Quotes about pricing
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Mark Twain photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo

“What I see in the amendment is not an assertion of great principles, which no man honours more than myself. What is at the bottom of it is rather that principle of peace at any price which a certain party in this country upholds. It is that dangerous dogma which I believe animates the ranks before me at this moment, although many of them may be unconscious of it. That deleterious doctrine haunts the people of this country in every form. Sometimes it is a committee; sometimes it is a letter; sometimes it is an amendment to the Address; sometimes it is a proposition to stop the supplies. That doctrine has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat this century. It has occasioned more wars than the most ruthless conquerors. It has disturbed and nearly destroyed that political equilibrium so necessary to the liberties of nations and the welfare of the world. It has dimmed occasionally for a moment even the majesty of England. And, my lords, to-night you have an opportunity, which I trust you will not lose, of branding these opinions, these deleterious dogmas, with the reprobation of the Peers of England.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech in the House of Lords (10 December 1876), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 1273.

Antonin Scalia photo
Lee Hsien Loong photo

“If you calculate the price of everything in this world, you will miss out on the real important things.”

Lee Hsien Loong (1952) Prime Minister of Singapore

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/trump-kim-summit-will-cost-about-20-million-to-host-says-pm-lee
Lee answered question about the cost of 2018 Trump-Kim summit.

James Tobin photo

“What is bravery, and what is bravado? Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price.”

Marie Colvin (1956–2012) American journalist, war reporter

Quoted in The Economist, 25 Feb 2012, p. 63

Barack Obama photo
Karl Marx photo

“Capitals accumulate faster than the population; thus wages; thus population; thus grain prices; thus the difficulty of production and hence the exchange values.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook III, The Chapter on Capital, p. 271.

“Neoliberalism is an ideology that reduces all values to money values. The worth of a thing is the price of the thing. The worth of a person is the wealth of the person. Neoliberalism tells you that you are valuable exclusively in terms of your activity in the marketplace.”

William Deresiewicz (1964) American literary critic

" The Neoliberal Arts: How College Sold Its Soul to the Market http://harpers.org/archive/2015/09/the-neoliberal-arts/," Harper's, September 2015, p. 26

V.S. Naipaul photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Nikola Tesla photo

“Much has been said about Yugoslavia and its people, but many Americans may be under a wrong impression for political enemies and agitators have spread the idea that its inhabitants belong to different nations animated by mutual hate and held together against their will, by a tyrannical power. The fact is that all Yugoslavs — Serbians, Slavonians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Dalmations, Montenagrins, Croatians and Slovenes — are of the same race, speak the same language and have common national ideals and traditions.
At the termination of the World War, Alexander brought about a political union creating a powerful and resourceful State. This was hailed with joy by all the Slavs of the Balkans, but it took time before the people found themselves in the new conditions.
I was born in Croatia. The Croatians and Slovenes were never in a position to fight for their independence. It was the Serbians who fought the battles for freedom and the price of liberty was paid in Serbian blood. All true Croatians and Slovenes remember that gratefully. They also know that the Serbians have an unequaled aptitude and experience in warfare and are best qualified to direct the forces of the country in a crisis.
Ever since united Yugoslavia came into being through Alexander's efforts, political enemies have done all they could to disrupt it by sowing seeds of discord and disseminating malicious reports. … The death of the King has shaken the country to its very foundations, but the enemies who say that it means the disruption of Yugoslavia will hope in vain, for the noble blood of the great man has only served to cement its parts more firmly and strengthen the national structure. Alexander will live long in the memory of his people, a heroic figure of imposing stature, both the Washington and Lincoln of the Yugoslavs; like Washington an able and intrepid general who freed his country from oppression; like Lincoln a wise and patriotic leader who suffered martyrdom.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Tribute to King Alexander, to the editor of The New York Times (19 October 1934), also at Heroes of Serbia http://www.heroesofserbia.com/2012/10/tribute-to-king-alexander-by-nikola.html

Isabel II do Reino Unido photo

“But nothing that can be said can begin to take away the anguish and the pain of these moments. Grief is the price we pay for love.”

Isabel II do Reino Unido (1926–2022) queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations

Message from the Queen, read by the British ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, St Thomas's Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue. 22 September 2001. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1341155/Grief-is-price-of-love-says-the-Queen.html

Ronald Reagan photo

“Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this [surrender], but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face — that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand — the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin — just in the face of this enemy?”

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

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)

Ronald H. Coase photo
Barack Obama photo
James Tobin photo
David Ricardo photo

“If a tax on malt would raise the price of beer, a tax on bread must raise the price of bread.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter XVII, Taxes on Other Commodities, p. 168

Karl Marx photo

“Supply and demand constantly determine the prices of commodities; never balance, or only coincidentally; but the cost of production, for its part, determines the oscillations of supply and demand.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 58.

