Quotes about cost
page 8

Miguel de Cervantes photo

“It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Chap 11.
Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book IV

Thomas Sowell photo
Francesco Berni photo

“Of keeping silence few have paid the cost;
Of having said too much, a countless host.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Pochi si son del silenzio pentiti;
De l'aver troppo parlato, infmiti.
XLI, 3.
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Achim Steiner photo

“Restoration of peatlands is a low hanging fruit, and among the most cost-effective options for mitigating climate change.”

Achim Steiner (1961) German politician

IUCN UK Commission of Inquiry on Peatlands http://www.iucn-uk-peatlandprogramme.org/sites/all/files/IUCN%20UK%20Commission%20of%20Inquiry%20on%20Peatlands%20Full%20Report%20spv%20web.pdf Full Report, IUCN UK Peatland Programme (October 2011), page 8.

Steve King photo
George Soros photo
Russell Brand photo
John Vorster photo

“The government will not be intimidated. Orders have been given to maintain order at all costs.”

John Vorster (1915–1983) politician from South Africa and seventh Prime Minister of South Africa

On 18 June 1976 to parliament after the Soweto riots, as quoted in Down with Afrikaans - Oakes, D. (ed.), 1988. Illustrated history of South Africa – The real story, Reader’s Digest: Cape Town http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/down-afrikaans-oakes-d-ed1988-illustrated-history-south-africa-%26ndash%3B-real-story-reader%E2%80%99s-digest-, sahistory.org.za

David D. Friedman photo
Robert Burton photo

“Who cannot give good counsel? 'Tis cheap, it costs them nothing.”

Section 2, member 3, Air rectified. With a digression of the Air.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part II

Baba Amte photo
Frances Moore Lappé photo
Jean Chrétien photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
James Van Allen photo

“A man is a fabulous nuisance in space right now. He's not worth all the cost of putting him up there and keeping him comfortable and working.”

James Van Allen (1914–2006) American nuclear physicist

On men in space, Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

Amy Winehouse photo
Bill Maher photo
David Dixon Porter photo

“It looked queer to me to see boxes labeled 'His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America'. The packages so labeled contained Bass ale or Cognac brandy, which cost 'His Excellency' less than we Yankees had to pay for it. Think of the President drinking imported liquors while his soldiers were living on pop-corn and water!”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

David D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War https://ia802604.us.archive.org/9/items/incidentsanecdot00port/incidentsanecdot00port.pdf (1885), p. 274.
1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885)

Victor Davis Hanson photo
Charles Darwin photo
James Branch Cabell photo

“At what cost, now, may one attempt to write perfectly of beautiful happenings?”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

Randy Pausch photo

“Everything you do is an opportunity cost. Learn to say “No””

Randy Pausch (1960–2008) American professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design

Time Management (2007)

Bill Gates photo
Francis Escudero photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Pierre Trudeau photo

“Trudeau: Well there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed. But it's more important to keep law and order in the society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don't like the looks of a soldier—
CBC reporter Tim Ralfe [interrupting]: At any cost? How far would you go with that? How far would you extend that?
Trudeau: Well, just watch me.”

Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada

Responses to reporters following the kidnapping by the FLQ of a provincial cabinet minister who was eventually murdered. CBC video archives http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-162-429-21/unforgettable_moments/conflict_war/trudeau_just_watch_me (13 October 1970)

“Capitalism must be regarded as an economy of unpaid costs, ‘unpaid’ in so far as a substantial portion of the actual costs of production remains unaccounted for in entrepreneurial outlays; instead they are shifted to, and ultimately borne by, third persons or by the community as a whole.”

Karl William Kapp (1910–1976) American economist

Source: Social Costs of Business Enterprise, 1963, p. 231. Cited in: Rania Ghosn (2012) "Where are the Missing Spaces? The Geography of some Uncommon Interests" in the Yale Architectural Journal Perspecta. Perspecta 45.

Henry R. Towne photo

“Executives must have a practical knowledge of how to observe, record, analyze and compare essential facts in relation to… all… that enters into or affects the economy of production, the costs of the product.”

Henry R. Towne (1844–1924) American engineer

Attributed to Henry R. Towne in: William Kent (1914) Investigating an Industry: A Scientific Diagnosis of the Diseases of Management, p. 3
Comment: William Kent mentions the "The Engineer as an Economist," (1886) as the source.

Calvin Coolidge photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“5485. What costs little, is less esteemed.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Husayn ibn Ali photo

“Never will be salvaged the people who win the consent of the creature, at the cost of the dissatisfaction of the creator.”

Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Khawarazmi, Maqtal al-Husayn, vol.1, p. 234
Regarding the Advent of Karbalā

Anthony Crosland photo

“To say that we must attend meticulously to the environmental case does not mean that we must go to the other extreme and wholly neglect the economic case. Here we must beware of some of our friends. For parts of the conservationist lobby would do precisely this. Their approach is hostile to growth in principle and indifferent to the needs of ordinary people. It has a manifest class bias, and reflects a set of middle and upper class value judgements. Its champions are often kindly and dedicated people. But they are affluent and fundamentally, though of course not consciously, they want to kick the ladder down behind them. They are highly selective in their concern, being militant mainly about threats to rural peace and wildlife and well loved beauty spots: they are little concerned with the far more desperate problem of the urban environment in which 80 per cent of our fellow citizens live…As I wrote many years ago, those enjoying an above average standard of living should be chary of admonishing those less fortunate on the perils of material riches. Since we have many less fortunate citizens, we cannot accept a view of the environment which is essentially elitist, protectionist and anti-growth. We must make our own value judgement based on socialist objectives: and that judgement must…be that growth is vital, and that its benefits far outweigh its costs.”

Anthony Crosland (1918–1977) British politician

'Class hypocrisy of the conservationists', The Times (8 January 1971), p. 10
An extract from the Fabian pamphlet A Social Democratic Britain.

Josiah Warren photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“I was informed this afternoon by the distinguished Secretary of the Treasury that his preliminary estimates indicate that our balance of payments deficit has been reduced from $2.8 billion in 1964 to $1.3 billion, or less, in 1965. This achievement has been made possible by the patriotic voluntary cooperation of businessmen and bankers working with your government. We must now work together with increased urgency to wipe out this balance of payments deficit altogether in the next year. And as our economy surges toward new heights we must increase our vigilance against the inflation which raises the cost of living and which lowers the savings of every family in this land. It is essential, to prevent inflation, that we ask both labor and business to exercise price and wage restraint, and I do so again tonight. I believe it desirable, because of increased military expenditures, that you temporarily restore the automobile and certain telephone excise tax reductions made effective only 12 days ago. Without raising taxes—or even increasing the total tax bill paid—we should move to improve our withholding system so that Americans can more realistically pay as they go, speed up the collection of corporate taxes, and make other necessary simplifications of the tax structure at an early date.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Ernest Flagg photo

“The object of this work is to improve the design and construction of small houses while reducing their cost.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“Some people did not like this ceremonious style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.”

Churchill ended his December 8, 1941 letter to the Japanese Ambassador, declaring that a state of war now existed between the United Kingdom and Japan, with the courtly flourish "I have the honour to be, with high consideration, Sir, Your obedient servant".
The Second World War, Volume III : The Grand Alliance (1950) Chapter 32 (Pearl Harbor).
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Ai Weiwei photo

“I feel powerless all the time, but I regain my energy by making a very small difference that won’t cost me much.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Life’s Work: Ai Weiwei, 2012

Peter D. Schiff photo
Orrin H. Pilkey photo
Eric Maskin photo

“To date, most research on information technology (IT) outsourcing concludes that firms decide to outsource IT services because they believe that outside vendors possess production cost advantages. Yet it is not clear whether vendors can provide production”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

Natalia Levina and Jeanne W. Ross (2003) "From the vendor's perspective: exploring the value proposition in information technology outsourcing." MIS quarterly p. 331

Richard Nixon photo

“I would rather be a one-term President and do what I believe is right than to be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second-rate power and to see this Nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Address to the nation on the situation in Southeast Asia (30 April 1970); in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon, 1970, p. 410
1970s

“The fundamental idea of transaction costs is that they consist of the cost of arranging a contract ex ante and monitoring and enforcing it ex post, as opposed to production costs, which are the costs of executing a contract.”

R. C. O. Matthews (1927–2010) British economist

Source: "The Economics of Institutions and the Sources of Growth." 1986, p. 904; as cited in Eggertsson (1990; 14)

Norman G. Finkelstein photo

“Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of freedom. Add intellectual integrity to the cost basis.”

