all had their own purposes; nor what his mother might think, for her own perception was colored by her desire to see people in certain ways. One did not trust the periodicals, certainly, and pamphleteers were never disinterested. Everyone seemed to see the world and events a little differently, depending on their own personal mixture of desire and pragmatism. In history there were any number of rulers whose perception of events was so far removed from reality that it led to calamity. Prince Wilam did not want to be one of those—at any cost. Even if it meant giving up the world as he desired it to be.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 26 (p. 352)

People , Truth , World , Color

“It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home,
A heap o' sun an' shadder, an' ye sometimes have t' roam
Afore ye really 'preciate the things ye lef' behind,
An' hunger fer 'em somehow, with 'em allus on yer mind.
It don't make any differunce how rich ye get t' be,
How much yer chairs an' tables cost, how great yer luxury;
It ain't home t' ye, though it be the palace of a king,
Until somehow yer soul is sort o' wrapped round everything.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: A Heap o' Livin' (1916), Home, stanza 1, p. 29.

Hunger , Home , Soul , Sun

“As Christianity spread, and the Church became more secularized, this realization of the costliness of grace gradually faded. The world was Christianized, and grace became its common property. It was to be had at low cost. Yet the Church of Rome did not altogether lose the earlier vision. It is highly significant that the Church was astute enough to find room for the monastic movement … Thus monasticism became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity and the cheapening of grace. … Monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate. By thus limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus to a restricted group of specialists, the Church evolved the fatal conception of the double standard.”

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

translated as The Cost of Discipleship (1959), pp. 46-47.
Discipleship (1937), Costly Grace

World

“We can reckon the cost of misdirected emotions by the price which the past has paid for them. We know the full significance of that irresponsible sympathy which … admits no difference between attack and resistance, between a war of aggression and a war of defence; which confuses moral issues, ignores experience, and insults the intelligence of mankind. The reformer whose heart is in the right place, but whose head is elsewhere, represents a waste of force; and we can not afford any waste in the conservation of honour and goodness.”

Agnes Repplier (1855–1950) American essayist

in "The Cost of Modern Sentiment" (1916)

War , Intelligence , Past , Heart

“Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 81

Money , War

“Engineers, scientists, and statisticians have, until recently, been the groups chiefly interested in activity called quality control. These technologists have been primarily concerned with the technical methods which have become associated with the subject. They have applied these methods to a number of industrial quality problems.
Excellent results in improving quality and in reducing costs are now being reported from these applications. These reports have generated growing interest by industrial managers in the potentialities of quality control as a business method.
What, management is asking, is meant by the term "quality control"? Is there anything really new about it? What are the quality-control activities? What is the proper organization for quality control? How much does the program cost, and what benefits can result from it? Is quality control good only for mass production? May it be useful in a job shop as well? How do statistical methods fit into the quality-control pattern? What does quality control mean to the foreman, to the design engineer, to the salesman? How is quality control introduced to a company?”

Armand V. Feigenbaum (1922–2014) American businessman

Source: Quality Control: Principles, Practice, and Administration. 1951, p. vii; Preface: lead paragraph

Business , Problem

“As the city continues to grow, the costs of congestion – to our health, to our environment, and to our economy – are only going to get worse. The question is not whether we want to pay but how do we want to pay. With an increased asthma rate? With more greenhouse gases? Wasted time? Lost business? And higher prices? Or, do we charge a modest fee to encourage more people to take mass transit?”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/environment_sustainability/mayor_michael_bloomberg_delivers_planyc_a_greener_greater_new_york
Environment

People , Health , Question , Business

“The assault on Malta will cost us many casualties… But I am the one who wants it because I consider it absolutely essential for the future development of the war. If we take Malta, Libya will be safe. If not, the situation of the colony will always be precarious.”

Ugo Cavallero (1880–1943) Italian general

Quoted in "From the Ashes of Disgrace" - Page 79 - by Franco Maugeri, Victor Rosen - 1948

War , Future

“To disgust men with their work is a serious blunder on the part of human society; what could be more natural than their liking for what they do? Work keeps off boredom, vice, and poverty. It is the remedy for all imagined evils. "The souls' joy lies in doing," said Shelly. Active work saves man from himself; indolence make shim a prey to useless regrets, dangerous reveries, enviousness, and hate. Also the first rule of the art of governing is, at all costs, to keep a nation at work. A bored nation is impossible to govern, but a nation occupied by work which it believes to be useful and accomplishes on its own initiative is already a happy one.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Men , Hate , Art , Soul

“We promised the Europeans freedom. It would be worse than dishonorable not to see that they have it. This might mean war with the Russians, but what of it? They have no air force, and their gasoline and ammunition supplies are low. I've seen their miserable supply trains; mostly wagons drawn by beaten up old horses or oxen. I'll say this; the Third Army alone and with damned few casualties, could lick what is left of the Russians in six weeks. You mark my words. Don't ever forget them. Someday we will have to fight them and it will take six years and cost us six million lives.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

As quoted in The Unknown Patton (1983) by Charles M. Province, p. 100

War , Freedom , Horse , Fight

“I've stopped smoking… I think the cost was a lot of it, and not being able to breathe. I first gave up smoking when I was eight.”

Dave Allen (1936–2005) Irish comedian and satirist

Compilation by the BBC 11 March, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4340205.stm

Thinking

“A wedge strategy is where you focus on a highly charged issue at the borders of rationality and emotion. The emotional content of the issue can create a moral conviction that the issue needs to be resolved at any cost. Tactics that would otherwise be called into question can then be employed to resolve the issue. This sets precedent for the future use of those tactics in other arenas.”

