Quotes about expense
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John Adams photo
Eddie Izzard photo
Kay Redfield Jamison photo
Ambrose Bierce photo

“Amnesty, n. The state’s magnaminity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Edward Gibbon photo

“Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.”

Vol. 1, Chap. 11.
The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Volume 1 (1776)
Source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“When kindness comes at the expense of truth, it is not a kindness worth having.”

Rachel Simmons (1974) American writer

Source: The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. photo
Patrick O'Brian photo
James Gleick photo

“When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.”

Source: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

Milton Friedman photo

“Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”

Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 1 "The Power of the Market", page 13
Context: The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

Garth Brooks photo
Michel De Montaigne photo

“There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman
Edith Wharton photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
E.M. Forster photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Naomi Novik photo
Ayn Rand photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Hannah More photo
David Levithan photo
Janet Evanovich photo
Jen Lancaster photo

“Owning a dog is slightly less expensive than being addicted to crack.”

Jen Lancaster (1967) American writer

Source: Bitter Is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office

Bette Davis photo

“Your heart, the compassionate part of you, knows that it’s impossible to feel better at the expense of someone else.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Source: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and it's all small stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life

Alan Moore photo
Suzanne Collins photo
David Nicholls photo

“It is not the terrible occurrences that no one is spared, — a husband’s death, the moral ruin of a beloved child, long, torturing illness, or the shattering of a fondly nourished hope, — it is none of these that undermine the woman’s health and strength, but the little daily recurring, body and soul devouring care s. How many millions of good housewives have cooked and scrubbed their love of life away! How many have sacrificed their rosy checks and their dimples in domestic service, until they became wrinkled, withered, broken mummies. The everlasting question: ‘what shall I cook today,’ the ever recurring necessity of sweeping and dusting and scrubbing and dish-washing, is the steadily falling drop that slowly but surely wears out her body and mind. The cooking stove is the place where accounts are sadly balanced between income and expense, and where the most oppressing observations are made concerning the increased cost of living and the growing difficulty in making both ends meet. Upon the flaming altar where the pots are boiling, youth and freedom from care, beauty and light-heartedness are being sacrificed. In the old cook whose eyes are dim and whose back is bent with toil, no one would recognize the blushing bride of yore, beautiful, merry and modestly coquettish in the finery of her bridal garb.”

Dagobert von Gerhardt (1831–1910) German writer

To the ancients the hearth was sacred; beside the hearth they erected their lares and household-gods. Let us also hold the hearth sacred, where the conscientious German housewife slowly sacrifices her life, to keep the home comfortable, the table well supplied, and the family healthy."
"von Gerhardt, using the pen-name Gerhard von Amyntor in", A Commentary to the Book of Life. Quote taken from August Bebel, Woman and Socialism, Chapter X. Marriage as a Means of Support.

Douglas Coupland photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Pauline Kael photo
J.C. Ryle photo
Richard Nixon photo

“Well, then, some of you will say, and rightly, "Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator? Why did you have to have it?" Let me tell you in just a word how a Senate office operates. First of all, a Senator gets $15,000 a year in salary. He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year, a round trip, that is, for himself, and his family between his home and Washington, DC. And then he gets an allowance to handle the people that work in his office to handle his mail. And the allowance for my State of California, is enough to hire 13 people. And let me say, incidentally, that that allowance is not paid to the Senator. It is paid directly to the individuals that the Senator puts on his payroll. But all of these people and all of these allowances are for strictly official business; business, for example, when a constituent writes in and wants you to go down to the Veteran's Administration and get some information about his GI policy — items of that type, for example. But there are other expenses that are not covered by the Government. And I think I can best discuss those expenses by asking you some questions.Do you think that when I or any other senator makes a political speech, has it printed, should charge the printing of that speech and the mailing of that speech to the taxpayers? Do you think, for example, when I or any other Senator makes a trip to his home State to make a purely political speech that the cost of that trip should be charged to the taxpayers? Do you think when a Senator makes political broadcasts or political television broadcasts, radio or television, that the expense of those broadcasts should be charged to the taxpayers? Well I know what your answer is. It's the same answer that audiences give me whenever I discuss this particular problem: The answer is no. The taxpayers shouldn't be required to finance items which are not official business but which are primarily political business.”

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

1950s, Checkers speech (1952)

Ross Perot photo
Daniel J. Boorstin photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“Busy with the ugliness of the expensive success we forget the easiness of free beauty lying sad right around the corner, only an instant removed, unnoticed and squandered.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Serious Business http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/serious-business/
From the poems written in English

Adam Smith photo
Sueton photo

“Once a woman declared that she was desperately in love with him, and he took her to bed with him. "How shall I enter that item in your expense ledger?" asked his accountant later, on learning that she had got 4,000 gold pieces out of him; and Vespasian replied, "Just put it down to 'passion for Vespasian'."”
Expugnatus autem a quadam, quasi amore suo deperiret, cum perductae pro concubitu sestertia quadringenta donasset, admonente dispensatore, quem ad modum summam rationibus vellet inferri, "Vespasiano," inquit, "adamato".