"The Tallest Tale", p. 315
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Louis C.K. photo

“They charged me 15 dollars. That's how much it costs to only have 20 dollars.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

On being broke http://youtube.com/watch?v=rpaCQKJpE9k

Imre Kertész photo
Francis Escudero photo

“c) Decreased cost due to improved efficiency during the implementation or after the completion of the P/A/P; and”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Stewart Brand photo
Francis Escudero photo
André Maurois photo

“There are very few men who do not reckon the cost to themselves of a system of taxes before approving it.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

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

Glenn Beck photo

“You have three people in the White House that are in love with eugenics, or whatever it is you would call it today. Of course it's not "eugenics", because eugenics has been horribly maligned. How did the T4 program start in Germany? It started through compassion, and it started because we needed to get control of the costs.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Beck links health care reform to Nazis, suggests reform would kill elderly and newborns
Media Matters for America
2009-08-06
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200908060009
The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2009-08-06
2000s, 2009

Francis Escudero photo
Andrew Puzder photo
Shona Brown photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Warren Buffett photo

“If you invested in a very low cost index fund — where you don’t put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years — you’ll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting (2004), as quoted at The Buffett http://www.thebuffett.com/quotes.html

Sun Myung Moon photo

“In particular, unification represents my purpose to bring about God’s ideal world. Unification is not union. Union is when two things come together. Unification is when two become one. “Unification Church” became our commonly known name later, but it was given to us by others. In the beginning, university students referred to us as “the Seoul Church.” I do not like using the word kyo-hoi in its common usage to mean church. But I like its meaning from the original Chinese characters. Kyo means “to teach,” and Hoi means “gathering.” The Korean word means, literally, “gathering for teaching.” The word for religion, jong-kyo, is composed of two Chinese characters meaning “central” and “teaching,” respectively. When the word church means a gathering where spiritual fundamentals are taught, it has a good meaning. But the meaning of the word kyo-hoi does not provide any reason for people to share with each other. People in general do not use the word kyo-hoi with that meaning. I did not want to place ourselves in this separatist type of category. My hope was for the rise of a church without a denomination. True religion tries to save the nation, even if it must sacrifice its own religious body to do so; it tries to save the world, even at the cost of sacrificing its nation; and it tries to save humanity, even if this means sacrificing the world. By this understanding, there can never be a time when the denomination takes precedence. It was necessary to hang out a church sign, but in my heart I was ready to take it down at any time. As soon as a person hangs a sign that says “church,” he is making a distinction between church and not church. Taking something that is one and dividing itinto two is not right. This was not my dream. It is not the path I chose to travel. If I need to take down that sign to save the nation or the world, I am ready to do so at any time.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

2009, As a Peaceloving Global Citizen http://www.euro-tongil.org/swedish/english/TFbiography.pdf, page 56.

Tim McGraw photo
Simon Kuznets photo

“Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between its costs and return, and between the short and the long term. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.”

Simon Kuznets (1901–1985) economist

Simon Kuznets in: Herbert David Croly eds. (1962) The New Republic Vol. 147. p. 29: About rethinking the system of national accounting

Glen Cook photo
C. Wright Mills photo

“Competition has been curtailed by larger corporations; it has been sabotaged by groups of smaller entrepreneurs acting collectively. Both groups have made clear the locus of liberalism's rhetoric of small business and family farm.The character and ideology of the small entrepreneur and the facts of the market are selling the idea of competition short. These liberal heroes, the small businessmen and the farmer, do not want to develop their characters by free and open competition; they do not believe in competition, and they have been doing their best to get away from it.When the small businessmen are asked whether they think free competition is…a good thing, they answer…, 'Yes, of course—what do you mean?' … Finally: 'How about here in this town in furniture?'—or groceries, or whatever the man's line is. Their answers are of two sorts: 'Yes, if it's fair competition,' which turns out to mean: 'if it doesn't make me compete.' … The small businessman, as well as the farmer, wants to become big, not directly by eating up others like himself in competition, but by the indirect ways means practiced by his own particular heroes—those already big. In the dream life of the small entrepreneur, the sure fix is replacing the open market.But if small men wish to close their ranks, why do they continue to talk…about free competition? The answer is that the political function of free competition is what really matters now…[f]or, if there is free competition and a constant coming and going of enterprises, the one who remains established is 'the better man' and 'deserves to be where he is.' But if instead of such competition, there is a rigid line between successful entrepreneurs and the employee community, the man on top may be 'coasting on what his father did,' and not really be worthy of his hard-won position. Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm. …… In Congress small-business committees clamored for legislation to save the weak backbone of the national economy. Their legislative efforts have been directed against their more efficient competitors. First they tried to kill off the low-priced chain stores by taxation; then they tried to eliminate the alleged buying advantages of mass distributor; finally they tried to freeze the profits of all distributors in order to protect their own profits from those who could and were selling goods cheaper to the consumer.The independent retailer…has been pushing to maintain a given margin under the guise of 'fair competition' and 'fair-trade' laws. He now regularly demands that the number of outlets controlled by chain stores be drastically limited and that production be divorced from distribution. This would, of course, kill the low prices charged consumers by the A&P;, which makes very small retail profits, selling almost at cost, and whose real profits come from the manufacturing and packaging.…Under the threat of 'ruinous competition,' laws are on the books of many states and cities legalizing the ruin of competition.”