Eduardo Galeano photo
Barack Obama photo
William Bradford photo

“The loss of…honest and industrious men's lives cannot be valued at any price.”

William Bradford (1590–1657) English Separatist leader in Leiden, Holland and in Plymouth Colony (1590-1657)

Ch. 3.

Ronald Reagan photo

“History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.”

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

Address to the nation from the White House http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1984/11684a.htm (16 January 1984)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Karl Marx photo

“But if the labourers could live on air they could not be bought at any price.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. I, Ch. 24, Section 4, pg. 657.
(Buch I) (1867)

C.G. Jung photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo

“I say, then, assuming, as I have given you reason to assume, that the price of wheat, when this system is established, ranges in England at 35s. per quarter, and other grain in proportion, this is not a question of rent, but it is a question of displacing the labour of England that produces corn, in order, on an extensive and even universal scale, to permit the entrance into this country of foreign corn produced by foreign labour. Will that displaced labour find new employment? … But what are the resources of this kind of industry to employ and support the people, supposing the great depression in agricultural produce occur which is feared—that this great revolution, as it has appropriately been called, takes place—that we cease to be an agricultural people—what are the resources that would furnish employment to two-thirds of the subverted agricultural population—in fact, from 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 of people? Assume that the workshop of the world principle is carried into effect—assume that the attempt is made to maintain your system, both financial and domestic, on the resources of the cotton trade—assume that, in spite of hostile tariffs, that already gigantic industry is doubled…you would only find increased employment for 300,000 of your population…What must be the consequence? I think we have pretty good grounds for anticipating social misery and political disaster.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/15/corn-importation-bill-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (15 May 1846).
1840s

Barack Obama photo

“Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure — and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (December 2009)
Context: I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to actually change behavior — for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure — and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“War is the price we pay for living in a state. Before you can abolish war you will have to abolish all states. But that is unthinkable until the propensity to violence and evil is rooted out of human beings.”

"Father Severyan", in November 1916: The Red Wheel: Knot II (1984; translation 1999).
Context: At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or ten or twenty thousand years. Neither the wisest of leaders, nor the noblest of kings, nor yet the Church — none of them has been able to stop it. And don't succumb to the facile belief that wars will be stopped by hotheaded socialists. Or that rational and just wars can be sorted out from the rest. There will always be thousands of thousands to whom even such a war will be senseless and unjustified. Quite simply, no state can live without war, that is one of the state's essential functions. … War is the price we pay for living in a state. Before you can abolish war you will have to abolish all states. But that is unthinkable until the propensity to violence and evil is rooted out of human beings. The state was created to protect us from evil. In ordinary life thousands of bad impulses, from a thousand foci of evil, move chaotically, randomly, against the vulnerable. The state is called upon to check these impulses — but it generates others of its own, still more powerful, and this time one-directional. At times it throws them all in a single direction — and that is war.

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Speech at Progressive Party Convention, Chicago http://www.ssa.gov/history/trspeech.html (17 June 1912)
1910s
Context: We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the businessman is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals.

Barack Obama photo

“So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)
Context: America has an important strategic interest in preventing Qaddafi from overrunning those who oppose him. A massacre would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya’s borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful — yet fragile — transitions in Egypt and Tunisia. The democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive leaders concluded that violence is the best strategy to cling to power. The writ of the United Nations Security Council would have been shown to be little more than empty words, crippling that institution’s future credibility to uphold global peace and security. So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.

“The price of several of those college educations I didn’t want was spent on my hospitalization.”

Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Context: Naked, we needed protection, and the hospital protected us. Of course, the hospital had stripped us naked in the first place—but that just underscored its obligation to shelter us. And the hospital fulfilled its obligation. Somebody in our families had to pay a good deal of money for that: sixty dollars (1967 dollars) a day just for the room; therapy, drugs, and consultations were extra. Ninety days was the usual length of mental-hospital insurance coverage, but ninety days was barely enough to get started on a visit to McLean. My workup alone took ninety days. The price of several of those college educations I didn’t want was spent on my hospitalization.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo

“Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

Reportedly first said by Holmes in a speech in 1904, alternately phrased as "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, including the chance to insure", Compania General De Tabacos De Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue, 275 U.S. 87, 100, dissenting; opinion (21 November 1927). The first variation is quoted by the IRS above the entrance to their headquarters at 1111 Constitution Avenue.
1900s

Ludwig von Mises photo
Vince Lombardi photo
Vince Lombardi photo
Steven Weinberg photo
Stafford Cripps photo

“Though we have achieved considerable success in our policy of increasing production and maintaining full employment, this has been accompanied by constant pressure for higher wages resulting in higher prices. We have not yet found out how we can maintain full employment in combination with stable or decreasing costs and prices.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Memorandum, 'The Dollar Situation: Forthcoming Discussions with U.S.A. and Canada' (4 July 1949), quoted in Correlli Barnett, The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities: 1945–1950 (London: Pan, 1996), p. 353
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Helena Roerich photo