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Vespasian, Ch. 22

John Updike photo
Mary Midgley photo
Robert Graves photo
Marshall Goldsmith photo

“The Great Western Disease is that we fixate on the future at the expense of enjoying the life we're living now.”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: What Got You Here Won't Get You There, 2008, p. 81 (2010 edition)

H. G. Wells photo
Isa Genzken photo
Ward Cunningham photo
John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge photo
Robert Frost photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“Yes, certainly, we jeopardize the liberty to profiteer at the expense of the community, and, if necessary, we even abolish it.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech to the Workers of Berlin (10 December 1940)
1940s

John Maynard Keynes photo
Francis Parkman photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Verghese Kurien photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“An hereditary chief, strictly limited, the right of war vested in the legislative body, a rigid economy of the public contributions, and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses, will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive. But the only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.”

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

Letter to Marquis de la Fayette http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff10.txt (November 4, 1823); in: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition (ME) (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04, Volume 15, page 491
1820s

David Cameron photo

“One of the tasks that we clearly have is to rebuild trust in our political system. Yes, that's about cleaning up expenses, yes, that's about reforming parliament, and yes, it's about making sure people are in control and that the politicians are always their servants and never their masters.
But I believe it's also something else — it's about being honest about what government can achieve. Real change is not what government can do on its own, real change is when everyone pulls together, comes together, works together, when we all exercise our responsibilities to ourselves, our families, to our communities and to others. And I want to help try and build a more responsible society here in Britain, one where we don't just ask what are my entitlements but what are my responsibilities, one where we don't ask what am I just owed but more what can I give, and a guide for that society that those that can should and those who can't we will always help.
I want to make sure that my Government always looks after the elderly, the frail, the poorest in our country.
We must take everyone through us on some of the difficult decisions that we have ahead.
Above all it will be a Government that is built on some clear values, values of freedom, values of fairness and values of responsibility. I want us to build an economy that rewards work, I want us to build a society with stronger families and stronger communities and I want a political system that people can trust and look up to once again.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2010, First speech as UK Prime Minister (2010)

Will Cuppy photo
Nathanael Greene photo
John D. Carmack photo

“This is a bit more expensive than my previous turbo-Ferrari habit, but not too bad.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

On spending $2 million on building rockets, Quoted in "Carmack's Jet Vanes" http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/msg/04e3682944fbcc74?hl=en (2004-05-13)

C. Wright Mills photo
Ahad Ha'am photo

“We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated and that's because the Arabs do not like working too much in the present for a distant future. Therefore, it is very difficult to find good land for cattle. And not only peasants, but also rich landowners, are not selling good land so easily…We who live abroad are accustomed to believing that the Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys, neither see nor understand what is happening around them. But this is a grave mistake. The Arab, like all the Semites, is sharp minded and shrewd. All the townships of Syria and Eretz Yisrael are full of Arab merchants who know how to exploit the masses and keep track of everyone with whom they deal – the same as in Europe. The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. … But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Wrestling with Zion, pp. 14-15.

James Frazer photo
Ernest Flagg photo
Saddam Hussein photo
Bono photo
Donald A. Norman photo
Michał Kalecki photo

“When failure is not an option, success can be expensive.”

Peter Stibrany (1959) Canadian aerospace engineer

Conference paper https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264346445_The_Microsat_Way_in_Canada%5D Stibrany, P. and Carroll, K.A., "The Microsat Way in Canada," in Proc. ASTRO 2000 - 11th CASI Conference on Astronautics, Ottawa, Canada, 6-9 Nov. 2000.
The quote is a play on the title of Gene Kranz's autobiography, "Failure Is Not An Option". (See the Discussion page for further contextual information.)
The quote gained immediate currency within the MOST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOST_(satellite) development team. It started to spread when one of the MOST team members, Henry Spencer (one of the fathers of the open-source movement, a well-known long-time contributor to the sci.space newsgroups, and also MOST's Software Architect) began using this quote as his Usenet newsgroups .sig ( this being one example https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.space.history/Sl54b83g0jk%5B1-25%5D). The quote has gained wider currency since then, for example in this 2005 blog post by Rand Simberg. http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005132.html More recently, the quote has been stated numerous times by Chris Lewicki, the CEO of the asteroid mining company Planetary Resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources (e.g., here https://singularityhub.com/2017/08/17/space-startups-see-a-future-when-millions-of-people-live-and-work-in-space/?utm_content=buffer52ee3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter-su&utm_campaign=buffer), as well as by that company's Chairman, Peter Diamandis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_diamandis (e.g., here http://www.diamandis.com/blog/entrepreneurs-not-government-drive-innovation-heres-why), with others subsequently requoting them, such as here http://www.diamandis.com/blog/entrepreneurs-not-government-drive-innovation-heres-why and here http://vladdit.com/exponential-wisdom-episode-15-notes-driving-innovation/.

Asger Jorn photo
Éamon de Valera photo

“It is my considered opinion that in the fullness of time history will record the greatness of Michael Collins and it will be recorded at my expense.”

Éamon de Valera (1882–1975) 3rd President of Ireland

Comment in 1966, quoted in Michael Collins : A Biography (1990) by Tim Pat Coogan, p. 432.

“[Operating expense is defined as] all the money the system spends in turning inventory into throughput.”

Eliyahu M. Goldratt (1947–2011) Israeli physicist and management guru

Source: The Haystack Syndrome (1990), p. 29; as cited by: Gerald P. Marquis (2011, p. 10)

Alan Rusbridger photo
Sinclair Lewis photo
Maurice Jones-Drew photo
Valentine Blacker photo

“Blacker, with the exception of Col Everest, was the ablest and most scientific man that ever presided over this expensive department”

Valentine Blacker (1778–1826) British colonial administrator

Andrew Waugh quoted in J. R. Smith, Everest: The Man and the Mountain (1999), p. 226.
About

George W. Bush photo
Jeffrey D. Sachs photo
Christopher Monckton photo
Howard S. Becker photo
Joe Barton photo
Henry Adams photo
George Wallace photo

“Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining?”

George Wallace (1919–1998) 45th Governor of Alabama

Absurdities, Scandals & Stupidities in Politics (2006) by Hakeem Shittu and Callie Query, p. 106

Tom Robbins photo
A. P. Herbert photo

“Justice should be cheap but judges expensive.”

"What Is a Judge?"
Uncommon Law (1935)

Barry Boehm photo

“Who will disallow those Slovenes who live between the Mura and the Raba the right to translate these holy books into the language, in which they understand God talking to them through prophets and apostles' letters? God tells them too to read these books in order to get prepared for salvation in the faith of Jesus Christ. But they cannot receive this from Trubar's, Dalmatin's, Francel's, or other translations (versio). The language of our Hungarian Slovenes is different from other languages and unique in its own characteristics. Already in the aforementioned translations there are differences. Therefore, a man had to come who would translate the Bible and bring praise for God and salvation for his nation. God encouraged István Küzmics for this work, a priest from Surd, who translated – with the help of the Holy Spirit and with great diligence – the whole New Testament from Greek into the language you are reading and hearing. With the help (and expenses) of many religious souls, the Holy Bible was printed and given to you for the same reason Küzmics prepared Vöre Krsztsánszke krátki návuk, which was printed in 1754.”

István Küzmics (1723–1779) Hungarian translator

Sto de tak kráto naſim med Mürom i Rábom prebívajoucſim ſzlovenom tè ſz. Bo'ze knige na ſzvoj jezik, po ſterom ſzamom li vu ſzvoji Prorokov i Apoſtolov píſzmaj gucsécsega Bogà razmijo, obracsati? geto je nyim zapovidáva Goſzpodin Boug ſteti; da je moudre vcſiníjo na zvelicſanye po vöri vu Jezuſi Kriſztuſi; tou pa ni ſzTruberovòga, ni Dalmatinovoga, ni Frenczelovoga, niti znikakſega drügoga obracsanya (verſio) csakati ne morejo. Ár tej naſ Vogrſzki ſzlovenov jezik od vſzej drügi doſzta tühoga i ſzebi laſztvinoga mà. Kakti i vu naprek zracsúnani ſze veliki rázlocsek nahája. Zâto je potrejbno bilou tákſemi csloveki naprej ſztoupiti: kíbi vetom delao Bougi na díko ‘a’ ſzvojemi národi pa na zvelicsanye. Liki je i Goſzpodin Boug na tou nadigno Stevan Küzmicsa Surdánſzkoga Farara: kí je zGrcskoga pouleg premoucſi i pomáganya Dühà ſzvétoga zvelikom gyedrnoſztjom na ete, kákſega ſtés i csüjes, jezik czejli Nouvi Zákon obrnyeni i ſztroskom vnougi vörni düsícz vö zoſtámpani i tebi rávno tak za toga zroka, za ſteroga volo ti je 'z pred temtoga od nyega ſzprávleni Vöre Krſztsánſzke Krátki Návuk.Foreword of the Nouvi Zákon