Quotes about pay

A collection of quotes on the topic of pay, people, doing, attention.

Andrew Carnegie quote: “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”

Quotes about pay

“Politics is a great art. It succeeds at convincing the people that they have to pay for what has been stolen from them.”

Andrzej Majewski (1966) Polish writer and photographer

Aphorisms. Magnum in Parvo (2000)

People, Art

“Learn to pay yourself first, you'll never be broke”

Cornelius Keagon (1996) Liberian humanitarian aid worker

Learning

“The best miracle is to be sent to paradise without paying a ticket.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Star, Painting, Night, Forgetting

“It is, therefore, upon you as the programmer of your life, to pay more attention if you truly wish to succeed at the end of your journey.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life

“There's no way I could pay you back but my plan is to show you that I understand, you are appreciated”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Way, Understanding

“The boy had to pay the piper, so they all stay in fear of the neighborhood sniper”

Eazy-E (1963–1995) American rapper and producer

"Neighborhood Sniper", 5150: Home 4 tha Sick (1992).
1990s

Fear, Boy

“To the question what wine he found pleasant to drink, he replied, "That for which other people pay."”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 54
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

People, Drink, Question, Wine

“You must be willing to pay the price of being called an “adult”. Stop and reflect upon your life.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life

“I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Unsourced in Musician's Little Book of Wisdom‎ (1996) by Scott E. Power, Quote 416.
Misattributed

Success, Hurtful, Feeling

“All the loving acts that two human beings are capable of, the simple act of holding hands can often become the most intimate. Why is this so? Basically, because the nature of the hands and feet is such that the energy system finds expression in these two parts of the body in a very singular way. Two palms coming together have far more intimacy than the contact between any other parts of the body. You can try this with yourself. You don’t even need a partner. When you put your hands together, the two energy dimensions within you (right-left, masculine-feminine, solar-lunar, yin-yang, etc.) are linked in a certain way, and you begin to experience a sense of unity within yourself. This is the logic of the traditional Indian namaskar. It is a means of harmonizing the system. So, the simplest way to experience a state of union is to try this simple namaskar yoga. Put your hands together, and pay loving attention to any object you use or consume, or any form of life that you encounter. When you bring this sense of awareness into every simple act, your experience of life will never be the same again. There is even a possibility that if you put your hands together, you could unite the world!”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Love, Life, World, Way

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Often misattributed to Friedrich Nietzsche. Source: As quoted from “Interview with an Immoral,” Arthur Gordon, Reader’s Digest (July 1959). Reprinted in the Kipling Society journal, “Six Hours with Rudyard Kipling”, Vol. XXXIV. No. 162 (June, 1967) pp. 5-8. Interview took place in June, 1935 https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/pdf/KJ162.pdf Context: Looking back, I think he knew that in my innocence I was eager to love everything and please everybody, and he was trying to warn me not to lose my own identity in the process. Time after time he came back to this theme. " The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

Business

“I do not pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.”

Robert Bosch (1861–1942) German industrialist, inventor, engineer

citation needed
Variant: I don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.

Money

“The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Way

“The mother of all the skills is to learn the art of paying attention—Remembering every step you make or anything that’s around you.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Learning, Art

“Continuous reading is the price that each author must pay.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Reading

“People who have been hardworking, tax paying, those people ought to be given an opportunity to be on a track that leads towards citizenship, and if that happened, then they wouldn't be prey to the employers who say, 'We want you because we know that you work for a salary we could not lawfully pay anyone else.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Interview, MSNBC, UNKNOWN DATE

People

“Only value the opinion of those that you respect. And anyone that you don’t respect, pay no mind to their opinion about you or anything else.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Context: Grace Jones said this to me when I met her. I washed her feet, and I looked up at her and she said, "No matter what you do in your life, don’t you ever let anybody take your creative people away from you." And what my creative friends always remind me of is they say, "Only value the opinion of those that you respect. And anyone that you don’t respect, pay no mind to their opinion about you or anything else." And that’s how I live my life. If I worried about everything that everyone said, I would not be a good artist.

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

Men

“Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 56e

“I used to work at McDonald's making minimum wage. You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it's against the law.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Law

“Because you can't argue with all the fools in the world. It's easier to let them have their way, then trick them when they're not paying attention.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

World, Fools, Way

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Source: 1910s, My Larger Education, Being Chapters from My Experience (1911), Ch. V: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob (pg. 118)

People, Business, Learning

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“On the surface it may seem that wars are caused by economic and political questions, but in fact they are caused by our wholesale slaughter of animals. The laws of justice are inexorable, and human beings are going to have to pay with their own blood … We kill animals, but nature is an organic whole, and by killing animals we are, as it were, affecting certain glands in that organism. When this happens, the balance of the organism is disrupted, and it is not surprising that before long war breaks out among men. Yes, human beings have slaughtered millions of animals for their meat, without realizing that on the invisible plane those animals are linked to other human beings, and it is they who will now have to share the fate of the animals. When we slaughter animals we are slaughtering human beings. Everybody agrees that it is time to establish the reign of peace in the world, that there must be no more wars. Yes, but war will go on just as long as we continue to slaughter animals, because by destroying them we are destroying ourselves.”

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (1900–1986) Bulgarian philosopher

The Yoga of Nutrition, Editions Prosveta, 2012 ebook edition, pp. 24 https://books.google.it/books?id=jnoVCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT24-25.

Men, Fate, War, World

“One ought to fast, watch, and labor to the extent that such activities are needed to harness the body’s desires and longings; however, those who presume that they are justified by works pay no attention to the need for self-discipline but see the works themselves as the way to righteousness. They believe that if they do a great number of impressive works all will be well and righteousness will be the result. Sometimes this is pursued with such zeal that they become mentally unstable and their bodies are sapped of all strength. Such disastrous consequences demonstrate that the belief that we are justified and saved by works without faith is extremely foolish.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), p. 73

Faith, Way

“Financially: All attention is engrossed in devising new modes of taxation, without any adequate effort to increase the means of the people to pay; and the consequent vexation and oppressiveness of the taxes imposed, imperial and local. Inequitable financial relations between England and India, i. e., the political debt of,100,000,000 clapped on India's shoulders, and all home charges also…”

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917) Indian politician

Drain Theory

People, Home, Effort

“In Tunisia the Americans had to pay a stiff price for their experience, but it brought rich dividends. Even at that time, the American generals showed themselves to be very advanced in the tactical handling of their forces, although we had to wait until the Patton Army in France to see the most astonishing achievements in mobile warfare.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

Source: The Rommel Papers (1953), Ch. XXIII : The Sky Has Grown Dark, p. 523.

Time, Waiting

“In many parts of the plains thorny jungles grow, behind the good defence of which the people… become stubbornly rebellious… and pay no taxes.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

People, Parting

“Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), First Inaugural address (1981)
Context: If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price.

Freedom, Time

“Love is the unity of soul, mind and body. Pay attention to the precedence… ”

Brigitte Bardot (1934) French model, actor, singer and animal rights activist

Love, Soul

“When you aren’t willing to pay the price of learning by changing you will eventually pay the price of losing.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

Learning, Change

“People who respect nothing dread fear. It is upon fear, therefore, that I have built up my organization. But understand me correctly, please. Those who work with me are afraid of nothing. Those who work for me are kept faithful, not so much because of their pay as because they know what might be done with them if they broke faith.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

Fear, Faith, People, Understanding

“Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay its price.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Attributed to Sun Tzu in multiple books and internet sites, but this text does not appear in The Art of War and seems to be a more recent creation.
Disputed

Victory

“You burn with the flames of desire for someone that doesn’t notice or pay attention. Your love affair has not even begun and the flames are now burning into your soul. You can douse the flames; you must first walk away. Only then can you be transformed.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1977 (from the poem, Douse the Flames)

Soul, Love, Making love

“When I treat other people with kindness and love, it is part of my way of paying my debt to God and the world for the privilege of living on this planet.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Love, God, People, World

“We are not utopians, we do not indulge in "dreams" of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination; these anarchist dreams… serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until human nature has changed. No, we want the with human nature as it is now, with human nature that cannot dispense with subordination, control and "managers."… The united workers themselves… will hire their own technicians, managers and bookkeepers, and pay them all, as, indeed, every state official, ordinary workmen's wages.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

§ 3.4, Essential Works of Lenin (1966), pp. 307-308
Source: The State and Revolution (1917)

Dreams, Nature, Change

“The fact that a thesis is flawed does not mean that we should not invest in it as long as other people believe in it and there is a large group of people left to be convinced. The point was made by John Maynard Keynes when he compared the stock market to a beauty contest where the winner is not the most beautiful contestant but the one whom the greatest number of people consider beautiful. Where I have something significant to add is in pointing out that it pays to look for the flaws; if we find them, we are ahead of the game because we can limit our losses when the market also discovers what we already know. It is when we are unaware of what could go wrong that we have to worry.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Source: The Alchemy of Finance

People, Beauty, Game, Loss

“Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Source: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

“Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

People, Dead

“Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Wise, Life, Kiss, Waiting

“We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Life, Death

“We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

“Pay For Soup/Build A Fort/Set That On Fire”

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) American artist

“Fear is a good thing. It mean you're paying attention.”

Tamora Pierce book Page

Source: Page

Fear

“There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Charles Dickens (1939)
Source: Homage to Catalonia

Fight

“Nor did they succeed in hanging me on the gallows, for you rescued me with your blood from the infamous conspiracy case. That day, right here on this racecourse, I had pledged to you that I would pay this debt with my own blood. Do you remember? I am ready today to fulfill that promise!”

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975) Bengali revolutionary, founder ("father") of Bangladesh

Quote, This time the struggle is for our freedom (1971)

“I have had no regular disciples: but if anyone likes to come and hear me while I am pursuing my mission, whether he be young or old, he may freely come. Nor do I converse with those who pay only, and not with those who do not pay; but anyone, whether he be rich or poor, may ask and answer me and listen to my words; and whether he turns out to be a bad man or a good one, that cannot be justly laid to my charge, as I never taught him anything. And if anyone says that he has ever learned or heard anything from me in private which all the world has not heard, I should like you to know that he is speaking an untruth.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

33a–b
Plato, Apology

World, Learning

“I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment.”

Sam Walton (1918–1992) Founder of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club

Attributed in Adam L. Penenberg, "Why Google Is Like Wal-Mart" https://archive.is/20130630165550/www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/04/67287?currentPage=all, Wired, 21 April 2005

Success

“I've become a free-for-all brand. I hope they come out with a rule that they can't use a person's name without paying him for it!”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Anshul Chaturvedi

Hope, Personality

“In order to touch the heart and gain the confidence, the assent, the adhesion, and the co-operation of the illiterate legions of the proletariat — and the vast majority of proletarians unfortunately still belong in this category — it is necessary to begin to speak to those workers not of the general sufferings of the international proletariat as a whole but of their particular, daily, altogether private misfortunes. It is necessary to speak to them of their own trade and the conditions of their work in the specific locality where they live; of the harsh conditions and long hours of their daily work, of the small pay, the meanness of their employer, the high cost of living, and how impossible it is for them properly to support and bring up a family.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Program and Object of the Secret Revolutionary Organisation of the International Brotherhood (1868)

Family, Confidence, Support, Suffering

“Those who try to make room for sex as mere casual enjoyment pay the penalty: they become shallow. At any rate the talk that reflects and commends this attitude is always shallow. They dishonour their own bodies; holding cheap what is naturally connected with the origination of human life.”