Ze Frank (1972) American online performance artist

http://www.zefrank.com/wiki/index.php/the_show:_06-29-06
"The Show" (www.zefrank.com/theshow/)

Question , Future

“Get wealth if you can by honorable means, and if it do not cost too much. A true cultivation of the mind is fitted to forward you in your worldly concerns, and you ought to use it for this end. Only, beware lest this end master you; lest your motives sink as your condition improves; lest you fall victims to the miserable passion of vying with those around you in show, luxury, and expense. Cherish a true respect for yourselves. Feel that your nature is worth more than every thing which is foreign to you.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Feeling , Motivation , Nature , Passion

“Contemporary liberals think of rights as universal human attributes that can be respected anywhere, but here they show a characteristic disregard of history. Current understandings of human rights developed along with the modern nation-state. It was the nation-state that emancipated individuals from the communal ties of medieval times and created freedom as it has come to be known in the modern world. This was not done without enormous conflict and severe costs. Large-scale violence was an integral feature of the process. If the US became a modern nation only after a civil war, France did so only after the Napoleonic wars and Germany after two world wars and the Cold War. In Africa and the Balkans the struggle for nationhood has run in parallel with ethnic cleansing, while the welding of China into a nation that is underway today involves the suppression of Muslim minorities and something not far from genocide in Tibet.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Armed Missionaries: Missionary Liberalism, Liberal Imperialism (pp. 238-9)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

War , World , History , Communication

“It is an easy and patriotic matter for the lawyer, minister, professor, employer, or investor, placed above the arena of competition, to proclaim the equal right of all races to American opportunities; to avow his own willingness to give way should even a better Chinaman, Hindu, or Turk come in to take his place; and to rebuke the racial hatred of those who resist this displacement. His patriotism and world-wide brotherhood cost him and his family nothing, and indeed they add to his profits and leisure.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

pgs. 115-16.
Races and Immigrants in America, 1907

World , Family , Way

“In my opinion the Government can do more to remedy the economic ills of the people by a system of rigid economy in public expenditure than can be accomplished through any other action. The costs of our national and local governments combined now stand at a sum close to $100 for each inhabitant of the land. A little less than one-third of this is represented by national expenditure, and a little more than two-thirds by local expenditure. It is an ominous fact that only the National Government is reducing its debt. Others are increasing theirs at about $1,000,000,000 each year. The depression that overtook business, the disaster experienced in agriculture, the lack of employment and the terrific shrinkage in all values which our country experienced in a most acute form in 1920, resulted in no small measure from the prohibitive taxes which were then levied on all productive effort. The establishment of a system of drastic economy in public expenditure, which has enabled us to pay off about one-fifth of the national debt since 1919, and almost cut in two the national tax burden since 1921, has been one of the main causes in reestablishing a prosperity which has come to include within its benefits almost every one of our inhabitants. Economy reaches everywhere. It carries a blessing to everybody.”

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)

People , Business , Effort , Country

“I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. No more running — from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this earth. I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much! Do you hear me? It cost too much.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Beloved (1987)

Tree , Housing , Daughters

“In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Problem of Pain

The Problem of Pain (1940)

God , Forgiveness , Hell , Question

“Does the critic wish to influence the kind of film that costs more than £250,000? It is as if he were to send a postcard to General Motors explaining that he would like them to make a raft next year, or a helicopter, instead of a car.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

"Footnote on Cinema" (undated), p. 260
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

Cars

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow…… [Continued in another tweet 9 minutes later] …. Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U. S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming….. [after another 4 minutes] …. victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Series https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890193981585444864 of https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890196164313833472 tweets https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890197095151546369 by @realDonaldTrump. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, subsequently wrote to senior commanders https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/us/politics/transgender-military-trump-ban.html that "We will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect" until the White House sends the Defense Department new rules and the secretary of defense issues new guidelines. (26 July 2017)
2010s, 2017, July

Decision , Victory

“The assertion that a problem unstated is a problem unsolved seem to have escaped many builders… All too often, design and implementation begins before the real needs and system functions are fully known. The results are skyrocketing costs, missed scheduled, waste and duplication, disgruntled users and endless series of patches and repairs euphemistically called "systems maintenance"”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

D.T. Ross and K.E. Schoman (1977) "Structured analysis for requirements definition" IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. Vol 3. (1) p. 6-15; as cited in: G. Agyekum-Mensah et al. (2012) "Adaption of structured analysis design techniques methodology for construction project planning".

Problem

“In discussing the distinction between minor inventions, whose cumulative impact is decisive in productivity growth, and major technological breakthroughs, it may be useful to draw an analogy between the history of technology and the modem theory of evolution ( … ) Some biologists distinguish between micromutations, which are small changes in an existing species and which gradually alter its features, and macromutations, which creates new species. The distinction between the two could provide a useful analogy for our purposes. I define micro inventions as the small, incremental steps that improve, adapt an extremeline existing techniques already in use, reducing costs, improving form and function, increasing durability, and reducing energy and raw material requirements. Macroinventions, on the other hand, are those inventions in which a radical new idea, without clear precedent, emerges more or less ab nihilo. In terms of sheer numbers, micro inventions are far more frequent and account for most gains in productivity. Macroinventions, however, are equally crucial in technological history.”

Joel Mokyr (1946) Israeli American economic historian

Source: The lever of riches: Technological creativity and economic progress, 1992, p. 12-13 as cited in: Pol, Eduardo, and Peter Carroll. "Innovation heterogeneity and schumpeterian growth models." (2004): 1.

History , Idea , Decision , Change

“Why is it that once having decided what I must do, I'm afraid to reexamine my decision? Maybe because the original decision cost me so much that I didn’t want to go through it again.”

John Varley (1947) American science fiction author

"The Persistence of Vision"

Decision

“I have never hidden behind a pseudonym to say what I think. I have been one of the rare western journalists to defend Hindus. I have done it openly, in my own name, with dedication and courage and that has cost me a lot.”

François Gautier (1959) French journalist

As quoted in "An Irritant Foreign Body" http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/an-irritant-foreign-body/601585/0, The Indian Express (8 April 2010)

Courage , Thinking

“Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, "that," said he, "the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no further with me."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

50 Alcibiades
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

Dogs

“Remember the $5 billion Web site? $5 billion we spent on a Web site, and to this day it doesn't work. A $5 billion Web site. I have so many Web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a Web site. It costs me $3.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

People

“There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always—always—returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred.
Not this time. Not ever again.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 30 (p. 237)

Love , God , People , Search

“Let's bear in mind that the chances to multiply wealth are unlimited. All people can become rich. There is an error in our understandings - that all people cannot become equally rich. Wealth can not exist where the people are busy with mutual cheating, have no time for creating values and wealth. It is remarkable that we can find the greatest number of wealthy tradesmen and a population on a high standard of living in countries with a high level of business morality. On the other hand, we can find poor tradesmen and entrepreneurs and an impoverished population in countries with a low standard of business morality. This is natural because these people concentrate on cheating one another instead of trying to create value.
We are granting you the profit share not because we feel a need to give money to the people just out of the goodness of the heart. No, we are aiming at other goals by this step. By this measure we want to reach a further decrease of production costs. We want to reach the situation that the shoes are cheaper and workers earn even more. We think that our products are still too expensive and worker's salary too low.”

Tomáš Baťa (1876–1932) Czech businessman

Attributed to Tomáš Baťa in: Rybka, Zdeněk. Principles of the Bata Management System. Tomas Bata University, Faculty of Management and Economics, 2013.
Attributed to Tomas Bata

Money , People , Shoe , Error

“Social costs… are all direct and indirect losses sustained by third persons or the general public as a result of unrestrained economic activities.”

Karl William Kapp (1910–1976) American economist

Source: Social Costs of Business Enterprise, 1963, p. 12. Cited in: M. Rangone & S. Solari (2012) "Southern European capitalism and the social costs of business enterprise". in: Studi e Note di Economia, Anno XVII, n. 1-2012, pp. 3-28

Loss , Personality

“In the long run, competitiveness derives from an ability to build, at lower cost and more speedily than competitors, the core competencies that spawn unanticipated products.”

Gary Hamel (1954) American management expert

Source: "The Core Competence of the Corporation," 1990, p. 4

“How much do you think it costs to go to college? Most people are likely to answer by adding together their expenditures on tuition, room and board, books, and the like, and then deducting any scholarship funds they may receive. Suppose that amount comes to $15,000.
Economists keep score differently. They first want to know how much you would be earning if you were not attending college. Suppose that salary is $20,000 per year. This may seem irrelevant, but because you give up these earnings by attending college, they must be added to your tuition bill. You have that much less income because of your education. On the other side of the ledger, economists would not count all of the university’s bill for room and board as part of the costs of your education. They would want to know how much more it costs you to live at school rather than at home. Economists would count only these extra costs as an educational expense because you would have incurred these costs whether or not you attend college. On balance, college is probably costing you much more than you think. And, as we will see later, taking opportunity cost into account in any personal planning will help you to make more rational decisions.”

William J. Baumol (1922–2017) American economist

William Baumol and Alan Blinder, Economics: Principles and Policy (2011), Ch. 1 : What is Economics?

People , Books , Education , School

“The present estimated margin between public receipts and expenditures for this fiscal year is very small. Perhaps the most important work that this session of the Congress can do is to continue a policy of economy and further reduce the cost of government, in order that we may have a reduction of taxes for the next fiscal year. Nothing is more likely to produce that public confidence which is the forerunner and the mainstay of prosperity, encourage and enlarge business opportunity with ample opportunity for employment at good wages, provide a larger market for agricultural products, and put our country in a stronger position to be able to meet the world competition in trade, than a continuing policy of economy. Of course necessary costs must be met, proper functions of the Government performed, and constant investments for capital account and reproductive effort must be carried on by our various departments. But the people must know that their Government is placing upon them no unnecessary burden.”

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)

People , World , Confidence , Business

“Americanization having its roots in political ideals cannot be achieved so long as these ideals, as interpreted by the sources of authority in America, mean one thing for the native-born and another thing for the foreign-born; one thing for men and another for women; one thing for employers and another for employees; one thing for the rich and another for the poor; one thing in one State and another thing in an adjoining State. No American who hopes for national unity can spend too much time insisting upon the most painstaking interpretation of the guarantees of American law, even though it takes him into such technical matters as interpreter service, cost of appeals, discriminatory laws, and race prejudices. Every support of a sound Americanism is strong or weak according as justice is done or not done.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Women , Men , Justice , Law

“[Unplugged] was also the cheapest to produce and required the least amount of preparation and work. But if you want to know what it actually cost me, go to Ripley and visit the grave of my son.”

Eric Clapton (1945) English musician, singer, songwriter, and guitarist

"Clapton: The Autobiography"

“The size of a firm influences its competitive policies in a number of ways. In the first place the scale of its purchases and sales relative to the total volume of transactions in the firm's market is one indication of the extent of its market control. Taken in conjunction with other data it may throw a good deal of light on price and production policies. Certain authorities, on the other hand, brush aside figures on the relative size of firms as irrelevant and emphasize the decisive importance of the elasticity of the firm's demand curve. 3 It would no doubt be extremely convenient if economists knew the shape of individual demand and cost curves and could proceed forthwith, by comparisons of price and marginal cost, to conclusions regarding the existing degree of monopoly power. The extent to which the monopoly theorists, however, refrain from an empirical application of their formulae is rather striking.”

Edward S. Mason (1899–1992) American economist

Source: "Price and production policies of large-scale enterprise," 1939, p. 62

Way , Decision , Light

“Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), pp. 4-5

Life , Death , Men , Pain

“Another test came slightly later in Jammu and Kashmir which a Hindu prince had managed to save from the Islamic monster in spite of machinations by Mountbatten and British die-hards, and in the face of undisguised hostility from a Soviet stooge masquerading as the Prime Minister of India. But a large part of that precious patrimony was soon surrendered to Islamic imperialism in order to demonstrate India’s ‘democratic’ credentials before an international opinion which wondered for quite some time why India was smitten with such a grave sense of guilt. The rest of the region, which had been saved by a brave soldiery at the cost of so much blood and toil, was handed over to a haughty sheikh who had never hidden his intention of setting up a separate sultanate. The Valley was very soon barred even to the sons of the soil who had to flee from their homes in the Pakistan-occupied parts of Jammu and Kashmir.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Hostility , Home , Sense , Time

“Instead of the dormers, skylights… are easier to make and operate, need no double sash, cost less, and some may prefer their appearance.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Appearance

“An economy based on information, with its tendency to zero-cost products and weak property rights, cannot be a capitalist economy.”

Paul Mason (journalist) book PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future

PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future (2015)

“When people are afraid of the truth they've got nowhere to turn. All they have at their disposal is censorship and denial. And Swedish politicians are so deep in denial you can only feel pity for them, because you know that in some dark chamber of their subconscious these wretched people know what a terrible thing they're doing, and they know that history is going to revile them and their entire generation for it. But they just can't face up to it. Psychologically, they are simply not big enough as people to acknowledge, let alone confront, the enormity of their mistake. They've backed themselves into an ideological corner where their only option now is to double down on the insanity and brazen it out until the bitter end, while criminalising anyone who draws attention to it. Whatever social upheaval it may cause, and whatever the cost to Sweden's women, mass Islamic immigration must continue. Any restriction would be an admission that there's a problem, and that would fatally undermine everything they're so desperately pretending to believe in… If you say there's a problem, you'll be treated as a criminal – which means that there are now two problems. One: the Swedish people have an aggressive social cancer growing in their midst; and two: they're not allowed to talk about it.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sweden Goes Insane" (19 May 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_znVnOizU8
2014

Women , People , Truth , Feeling

“Not prayer without faith, nor faith without prayer, but prayer in faith, is the cost of spiritual gifts and graces.”

Henry Clay Trumbull (1830–1903) Union Army chaplain

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 221.

Faith

“29 million people have no health insurance today in America. We pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. One out of five Americans can't even afford the prescriptions their doctors are writing. Millions of people have high deductibles and co-payments. I don't know what economists Secretary Clinton is talking to, but what I have said, is that the family right in the middle of the economy would pay $500 dollars more in taxes, and get a reduction in their healthcare costs of $5,000 dollars. In my view healthcare is a right of all people, not a privilege, and I will fight for that.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2010s, 2016, Democratic Presidential Debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (11 February 2016)

People , Health , World , Family

“I have three objections to my honourable Friend’s wider proposal that exchange control powers be used to require the fixing of exchange by merchants on entering into both export and import contracts. The first is that I think it excessively paternalistic to require a merchant to protect himself against a risk he is prepared to take. Secondly, I think it wrong to impose a condition which is likely to cause one group of merchants a loss, for the purpose of providing the other group with protection at no cost to them. Thirdly, I do not think it is in fact practicable to enforce such a system. I am sorry to be so negative, but I am sure that the solution to my honourable Friend’s problem should not depend on compulsion but on the provision of voluntary protection on insurance principles.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

March 27, 1968, page 208.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Problem , Thinking , Loss , Dependency

“So what's the cost of the culture of corruption? Of people giving breaks to the oil companies and giving giveaways and Christmas presents to the drug companies and the insurance companies? The cost is $90 billion a year. There you go. Quantifiable.”

Amy Klobuchar (1960) United States Senator from Minnesota

Quoted in [interview with Jonathan Singer, Conversation with MN-Sen Candidate Amy Klobuchar, MyDD, February 23 2006, http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/2/23/12158/1447, 2007-02-25]
2006

People , Christmas

“I have no idea whether my grandfather took notice of everything in it, or nothing. If he believed at all, he was just like those theologians who store their theology somewhere in a locked compartment of the brain, or rather, perhaps, like those travelers who carry a bottle of iodine in their luggage and take care to keep it tightly corked in case it leaks and ruins their belongings. To be honest, I think my grandfather Björn of Brekkukot would not have been significantly different if he had lived here in Iceland in pagan times, or if his home had been somewhere in the world where people never read from Vídalín's Book of Sermons but believed instead in the bull Apis, or the god Ra, or the bird Colibri.... "A Bible that costs half a hen? Pshaw!"”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

God , People , Books , World

“It is in this way that all my books have been composed. They were always written at least twice over; a first draft of the entire work was completed to the very end of the subject, then the whole begun again de novo; but incorporating, in the second writing, all sentences and parts of sentences of the old draft, which appeared as suitable to my purpose as anything which I could write in lieu of them. I have found great advantages in this system of double redaction. It combines, better than any other mode of composition, the freshness and vigour of the first conception, with the superior precision and completeness resulting from prolonged thought. In my own case, moreover, I have found that the patience necessary for a careful elaboration of the details of composition and expression, costs much less effort after the entire subject has been once gone through, and the substance of all that I find to say has in some manner, however imperfect, been got upon paper.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/222/mode/1up p. 222

Effort , Parting , Books , Way

“Rebuild the country's infrastructure. Nobody can do that like me. Believe me. It will be done on time, on budget, way below cost, way below what anyone ever thought. I look at the roads being built all over the country, and I say I can build those things for one-third. What they do is unbelievable, how bad.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

Way , Time , Country

“Status is dependent in the long run upon high class position — the maintenance of a prestigious style of life costs money — there is no necessary correspondence between them at any given time.”

Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist

Source: Class and society (1959), p. 48.

Life , Money , Time , Dependency

“Software Engineering Economics is an invaluable guide to determining software costs, applying the fundamental concepts of microeconomics to software engineering, and utilizing economic analysis in software engineering decision making.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Barry W. Boehm (1981) Software engineering economics. Abstract.

Decision

“The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done.”

Lawrence Lessig book Free Culture

Free Culture (2004)

Justice , Thinking

“On a second front, a powerful new technology platform is developing out of the bowels of the Second Industrial Revolution, speeding the central contradiction of capitalist ideology to the end game mentioned above. The coming together of the Communications Internet with the fledgling Energy Internet and Logistics Internet in a seamless twenty-first-century intelligent infrastructure—the Internet of Things (IoT)—is giving rise to a Third Industrial Revolution. The Internet of Things is already boosting productivity to the point where the marginal cost of producing many goods and services is nearly zero, making them practically free. The result is corporate profits are beginning to dry up, property rights are weakening, and an economy based on scarcity is slowly giving way to an economy of abundance.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

Way , Game , Intelligence , Communication

“A military junta is the herald communism. The failure to realize this axiomatic fact is the cause of the confusion in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Military rule turns the people totally and irrevocably against the bemedalled generals and their patrons. Where else can the people turn? If freedom, democracy and the rights of man are to be put on the counter to see whether copper and coffee is to cost ten cents more or ten cents less and bargained away with so little consideration, then freedom is a very cheap commodity and the rights of man are not worth a nickel.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979) Fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan

Source: Letter to his daughter (1978), p. 68

People , Democracy , Communication , Coffee

“However, even those who expect deterrence to work might hesitate at introducing a new weapon system that increased the reliability of deterrence, but at the cost of increasing the possible casualties by a factor of 10, that is, there would then be one or two billion hostages at risk if their expectations fail. Neither the 180 million Americans nor even the half billion people in the NATO alliance should or would be willing to design and procure a security system in which a malfunction or failure would cause the death of one or two billion people. If the choice were made explicit, the United States or NATO would seriously consider "lower quality" systems; i. e., systems which were less deterring, but whose consequences were less catastrophic if deterrence failed. They would even consider such possibilities as a dangerous degree of partial or complete unilateral disarmament, if there were no other acceptable postures. The West might be willing to procure a military system which, if used in a totally irrational and unrealistic way, could cause such damage, but only if all of the normal or practically conceivable abnormal ways of operating the system would not do anything like the hypothesized damage. On the other hand, we would not let the Soviets cynically blackmail us into accommodation by a threat on their part to build a Doomsday Machine, even though we would not consciously build a strategic system which inevitably forced the Soviets to build a Doomsday Machine in self-defense.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

Death , People , Way , Failure

“And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of military government in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries. Now let me tell you the truth about it. They must see Americans as strange liberators. Do you realize that the Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945, after a combined French and Japanese occupation. And incidentally, this was before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. And this is a little known fact, these people declared themselves independent in 1945, they quoted our Declaration of Independence in their document of freedom. And yet our government refused to recognize, President Truman said they were not ready for independence. So we failed victim as a nation at that time of the same deadly arrogance that has poisoned the international situation for all of these years. France then set out to reconquer its former colony. And they fought eight long, hard, brutal years, trying to reconquer Vietnam. You know who helped France? It was the United States of America, it came to the point that we were meeting more than 80% of the war cost. And even when France started despairing of its reckless action, we did not. And in 1954, a conference was called at Geneva, and an agreement was reached, because France had been defeated at Dien Bien Phu. But even after that and even after the Geneva Accord, we did not stop. We must face the sad fact that our government sought in a real sense to sabotage the Geneva Accord. Well, after the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva agreement. But instead the United States came and started supporting a man named Diem, who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the world. He set out to silence all opposition, people were brutally murdered merely because they raised their voices against the brutal policies of Diem. And the peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States influence, and then by increasing numbers of United States troops, who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace. And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It's a man by the name of General Ky, who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we're supporting in Vietnam today. Oh, our government, and the press generally, won't tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

Life , God , War , People

“There are sneakers that cost more than an iPod.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

On the iPod's $300 price tag, as quoted in Newsweek (27 October 2003)
2000s

“Thus the facilities (of the Advocates' Library), which in England were provided at the taxpayers' expense in the British Museum, were in Scotland afforded entirely at the cost of the Scottish Bar… Much the greater part of their annual income was expended in maintaining it.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 234

Parting

“What is the "cost of capital" to a, firm in a world in which funds are used to acquire assets whose yields are uncertain; and in which capital can be obtained by many different media, ranging from pure debt instruments, representing money-fixed claims, to pure equity issues, giving holders only the right to a pro-rata share in the uncertain venture? This question has vexed at least three classes of economists: (1) the corporation finance specialist concerned with the techniques of financing firms so as to ensure their survival and growth; (2) the managerial economist concerned with capital budgeting; and (3) the economic theorist concerned with explaining investment behavior at both the micro and macro levels.”

Franco Modigliani (1918–2003) Italian-American economist

Franco Modigliani and Merton H. Miller. "The cost of capital, corporation finance and the theory of investment." The American economic review (1958): 261-297.

Money , World , Behavior , Question

“In any case the road to success is pictured as one beset with perils but which, it would seem, an individual with the proper qualities can overcome to attain the goal. The reward is seen in the distance; the way is lonely. Further on it is a route for wolves; one can succeed only at the cost of the failure of others.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Way , Failure , Success

“Surely you can understand the confusion, considering Donald Trump never voted for the Iraq War — Hillary Clinton did — and then she didn’t support the troops to have what they need, it was under Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, that changed the rules of engagements that probably cost his life.”

Katrina Pierson (1976) Political spokesperson

In an interview with CNN host Wolf Blitzer about the statements of Donald Trump on the family of the fallen Captain Humayun S. M. Khan — Trump spokeswoman blames Obama for 2004 death of Captain Khan http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/trump-spokeswoman-blames-obama-for-2004-death-of-capt-khan-226598, Politico (August 2, 2016)

Life , War , Understanding , Support

“I have endeavoured to attain this end (viz. the production of a vacuum in the cylinder) in another way. As water has the property of elasticity, when converted into steam by heat, and afterwards of being so completely recondensed by cold, that there does not remain the least appearance of this elasticity, I have thought that it would not be difficult to work machines in which, by means of a moderate heat and at a small cost, water might produce that perfect vacuum which has vainly been sought by means of gunpowder.”

Denis Papin (1647–1713) French physicist, mathematician and inventor

Denis Papin, Recueil de diverses Pièces touchant quelques nouvelles Machines (1695) p. 53 as quoted by Dionysius Lardner, The Steam Engine Explained and Illustrated (1840) pp. 45-46

Way , Water , Appearance , Perfection

“I want to thank Sian [Berry, Green Party] and Lindsey [German, Left List] and Alan [Craig, Christian Peoples Party] and Gerard [Batten, UKIP], who have sometimes joined us for hustings, but mainly I want to thank my two colleagues in the strange triumvirate who have been trundling around London's church halls and TV studios violently disputing the meaning of multiculturalism and the exact cost of conductors. On which point I think I'm going to declare victory.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

2000s, 2008, First Speech As London Mayor (May 3, 2008)

People , Thinking , Victory

“This criticism is ridiculous. The twenty-five hundreth anniversary celebration cost me less than the inauguration of each new president of the United States.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Gérard de Villiers (1975), The Imperial Shah: An Informal Biography, page 284
The twenty-five hundreth anniversary celebrations of Persian monarchy, taking place on October 12–16, 1971, were estimated to cost 100 million dollars.
Attributed

“And, having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.”

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) English novelist

Source: How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day (1910), Chapter 12.

Confidence , Self-confidence

“The reported backlog of 40,000 classrooms is unjustifiable. At a cost of P500,000 per classroom, it would cost only P20 billion to build everything. That's only one year's income of PAGCOR. I am incredulous how the future of millions of Filipino children has been irretrievably lost because of the insatiable greed of those in power.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

Children , Future

“As contractors began to understand project management better and stronger cost control became a requirement, the definition of success changed. Success came to be defined as accomplishing the effort on time, within budget, and at an acceptable level of quality.”

Harold Kerzner (1940) American engineer, management consultant

Source: In search of excellence in project management (1998), p. 24

Understanding , Effort , Change , Time

“Another method of escaping moral responsibility is to run with the crowd. The crowd never considers consequences; it is bent upon vindicating its principles at any cost. It is anonymous; in it the individual may not be held to account.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 195

“The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.

In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

[2008-11-19, Let Detroit Go Bankrupt, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html]
2008

Fate , Cars

“The very wise and wealthy financiers of the world--going way back, even before Rothschild's time--have observed that the world was a pretty rocky place to live in, and that nations were always fighting over something or other, there was always somebody who was trying to conquer somebody else, and wars were universal. Too bad about that, but that's the way it is. So we--the bankers--found out that if we loan money to them that we'll get paid back - they don't question what the interest rate is because they're fighting a war! And if they can win the war they can just plunder the victim and pay us whatever we want out of the plunder - it doesn't cost them anything really. Then the issue comes up of what happens if one of these nations decides not to pay us? Ah! The answer is very simple: if they refuse to pay us back we'll finance an opposing nation, a revolutionary group somewhere else to become an enemy of that nation and attack it, and destroy it, invade it. We'll create another war, in other words, in order to get our money back, we'll finance this side to attack that side. And so, by financing all sides in a war, and keeping the world divided up into warring fractions so that no one unit is particularly stronger than the other, the banks can continue to finance all sides of wars forever, and always collect their interest, because they have the ability of putting one nation against another nation against another nation to collect their debts.”

G. Edward Griffin (1931) American conspiracy theorist, film producer, author, and political lecturer

From the documentary Corporate Fascism: The Destruction of America's Middle Class (2011) http://www.youtube.com/embed/hTbvoiTJKIs?autoplay=1&start=2094&end=2183

Money , War , World , Way

“Even the matter of religious liberty, which has cost the world more tears, more blood and more agony, than any other interest, will be helped by his presence. I know of no church, however tolerant; of no priesthood, however enlightened, which could be safely trusted with the tremendous power which universal conformity would confer. We should welcome all men of every shade of religious opinion, as among the best means of checking the arrogance and intolerance which are the almost inevitable concomitants of general conformity. Religious liberty always flourishes best amid the clash of competition of rival religious creeds.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men , World , Tear , Universe

“It is possible to regulate watercourses over any given distance without embankment works; to transport timber and other materials, even when heavier than water, for example ore, stones, etc., down the centre of such water-courses; to raise the height of the water table in the surrounding countryside and to endow the water with all those elements necessary for the prevailing vegetation. Furthermore it is possible in this way to render timber and other such materials non-inflammable and rot resistant; to produce drinking and spa-water for man, beast and soil of any desired composition and performance artificially, but in the way that it occurs in Nature; to raise water in a vertical pipe without pumping devices; to produce any amount of electricity and radiant energy almost without cost; to raise soil quality and to heal cancer, tuberculosis and a variety of nervous disorders… the practical implementation of this … would without doubt signify a complete reorientation in all areas of science and technology. By application of these new found laws, I have already constructed fairly large installations in the spheres of log-rafting and river regulation, which as is known, have functioned faultlessly for a decade, and which today still present insoluble enigmas to the various scientific disciplines concerned.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger: Our Senseless Toil (1934)

Law , Way , Drink , Nature

“A city that pretends to be nothing but what it is, an enormous machine of exchange - of spectacle for money, of sensation for money, of money for more money, of pleasure for whatever be tomorrow's abstract cost.”

David Foster Wallace book Consider the Lobster

Big Red Son, on Las Vegas, NV
Consider the Lobster (2007)

Money , Pleasure

“Politicians may initially find it difficult to accept new standards of public accountability, but we must make the costs of not doing so even greater. The best way to do this is by publicly embarrassing and shaming those officials and departments who refuse to answer to the public.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 286.
Your Right to Know: A Citizen's Guide to the Freedom of Information Act, 2nd Edition

Way

“There's nothing to gain when there's nothing to be lost.
There's nothing to gain if you stay behind and count the cost.
Make the decision that you can be who you can be,
You can be.
Tasting the fruit come to the Liberty Tree.”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Shaking the Tree
Song lyrics, Shaking the Tree (1990)

Decision , Tree

“You're going to have a deportation force, and you're going to do it humanely and you're going to bring the country -- and, frankly, the people, because you have some excellent, wonderful people, some fantastic people hat have been here for a long period of time. Don't forget, Mika, that you have millions of people that are waiting in line to come into this country and they're waiting to come in legally. And I always say the wall, we're going to build the wall. It's going to be a real deal. It's going to be a real wall. There was a picture in one of the magazines where they had a wall this tall and they were taking drugs over the wall. They built a ramp over the wall and the truck was going up and down. They were using it like a highway; the wall is like a highway. It's not going to happen. It's going to be a Trump wall. It's going to be a real wall. And it's going to stop people and it's going to be good. But your friend Thomas Friedman called me and said, hah, there should be a big door. I said going to be a big door. I love the expression. There's going to be a big beautiful nice door. People are going to come in and they're going to come in legally. But we have no choice. Otherwise, we don't have a country. We don't even know how many people. We don't know if it's 8 million or if it's 20 million. We have no idea how many people are in our country. And then you see what happened with Kate in San Francisco. You see what happens with all of the things going on, all of the tremendous crime going on. It costs us $200 billion a year for illegal immigration right now. $200 billion a year, maybe $250, maybe $300. They don't even know. We're going to stop it. We're going to run it properly and we're going to stop it.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

On his immigration plan (2015 November 11)
2010s, 2015

Love , People , Beauty , Idea

“Because, Renisenb, it is so easy and it costs so little labour to write down ten bushels of barley, or a hundred head of cattle, or ten fields of spelt - and the thing that is written will come to seem like the real thing, and so the writer and the scribe will come to despise the man who ploughs the fields and reaps the barley and raises the cattle - but all the same the fields and the cattle are real - they are not just marks of inks on papyrus. And when all the records and all the papyrus rolls are destroyed and the scribes are scattered, the men who toil and reap will go on, and Egypt will still live.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Hori
(1945)

Men

“Everything has altered its dimensions, except the world we live in. The more we know of that, the smaller it seems. Time and distance have been abridged, remote countries have become accessible, and the antipodes are upon visiting terms. There is a reunion of the human race; and the family resemblance now that we begin to think alike, dress alike, and live alike, is very striking. The South Sea Islanders, and the inhabitants of China, import their fashions from Paris, and their fabrics from Manchester, while Rome and London supply missionaries to the ‘ends of the earth,’ to bring its inhabitants into ‘one fold, under one Shepherd.’ Who shall write a book of travels now? Livingstone has exhausted the subject. What field is there left for a future Munchausen? The far West and the far East have shaken hands and pirouetted together, and it is a matter of indifference whether you go to the moors in Scotland to shoot grouse, to South America to ride and alligator, or to Indian jungles to shoot tigers-there are the same facilities for reaching all, and steam will take you to either with the equal ease and rapidity. We have already talked with New York; and as soon as our speaking-trumpet is mended shall converse again. ‘To waft a sigh from Indus to the pole,’ is no longer a poetic phrase, but a plain matter of fact of daily occurrence. Men breakfast at home, and go fifty miles to their counting-houses, and when their work is done, return to dinner. They don’t go from London to the seaside, by way of change, once a year; but they live on the coast, and go to the city daily. The grand tour of our forefathers consisted in visiting the principle cities of Europe. It was a great effort, occupied a vast deal of time, cost a large sum of money, and was oftener attended with danger than advantage. It comprised what was then called, the world: whoever had performed it was said to have ‘seen the world,’ and all that it contained. The Grand Tour now means a voyage round the globe, and he who has not made it has seen nothing.”

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian-British politician, judge, and author

The Season-Ticket, An Evening at Cork 1860 p. 1-2.

Men , Money , Books , World

“Even if drugs are fully as destructive as they are usually claimed to be, it is morally wrong — and demonstrably more destructive — for government to deprive people of their unalienable, individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to make an utter mess of their own lives. Since human beings are inclined to learn more from the mistakes they make, rather than from their triumphs, the right to fail, for individuals and groups alike, may be even more important than the right to succeed, and it must be fiercely protected at almost any cost.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Some Random Thoughts About the War On Drugs" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle574-20100613-02.html 13 June 2010.

People , Learning

“But we lay people are not less called to the Christian life, in which the critical question is: "Where does the compass-needle of your mind and will point?" This is tested above all by our reactions when it costs or threatens to cost something to be a Christian. One should be glad if it does, rather than complain! If we will not let it cost anything; if we succumb to the threat of "losing our life", then our religion is indistinguishable from pure worldliness.”

G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001) British analytic philosopher

Contraception and Chastity (1975)

Life , People , Religion , Question

““She cost you more”
“I know,” said the trick. “How much?”
“You tell me,” she said, thinking he might be a cop setting her up. That kind of thing still happened whenever the religious authorities ran out of infidels to persecute.”

George Alec Effinger book When Gravity Fails

Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 2 (p. 17).

Thinking

“Software patents may be used as a form of outright coercion, providing protection against theft of ideas as a potentially high cost to future inventors.”

Nathaniel Borenstein (1957) American computer scientist

[Borenstein, Nathaniel S., Programming as if people mattered : friendly programs, software engineering, and other noble delusions, 1991, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 9780691087528, 53, 4. print.]
Attributed

Idea , Future

“Most business executives accept that bribes and grease money are costs of doing business in "soft "states.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

Money , Business

“Pride in one’s work carries with it a determination to accept the demands imposed by that work: in the case of philosophy to follow the argument where it leads, in the case of history to discover what actually happened, in the case of literature to explore to its depths a particular theme. In consequence, this sort of pride demands freedom: it has to be laid low in any authoritarian State. The historian, in such a system, has to conform to official interpretations of the past, the philosopher to dogmas, the writer to stereotypes of human action, the craftsman to “production-schedules.” More subtly, attempts are made to lay pride low in a consumer’s society: the film-director, the novelist, the craftsman are called upon to produce “what will sell” at whatever cost to their pride in workmanship.”

John Passmore (1914–2004) Australian philosopher

Source: The Perfectibility of Man (1971), p. 290.

History , Literature , Freedom , Past

“Because of smart policies, Finland is able to spend less per student than do Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the United States on all levels, with much better outcomes. The good news for America, though, is that for precisely this reason, Finland is an encouraging example for any country that is facing diminished budgets. […] One area in which Finns excel is cutting administrative costs. It turns out that Finns did not invent most of the education policies they are currently using. Americans did. Child-centered education, problem solving-based learning, educating people for democratic life—these are all ideas introduced by American thinkers. […] It doesn’t seem, then, like much of a stretch to suggest that the United States could borrow smart ideas about education from Finland.”

Anu Partanen (1975) journalist

Source: The Nordic Theory of Everything, Chapter 4

Life , People , Education , Idea

“The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year… Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer.”

Gordon Moore (1929) American businessman, co-founder of Intel and author of the eponym law

[1965, ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles-Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf, Cramming more components onto integrated circuits, PDF, 4, Electronics Magazine, 3 February 2010]

“What, exactly, is the cost of this inaction? Estimates of the total national cost of medical malpractice range from $20 billion to $45 billion annually. But this number hardly tells the whole story. There also is the more hidden cost of defensive medicine, including unnecessary testing and second opinions that send patients scurrying through processes that would not otherwise be ordered and deepen the financial burden of America’s health care system by an estimated three percent of our country’s total health care expenditures. Who ultimately pays these costs? Reckless doctors? Faceless insurance companies? Seldom mentioned, the totality of these expenses ultimately falls exclusively on the consumer, since each malpractice award translates ultimately to increased malpractice insurance premiums, which, in turn, translates to either higher health care costs, fewer physicians (with less competitive pricing pressure), or both.”

Michael Johns (1964) American businessman

"Malpractice: Where Will It End?" Orthopedic Technology Review, September/October 2003, by Michael Johns: Advocating Statutory Constraints on Medical Malpractice

Health , Country

“Leisure is permissible, we understand, because it costs money; idleness is not, because it doesn’t. Leisure is focused; whatever thinking it requires is absorbed by a certain task: sinking that putt, making that cast, watching that flat-screen TV. Idleness is unconstrained, anarchic. Leisure—particularly if it involves some kind of high-priced technology—is as American as a Fourth of July barbecue. Idleness, on the other hand, has a bad attitude. It doesn’t shave; it’s not a member of the team; it doesn’t play well with others. It thinks too much, as my high school coach used to say. So it has to be ostracized.”

Mark Slouka (1958) author

Quitting the paint factory: On the virtues of idleness

Money , School , Understanding , Thinking

“There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Chapter XXXVII: Sunshine

Lovers , Happiness

“Microeconomics, including the study of individual choice and of group choice in market and nonmarket processes, has generally been considered a field science as distinct from an experimental science. Hence microeconomics has sometimes been classified as "non-experimental" and closer methodologically to meteorology and astronomy than to physics and experimental psychology (Marschak, 1950, p. 3; Samuelson, 1973, p. 7). But the question of using experimental or nonexperimental techniques is largely a matter of cost, and generally the cost of conducting the most ambitious and informative experiments in astronomy, meteorology, and economics varies from prohibitive down to considerable. The cost of experimenting with different solar system planetary arrangements, different atmospheric conditions, and different national unemployment rates, each under suitable controls, must be regarded as prohibitive.”

Vernon L. Smith (1927) American economist

Source: "Relevance of laboratory experiments to testing resource allocation theory," 1980, p. 345.

Question , Study , Science

“There are problems connected with infidelity and problems connected with being faithful at any cost, and I am for letting those concerned choose the problems they'd prefer. There need not be one rule for all. Infidelity is enlarging and fragmenting and very very dangerous, but it has been known to retrieve people as well as marriages, so it can't be only bad. And while a lot of women would probably consider it better to have the man they care about rip-off other women if he must but hurry home again, I think I'd rather he be concerned about the survival of the people he sleeps with, even those who are not me. Men who take advantage of one woman take advantage of them all, and if he's going to have an experience in which I can't share, then I'd rather it be a good one, so if there are any benefits to trickle down the spout they'll be the kind I'd want.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Women , Men , Marriage , People

“Webster defines profit as excess of value over cost, and gain as that which is obtained as an advantage. I have availed of this well-expressed though delicate distinction between the two terms, to coin a name for the system herein described, whereby to differentiate it from profit-sharing as ordinarily understood and practised. The right solution of this problem will manifestly consist in allotting to each member of the organization an interest in that portion of the profit fund which is or may be affected by his individual efforts or skill, and in protecting this interest against diminution resulting from the errors of others or other extraneous causes not under his control. Such a solution, while not simple, is attainable under many circumstances, and attainable by methods which experience has shown to be both practical and successful.”

Henry R. Towne (1844–1924) American engineer

Henry R. Towne. "Gain Sharing," Paper presented at the May, 1889, meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; Quoted in: Hugo Diemer, Factory organization and administration. 1921, p. 375-6

Error , Problem , Effort , Success

“Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won't survive. It's as large a change as when we first got the printed book. Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? And for the middle-class family, college education for their children is as much of a necessity as is medical care—without it the kids have no future. Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Higher education is in deep crisis.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Seeing things as they really are http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0310/5905122a_7.html, Forbes (March 10, 1997)
1990s and later

Children , Health , Books , Education

“What America needs is to hold to its ancient and well-charted course. Our country was conceived in the theory of local self-government. It has been dedicated by long practice to that wise and beneficent policy. It is the foundation principle of our system of liberty. It makes the largest promise to the freedom and development of the individual. Its preservation is worth all the effort and all the sacrifice that it may cost.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Effort , Freedom , Country

“It is literally true that the toleration of banks of paper discount costs the United States one-half their war taxes; or, in other words, doubles the expenses of every war. Now think but for a moment, what a change of condition that would be, which should save half our war expenses, require but half the taxes, and enthral us in debt but half the time.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

ME 13:364
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

War , Thinking , Change , Time

“Passion doesn't count the cost. … Passion is destructive.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge

p, 125
The Razor's Edge (1943)

Passion

“Mayor Macbeth, of Charleston, told General Howard that he did not believe that a bureau at Washington could manage the social relations of the people from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. But the answer to Mayor Macbeth is that he and his companions have managed those relations at a cost to the country of four years of civil war, three thousand millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of lives. The Freedmen's Bureau will hardly be as expensive as that. And while such a bureau merely defends the rights of a certain class under the laws, the aid societies give them that education which in the present state of local feeling would be inevitably withheld. The mighty arch of Sherman, wasting and taming the land, is followed by the noiseless steps of the band of unnamed heroes and heroines who are teaching the people. The soldier drew the furrow, the teacher drops the seed. There is many and many a devoted woman, hidden at this moment in the lowliest cabins of the South, whose name poets will not sing nor historians record, but whose patient toil the eye that marks the sparrow's fall beholds and approves. Not more noble, not more essential, was the work of the bravest and most famous of the heroes who fell in the wild storm of battle, than that of many a woman to us unknown, faithful through privation and exposure and disease, and perishing at the lonely outpost of duty in the act of helping the nation keep its word.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

War , People , Education , Disease

“The misleading character of the accident theory is evident from the fact that even now the “error” involved from the standpoint of U. S. policy-makers and American leaders generally is neither one of purpose nor method – it is strictly a case of unexpectedly large expense. For the U. S. leadership, in other words, Vietnam is simply another, painfully large “cost over-run.” In terms of basic U. S. objectives and methods employed, in the Third World – essentially establishment of reliable client states, increasingly managed by military elites, with generous financial and military support (arms, advisors, Green Berets, and more extensive military intervention when junta control is threatened, as in Santo Domingo) – Vietnam is a facet of a completely rational policy. The policy may be vicious and catastrophic, from the perspective of the Vietnamese; and it may be a sordid and disruptive waste of human and material resources from the standpoint of the real interests of the ordinary American; but to the Rostows, Westmorelands and Nixons, the Vietnam War is a noble endeavor (“one of our finest moments”) that we cannot afford to abandon without achieving our original ends. The evidence is compelling that this leadership is entirely capable of destroying every village in Vietnam (and in the process, every Vietnamese) if this is required to attain the original political objectives.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities, 1970, pp. 87-88.

War , World , Error , Support

“Lets you and I try to live on food stamps in New Jersey (high cost of living) and feed a family for a week or month. U game?”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

[Fallon, Kevin, Cory Booker Rescues a Freezing Dog & 9 Other Things He Has Saved, https://www.thedailybeast.com/cory-booker-rescues-a-freezing-dog-and-9-other-things-he-has-saved?ref=scroll, 21 August 2018, The Daily Beast, January 26, 2013]
Via Twitter, in response to a tweet asking "Why is there a family today that is ‘too poor’ to afford breakfast?" Booker would go on to do exactly that. He later told CBS that it had been a "terrible state of human existence", and continued "I'll be honest with you. I take so much for granted, even going to Starbucks and buying a cup of coffee is more than my daily food allowance right now," as quoted in [Bailey, Holly, Cory Booker’s week on food stamps: political ambition amid the burned sweet potatoes, https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/ticket/cory-booker-week-food-stamps-political-ambition-amid-101008142--election.html, 21 August 2018, Yahoo! News, December 11, 2012]
2012

Family , Food , Game

“Carbon prices must be raised to transmit the social costs of GHG emissions to the everyday decisions of billions of firms and people.”

William D. Nordhaus (1941) American economist

A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies (2008), p. 168

People , Decision

Quotes about cost page 6

Quotes about cost
page 6