Section One: The Competitive Way of Life.
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Josiah Gilbert Holland photo
Joel Mokyr photo

“Before the Industrial Revolution all techniques in use were supported by very narrow epistemic bases. That is to say, the people who invented them did not have much of a clue as to why and how they worked. The pre-1750 world produced, and produced well. It made many path-breaking inventions. But it was a world of engineering without mechanics, iron-making without metallurgy, farming without soil science, mining without geology, water-power without hydraulics, dye-making without organic chemistry, and medical practice without microbiology and immunology. The main point to keep in mind here is that such a lack of an epistemic base does not necessarily preclude the development of new techniques through trial and error and simple serendipity. But it makes the subsequent wave of micro-inventions that adapt and improve the technique and create the sustained productivity growth much slower and more costly. If one knows why some device works, it becomes easier to manipulate and debug it, to adapt to new uses and changing circumstances. Above all, one knows what will not work and thus reduce the costs of research and experimentation.”

Joel Mokyr (1946) Israeli American economic historian

Joel Mokyr, " The knowledge society: Theoretical and historical underpinnings http://ehealthstrategies.comnehealthstrategies.comnxxx.ehealthstrategies.com/files/unitednations_mokyr.pdf." AdHoc Expert Group on Knowledge Systems, United Nations, NY. 2003.

Henry Adams photo
Andrew Vachss photo
Henning von Tresckow photo
Robert S. Kaplan photo

“Industrial age companies created sharp distinctions between two groups of employees. The intellectual elite—managers and engineers—used their analytical skills to design products and processes, select and manage customers, and supervise day-to-day operations. The second group was composed of the people who actually produced the products and delivered the services. This direct labor work force was a principal factor of production for industrial age companies, but used only their physical capabilities, not their minds. They performed tasks and processes under direct supervision of white-collar engineers and managers. At the end of the twentieth century, automation and productivity have reduced the percentage of people in the organization who perform traditional work functions, while competitive demands have increased the number of people performing analytic functions: engineering, marketing, management, and administration. Even individuals still involved in direct production and service delivery are valued for their suggestions on how to improve quality, reduce costs, and decrease cycle times…
Now all employees must contribute value by what they know and by the information they can provide. Investing in, managing, and exploiting the knowledge of every employee have become critical to the success of information age companies”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 5-6

Winston S. Churchill photo
Arjo Klamer photo
George W. Bush photo
Michael Rosen photo

“The competition between chunks of capital is getting fiercer, there is the same old same old desperate need to keep wages down, desperate need to substitute machines for labour (but that costs trillions of investment) and no matter how hard you exploit workers, you still need to sell stuff to them, and if their wages are low, they can't buy the stuff. You can force the poorly paid into borrowing money (credit cards, wonga etc) but there comes a point when that causes a credit crisis: someone somewhere says they want some dosh and a bank somewhere says they haven't got the dosh (Northern Rock, last time). Let's remember, none of this is caused by migrants or left social democrats. This is a crisis entirely born from a system that is locked into competition for markets. So, these fervid rows between squadrons of extremely unpleasant individuals are rows between people who deep down know that they can't control this system of running the making and distribution of the things we need. They are just coming up with fantasies on how to stay in power while the next phase veers from crisis to crisis. It is terrible for millions of people in awful insecure, low paid jobs and/or in insecure, lousy housing, or if they are disabled, or for millions trying to migrate their way out of poverty and despair. We should be alarmed when members of the ruling class start pleading with us to take sides with them against the 'elite': one section of the elite calling for us to oppose the elite.”

Michael Rosen (1946) British children's writer

'Neither Brussels or the City - for the many not the few'. http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2018/07/neither-brussels-or-city-for-many-not.html (6 July 2018)

Heather Brooke photo

“[O]ld lady sends her $25 to defeat Nancy Pelosi, and $22 of it goes to "fundraising costs."”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s

Calvin Coolidge photo
Charles A. Beard photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Samuel Goldwyn photo

“Unnamed director: [The script is] too caustic.
Goldwyn: To hell with the cost. If it's a good picture, we'll make it.”

Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) American film producer (1879-1974).

Quoted by Alva Johnston in The Great Goldwyn http://books.google.com/books?id=xU9AAAAAIAAJ&q=%22too+caustic%22+%22To+hell+with+the+cost%22+%22If+it's+a+good+picture+we'll+make+it%22&pg=PA34#v=onepage (1937)