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

Contraception and Chastity (1975)

Life, Penalty, Sex, Nature

“Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 12
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

Powerful

“Punk Rock (while still sacred to some) is, to me, dead and gone. We just wanted to pay tribute to something that helped us to feel as though we had crawled out of the dung heap of conformity.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Incesticide liner notes (1992)

Feeling, Help, Dead

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Love, Death, War, People

“Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Third Notebook: Part One
No Longer Human

Love, Pain, Friendship, People

“I've got no time to look back, I've got no time to see
The pieces of my heart that have been ripped away from me.
And if the feeling starts to coming, I've learned to stop 'em fast
Because I don't know, if I let 'em go, they might not wanna pass.
And there's just so many people trying to get me on the phone
And there's bills to pay, and songs to play
And a house to make a home.
I guess I'm older now and I've got no time to cry.”

Iris DeMent (1961) American singer and songwriter

No Time to Cry
Song lyrics, My Life (1994)

People, Feeling, Home, Learning

“The revolutionary atmosphere remained as I had first known it. General and private, peasant and militiaman, still met as equals; everyone drew the same pay, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and called everyone else 'thou' and 'comrade'; there was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching. I was breathing the air of equality, and I was simple enough to imagine that it existed all over Spain. I did not realize that more or less by chance I was isolated among the most revolutionary section of the Spanish working class.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Source: Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Food, Imagination, Chance, Clothes

“I told the world one day I would pay it back, say it on tape, lay it, so that one day i could play it back.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

2010s, I Need a Doctor (2011)

World

“Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it. … Dirtiness is inherent in hotels and restaurants, because sound food is sacrificed to punctuality and smartness… The only food at the Hotel X which was ever prepared cleanly was the staff's.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 14

Food

“Positive general principles need always to be supplemented by negative, anecdotal censors. For, it hardly ever pays to alter a general mechanism to correct a particular bug.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious (1980)

“A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started. He is going to sit where you are sitting, and when you are gone; attend to those things, which you think are important. You may adopt all policies you please, but how they are carried out depends on him. He will assume control of your cities, states and nations. All your books are going to be judged, praised or condemned by him. The fate of humanity is in his hands. So it might be well to pay him some attention.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

The origins of this quote are unknown. At least two sources can be traced back, but these sources date back to the 1940 years; long time after Lincon's death. Source 1: The 2003 "Masonic Historiology" from Allotter J. McKowe contains on page 55 (page 55 is dated on Jan. 11, 1944) the poem " What Is a Boy? http://books.google.de/books?id=K5CHWRttt-gC&pg=PA55&dq=desk" from an unknown author. The poem reads: :: He is a person who is going to carry on what you have started. :: He is to sit right where you are sitting and attend when you are gone to those things you think are so important. :: You may adopt all the policies you please, but how they will be carried out depends on him. :: Even if you make leagues and treaties, he will have to manage them. :: He is going to sit at your desk in the Senate, and occupy your place on the Supreme Bench. :: He will assume control of your cities, states and nations. :: He is going to move in and take over your prisons, churches, schools, universities and corporations. :: All your work is going to be judged and praised or condemned by him. :: Your reputation and your future are in his hands. :: All you work is for him, and the fate of the nations and of humanity is in his hands. Quotes about life http://www.quotesaboutlifee.com/2012/04/best-quotes-on-life-best-sayings-on.html :: So it might be well to pay him some attention. Source 2: The newspaper "The Florence Times" from Florence, Alabama (Volume 72 - Number 120) contains in its Wednesday afternoon edition from October 30, 1940 a statement from a Dr. Frank Crane. The entitled "What is a Boy?" statement http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19401030&id=yx8sAAAAIBAJ&sjid=I7oEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3738,3720511 reads: Disputed

Fate, Books, Thinking, Dependency

“[Some correspondents] rightly claimed that State patronage [for artists and authors] is a better guarantee against starvation than private patronage, but seemed to me too ready to disregard the censorship that this implies. The usual line was that it is better for the artist to be a responsible member of a community than an anarchic individualist. The issue, however, is not between irresponsible "self-expression" and discipline; it is between truth and lies. Artists don't so much object to aesthetic discipline. Architects will design theatres or churches equally readily, writers will switch from the three-volume novel to the one-volume, or from the play to the film, according to the demand. But the point is that this is a political age. A writer inevitably writes—and less directly this applies to all the arts—about contemporary events, and his impulse is to tell what he believes to be the truth. But no government, no big organization, will pay for the truth. To take a crude example: can you imagine the British Government commissioning E. M. Forster to write A Passage to India?”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

He could only write it because he was not dependent on State aid. "As I Please" column in The Tribune (13 October 1944) http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/ http://alexpeak.com/twr/ooc/#2 As I Please (1943–1947)

Truth, Age, Art, Imagination

“Education, in general, should not be limited to the acquisition of knowledge and preparation for a career or in common parlance, "to make a better living." We must think in terms of a "better life," not only for the individual, but also for society as a whole. The educational system must, therefore, pay more attention, indeed the main attention, to the building of character, with emphasis on moral and ethical values.”

Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994) Hasidic rabbi

Endorsement of President Jimmy Carter's Education Program - Feb. 7, 1979.

Life, Education, Knowledge, Thinking

“I'm crazy for love but
I'm not coming on.
I'm just paying my rent everyday
In the Tower Of Song.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Tower Of Song"
I'm Your Man (1988)
Context: My friends are gone and
My hair is grey.
I ache in the places where I used to play.
And I'm crazy for love but
I'm not coming on.
I'm just paying my rent everyday
In the Tower Of Song.

Love

“People are paying no attention to the best act of worship: Humility.”

Aisha (605–678) Muhammad's wife

Collected by Ibn Abee Shaybah (13/360) Ibn Hajr graded this Athar as being Saheeh.

People

“What I have learned is not to pay much attention to those that say, “Money will not make you happy.” To them, I answer, it’s certainly a good place to start. And not having it can make you sad.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1985

Money, Happiness, Learning, Sadness

“The Democracy are given to 'bushwhacking'. After having their errors and mis-statements continually thrust in their faces, they pay no heed, but go on howling about Seward and the 'irrepressible conflict'. That is 'bushwhacking.'”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Source: 1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)
Context: So with John Brown and Harper's Ferry. They charge it upon the Republican party and ignominiously fail in all attempts to substantiate the charge. Yet they go on with their bushwhacking, the pack in full cry after John Brown.

Democracy, Error

“Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Lord Darlington, Act I
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

“But surely for everything you love you have to pay some price.”

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

Source: An Autobiography

Love

“Heroism doesn't pay very well. I try to be cold-blooded and money-oriented, but I keep screwing it up.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Money

“Well, you do what you do and you pay for your sins, but there's no such thing as what might have been. That's a waste of time; drive you outta your mind”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Time

“It's a cash and carry world. Sometimes you pay a little. Mostly it's a lot. Sometimes, it's everything you have.”

Stephen King Storm of the Century

Source: Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay

World

“Some people believe that when you die, you cross the River of Death and have to pay the ferryman. People don’t seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there’s a bridge now.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

Death, People

“Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

“Ah, pay no heed if your enemies laugh. They'll not be able to once you lop off their heads.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Source: Eragon, Eldest & Brisingr

Attitude

“Writing is like paying myself a formal visit…”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“Women were complicated creatures. Any man who thought he had one figured out simply wasn’t paying attention”

Eileen Wilks Mortal Danger

Source: Mortal Danger

Women

“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Context: A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted — made cynical, superficial — by this understanding.

World, Thinking