“To all these insanities will be added the most shameful—the intensified competition between male and female. We insist upon equal and full rights for women, but the servants of darkness will expel them from many fields of activity, even where they bring the most benefit. We have spoken about the many maladies in the world, but the renewed struggle between the male and female principles will be the most tragic. It is hard to imagine how disastrous this will be, for it is a struggle against evolution itself! What a high price humanity pays for every such opposition to evolution! In these convulsions the young generations are corrupted. Plato spoke about beautiful thinking, but what kind of beauty is possible when there is hostility between man and woman? Now is the time to think about equal and full rights, but darkness invades the tensed realms. However, all the dark attacks will serve a certain good purpose, for those who have been humiliated in Kali Yuga will be glorified in Satya Yuga. ...Let us remember that these years of Armageddon are the most intense, and one’s health should be especially guarded because the cosmic currents will increase many diseases. You must understand that this time is unique... It is near-sighted to think that if war is prevented all problems will be solved! There are those who think so and imagine that they can cheat evolution, not realizing that the worst war is in their own homes. However, there do exist places on Earth where evolution develops normally, and We are always there.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

286
Armageddon

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood—the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Letter to S. Stanwood Menken, chairman, committee on Congress of Constructive Patriotism (January 10, 1917). Roosevelt’s sister, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, read the letter to a national meeting, January 26, 1917. Reported in Proceedings of the Congress of Constructive Patriotism, Washington, D.C., January 25–27, 1917 (1917), p. 172
1910s

Jawaharlal Nehru photo
Jawaharlal Nehru photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Jacque Fresco photo

“When education and resources are available to all without a price tag, there will be no limit to human potential.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Source: Designing the Future (2007), p.81

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“You could attach prices to ideas. Some cost a lot some little. … And how do you pay for ideas? I believe: with courage.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 60e

Zhou Fengsuo photo

“This is very scary for a country’s future and a great challenge to the world’s development of peace. Xi Jinping’s madness and stupidity is a representation of this country. China will have to pay a heavy price for it in the future.”

Zhou Fengsuo (1967) Chinese human rights activist

Source: May 12, 2019 The Tiananmen Massacre, 30 years on – Survivor Q&A: Zhou Fengsuo https://hongkongfp.com/2019/05/12/tiananmen-massacre-30-years-survivor-qa-zhou-fengsuo/

Muhammad al-Taqi photo

“Trusting in God is a price to every dear thing and a ladder to every high thing.”

Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism

[Baqir Sharīf al-Qurashi, The life of Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, Wonderful Maxims and Arts, 2005]

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Malcolm X photo
John Ruskin photo

“There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

According to Ruskin scholar George P. Landow, there is no evidence that this quotation or its variants can be found in any of Ruskin's works.
[Landow, George P., A Ruskin Quotation?, VictorianWeb.org, 2007-07-27, http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/quotation.html, 2013-01-07]
Disputed

Erich Fromm photo
Thomas Sowell photo

“Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: 1980s–1990s, Knowledge and Decisions (1980; 1996), Ch. 5 : Political Trade-Offs

Maureen Johnson photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Adam Smith photo

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter X, Part II, p. 152.
Context: People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

Stephen Chbosky photo
Andrzej Sapkowski photo
Scott Adams photo

“If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. It sounds trivial and obvious, but if you unpack the idea it has extraordinary power.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Source: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

Paulo Coelho photo

“A beautiful thing is precious no matter the price”

Source: Beastly

Susan Elizabeth Phillips photo
Jonathan Stroud photo

“Freedom is an illusion. It always comes at a price.”

Jonathan Stroud (1970) British writer of fantasy fiction

Source: The Bartimaeus Trilogy Boxed Set

Rudyard Kipling photo

“For all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high.”

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

The Courting of Dinah Shadd (1890).
Other works

Paulo Coelho photo

“Personal growth has its price, and she was paying it without complaint.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Max Lucado photo
Elbert Hubbard photo

“Responsibility is the price of freedom.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
James Baldwin photo

“The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" in Esquire (May 1961); republished in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Tom Robbins photo
Bret Easton Ellis photo

“Price. You're priceless.”

American Psycho

Lois Lowry photo
John Burroughs photo
Mike Dooley photo
Wally Lamb photo
James Patterson photo
Joan Didion photo

“Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

"On Self-Respect", in Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Ernest Hemingway photo

“Come touch,… but you'll a price”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Poison Princess

Joseph Delaney photo

“Everyone has a price.”

Joseph Delaney (1945) British writer

Source: Revenge of the Witch

Tom Stoppard photo
Karen Marie Moning photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Robert Fulghum photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo