Quotes about spending

A collection of quotes on the topic of spending, time, timing, life.

Quotes about spending

“I am an optimist... I choose to be. There is a lot of darkness in our world, there is a lot of pain and you can choose to see that or you can choose to see the joy. If you try to respond positively to the world, you will spend your time better.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

World, Joy, Pain, Time

“What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway!”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

Happy

“In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Way

“You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened… or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move on.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Variant: You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened... or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the f**k on.

Moving On

“When you spend your whole life living in a hole, the only way you can go is up. (Zero/Hector Zeroni)”

Louis Sachar book Holes

Variant: Zero wasnt worried, " When you spend your whole life living in a shole", he said, "the only way you can go is up.
Source: Holes

Life, Way

“I want to spend my time with people who don't look to be respected. But such good people won't want to spend their time with me.”

Osamu Dazai book The Setting Sun

Source: The Setting Sun

People, Time

“You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.”

Saul Bellow book Seize the Day

Source: Seize the Day

Life

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”

Meryl Streep (1949) American actress

Misattributed to Meryl Streep (and widely disseminated on the Internet as of August/September 2014), this quote is allegedly a translation of a text by the author José Micard Teixeira, the original of which begins (in Portuguese): "Já não tenho paciência para algumas coisas, não porque me tenha tornado arrogante..."
Misattributed

Love, Life, Hate, Friendship

“You could spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future but all there will ever be is what's happening here and the decisions we make in this moments which are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never dared the universe for it. I'm saying I'm the proof that you can ask the universe for it. My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn't believe that that was possible for him and so he made a conservative choice instead, he got a safe job as an accountant and when I was 12 years old he was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we could do to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you could fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”

Jim Carrey (1962) Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer

Love, Life, Fear, Family

“Love is like a teacup that every day falls to the ground and breaks to pieces. In the morning the pieces are gathered and with a little moisture and a little warmth, the pieces are glued together, and again there is a little teacup. He who is in love spends life fearing that the terrible day will come when the teacup is so broken that it can no longer mended.”

Subcomandante Marcos (1957) Mexican activist

"Speaking of Love, No Love, and Other Nuisances" (23 December 1995) in Our Word Is Our Weapon

Love, Life, Fear

“I can’t believe how fast 20 years went by. I mean, this is crazy… To be standing here, standing on the court with my teammates behind me, and appreciate this journey that we’ve been along… I grew up a die heart—I mean it—a die heart Laker fan. Die heart. I mean, I knew everything about every players’ that had played here. So, to be drafted, and then traded to this organization, and to spend 20 years here, I mean, you can’t write something better than this… The thing that had me crackin’ me up all night long was, in fact, I go though 20 years of everybody screaming, ‘pass the ball!’ and I was like, ‘No passing!’ (laugh)… (I also have to thank) my family: my wife, Vanessa, my daughters, Natalia and Gianna. Thank you guys for your sacrifice… What can I say? Mamba Out!”

Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player

A speech after Bryant's last game, 13 April 2016, posted on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg0mxPXIpLY&t=5s.

Family, Night, Daughters, Heart

“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Life, People, Waiting

“I think you can love a person too much.

You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don't even realize what you look like, how far you've deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Love, Thinking, Time, Personality

“Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else's dreams?”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Life, Dreams, Fight

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

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

Men, Children, Freedom

“There is something about spending Christmas alone, naked, sitting by the Christmas tree gripping a shotgun, that lets you know your life is spinning dangerously outta control.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Source: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star

Life, Tree, Christmas

“I've got so much work to do today, I'd better spend two hours in prayer instead of one.”

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

Variant: I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.

“We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Life, Funny

“Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Money, Time

“I really like you, Midori. A lot.”
“How much is a lot?”
“Like a spring bear,” I said.
“A spring bear?” Midori looked up again. “What’s that all about? A spring bear.”
“You’re walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring, and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, “Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?’ So you and the bear cub spend the whole day in each other’s arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh?”
“Yeah. Really nice.”
“That’s how much I like you.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Spring

“Originally, I wanted a machine that would cost $100. My idea was to spend nothing on the console technology so all the money could be spent on improving the interface and software. If we hadn't used NAND flash memory [to store data such as games and photos] and other pricey parts, we might have succeeded.”

Shigeru Miyamoto (1952) Japanese video game designer and producer

On Wii Source: November 16, 2006 Business Week interview http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2006/tc20061116_750580.htm

Money, Photo, Game, Idea

“I want to live my next life backwards: You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in a nursing home feeling better every day. Then you get kicked out for being too healthy. Enjoy your retirement and collect your pension. Then when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work 40 years until you're too young to work. You get ready for High School: drink alcohol, party, and you're generally promiscuous. Then you go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, and you have no responsibilities. Then you become a baby, and then… You spend your last 9 months floating peacefully in luxury, in spa-like conditions – central heating, room service on tap, and then… You finish off as an orgasm.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Variations of this piece have also been misattributed to Andy Rooney and Woody Allen. The original source is a variation on a piece by Sean Morey. ( "snopes.com: Andy Rooney on Everything", Snopes.com, 2012-09-09 http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/rooney3.asp, ) Misattributed

Life, Alcohol, School, Way

“Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like.”

Will Smith (1968) American actor, film producer and rapper

Cf. LOOK Magazine 1957: Actor Walter Slezak's version of "keeping up with the Joneses": "Spending money you don't have for things you don't need to impress people you don't like." p. 10 books.google http://books.google.com/books?id=-NERAQAAMAAJ&q=slezak. Misattributed

Money, People

“The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Extract from an interview by James Francis Cooke, as given in the 1999 edition of Great Pianists on Piano Playing (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1999) p. 217.

Life, World, Education, Music

“Those who spend too fast never grow rich.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Qui dépense trop n’est jamais riche. La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Maison_du_chat-qui-pelote [At the Sign of the Cat and Racket] (1830), translated by Clara Bell

“No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President, I never will.”

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

Democracy, Wisdom

“To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Personal correspondence (1839), as quoted in Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971) by Konstantin Mochulski, as translated by Michael A. Minihan, p. 17
General

Study, Faith, Time, Life

“Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.”

Ivo Andrič (1892–1975) novelist, short story writer

Fear, Hope, Thinking

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Problem, Thinking

“What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

War

“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

Thinking, Time, Happiness

“How many women are there…who because of their husbands' harshness spend their weary lives in the bond of marriage in greater suffering than if they were slaves among the Saracens?”

Christine de Pizan book The Book of the City of Ladies

Quantes femmes est il qui usent leur vie au lien de mariage par la durte de leurs maris en plus grant penitence que se elles feussent esclaves entre les sarazins.
Part II, ch. 13, pp. 118-19.
Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (c. 1405)
Source: The Book of the City of Ladies

Women, Marriage, Suffering

“Any one can get angry — that is easy — or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book II, 1109a.27.
Variant translation: Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.
As quoted in The Child: At Home and School (1944) by Edith M. Leonard, Lillian E. Miles, and Catherine S. Van der Kar, p. 203
Nicomachean Ethics

Money, Way, Motivation, Time

“I'm not close to people, I am close to myself. I spend a lot of time inside.”

Henry Rollins book Black Coffee Blues

Source: Black Coffee Blues

People, Time

“Spending time with God is the key to our strength and success in all areas of life. Be sure that you never try to work God into your schedule, but always work your schedule around Him.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Faith, Life, God, Time

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time… give it, give it all, give it now.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Time

“I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) Context: I told the Englishman that my alma mater was books, a good library. Every time I catch a plane, I have with me a book that I want to read—and that’s a lot of books these days. If I weren’t out here every day battling the white man, I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity—because you can hardly mention anything I’m not curious about. Chapter 11, paragraph 59 http://www.uri.edu/library/inscriptions/almamater.html

Life, Reading

“Ever wonder about those people who spend $2 apiece on those little bottles of Evian water? Try spelling Evian backward.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Source: George Carlin Reads to You: An Audio Collection Including Recent Grammy Winners Braindroppings and Napalm & Silly Putty

People, Water

“When we keep choosing between right and wrong. We spend our energy sorting life rather than living it.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

Life

“Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people that they don't like.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Money, People, Funny

“The central idea is that government fiscal policy, its spending and taxing, its borrowing and repayment of loans, its issue of new money and withdrawal of money, shall be undertaken with an eye only to the results of these actions on the economy and not to any established traditional doctrine what is sound and what is unsound …Government should adjust its rates of expenditure and taxation such that total spending is neither more or less than that which is sufficient to purchase the full employment level of output at current prices. If this means there is deficit, greater borrowing, "printing money," etc., then these things in themselves are neither good or bad, they are simply the means to the desired ends of full employment and price stability.”

Abba Lerner (1903–1982) American economist

On Functional Finance: (1943, pg.354) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=174849

Money, Idea

“Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other. If government spending is financed by borrowing from the commercial banks, it means credit expansion and inflation. If in the course of such an inflation the rise in commodity prices exceeds the rise in nominal wage rates, unemployment will drop. But what makes unemployment shrink is precisely the fact that real wage rates are falling.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

“We have a propensity for starting and joining all kinds of organisations, the result was that we were spending more time in conferences than implementing the decisions.”

Benjamin Mkapa (1938) Tanzanian politician and former president

Commenting on Tanzania's withdrawal from COMESA. 2000-09-04 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/909933.stm 2000

Decision, Time

“If we spend all our time gazing at the wonders ahead without remembering where we're standing right now, we're going to trip and fall flat on our face, over and over agaain.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Source: Fiction, Zendegi (2010), Ch. 1

Time

“The political, the economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we have to become involved in a program of re-education to educate our people into the importance of knowing that when you spend your dollar out of the community in which you live, the community in which you spend your money becomes richer and richer; the community out of which you take your money becomes poorer and poorer.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Detroit, Michigan (12 April 1964)

Money, People, Education, Communication

“I am here today, I may not be here tomorrow. But the responsibility to look after national interest is on the shoulder of every citizen of India. I have often mentioned this earlier. Nobody knows how many attempts have been made to shoot me, lathis have been used to beat me. In Bhubaneswar itself, a brickbat hit me. They have attacked me in every possible manner. I do not care whether I live or die. I have lived a long life and I am proud that I spend the whole of my life in the service of my people. I am only proud of this and nothing else. I shall continue to serve until my last breath and when I die, I can say, that every drop of my blood will invigorate India and strengthen it.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

In: Selected Speeches of Indira Gandhi: January 1, 1982-October 30, 1984 http://books.google.com/books?id=ndA3AQAAIAAJ, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1986, p. 495. Her last speech delivered in Orissa on 30 October 1984 before she was assassinated.

Life, People

“Being a beggar, he said, was not his fault, and he refused either to have any compunction about it or to let it trouble him. He was the enemy of society, and quite ready to take to crime if he saw a good opportunity. He refused on principle to be thrifty. In the summer he saved nothing, spending his surplus earnings on drink, as he did not care about women. If he was penniless when winter came on, then society must look after him. He was ready to extract every penny he could from charity, provided that he was not expected to say thank you for it. He avoided religious charities, however, for he said it stuck in his throat to sing hymns for buns. He had various other points of honour; for instance, it was his boast that never in his life, even when starving, had he picked up a cigarette end. He considered himself in a class above the ordinary run of beggars, who, he said, were an abject lot, without even the decency to be ungrateful.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

On "Bozo", in Ch. 30
Down and out in Paris and London (1933)

Life, Women, Drink, Winter

“No one says in the morning: A day is soon past, let us wait for the night. On the contrary, in the evening we consider what we shall do the next day. We should be very sorry to spend even one day at the mercy of time and bores. … Who can be certain of spending an hour without being bored, if he takes no care to fill even that short period according to his pleasure. Yet what we cannot be certain of for an hour, we sometimes feel assured of for life, and say: “If death is the end of everything, why give ourselves so much trouble? We are extremely foolish to make such a pother about the future”—that is to say, we are extremely foolish not to entrust our destinies to chance, and to provide for the interval which lies between us and death.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 173.

Life, Death, Pleasure, Feeling

“I'm in control of my life, not anyone in Hollywood. I only do this because I'm having fun. The day I stop having fun, I'll just walk away. I wasn't going to have fun doing a teen movie again. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I don't. I don't even want to spend the rest of my youth doing this in this industry. There's so much more I want to discover.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

As quoted in an interview in Vanity Fair (August 2000).

Life, Youth

“I like to help the whales, the otters, and the dolphins. When I`m acting and I take a break, the first thing on my list is spending time by the sea.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

Time, Help, Sea

“The Second World War supplied the occasion for the spending, and Keynesian economics supplied the rationale. But Keynesian fiscal policy had political appeal even before the war demonstrated its economic success. For unlike the various proposals for structural reform, such as vigorous antitrust action or national economic planning, Keynesian economics offered a way for the government to control the economy without having to choose among controversial views of the good society. Where earlier reformers had sought economic arrangements that would cultivate, citizens of a certain kind, Keynesians undertook no formative mission; they proposed simply to accept existing consumer preferences and to regulate the economy by manipulating aggregate demand.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

1. America's Search for a Public Philosophy
Public Philosophy (2005)

War, World, Way, Success

“All those things [meaning works of art] have given me the greatest satisfaction and contentment because they are not only for the honor of God but are likewise for my own remembrance. For fifty years, I have done nothing else but earn money and spend money; and it became clear that spending money gives me greater pleasure than earning it.”

Cosimo de' Medici (1389–1464) First ruler of the Medici political dynasty

Attributed to Cosimo de' Medici by Salviati; as cited in Taylor, F.H. (1948). The taste of angels, a history of art collecting from Rameses to Napoleon. Boston: Little, Brown. pp. 65–66.

Money, God, Pleasure, Art

“Your lack of common sense (can be well judged from the fact) that the evidence of two women is equal to one man, that is a proof of the lack of common sense, and you spend some nights (and days) in which you do not offer prayer and in the month of Ramadan (during the days) you do not observe fast, that is a failing in religion.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sahih Muslim, Book 001, Number 0142
Sunni Hadith
Context: It is narrated on the authority of 'Abdullah b. Umar that the Messenger of Allah observed: O womenfolk, you should give charity and ask much forgiveness for I saw you in bulk amongst the dwellers of Hell. A wise lady among them said: Why is it, Messenger of Allah, that our folk is in bulk in Hell? Upon this the Holy Prophet observed: You curse too much and are ungrateful to your spouses. I have seen none lacking in common sense and failing in religion but (at the same time) robbing the wisdom of the wise, besides you. Upon this the woman remarked: What is wrong with our common sense and with religion? He (the Holy Prophet) observed: Your lack of common sense (can be well judged from the fact) that the evidence of two women is equal to one man, that is a proof of the lack of common sense, and you spend some nights (and days) in which you do not offer prayer and in the month of Ramadan (during the days) you do not observe fast, that is a failing in religion. This hadith has been narrated on the authority of Abu Tahir with this chain of transmitters.

Women, Religion, Sense, Night

“I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach.”

Glenn Gould (1932–1982) Canadian pianist

Gramophone
Context: I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. I really can't think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that -- its humanity.

Life, Music, Thinking, Time

“Spending the night out of doors has nothing attractive about it in London, especially for a poor, ragged, undernourished wretch.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Beggars in London", in Le Progrès Civique (12 January 1929), translated into English by Janet Percival and Ian Willison
Context: Spending the night out of doors has nothing attractive about it in London, especially for a poor, ragged, undernourished wretch. Moreover sleeping in the open is only allowed in one thoroughfare in London. If the policeman on his beat finds you asleep, it is his duty to wake you up. That is because it has been found that a sleeping man succumbs to the cold more easily than a man who is awake, and England could not let one of her sons die in the street. So you are at liberty to spend the night in the street, providing it is a sleepless night. But there is one road where the homeless are allowed to sleep. Strangely, it is the Thames Embankment, not far from the Houses of Parliament. We advise all those visitors to England who would like to see the reverse side of our apparent prosperity to go and look at those who habitually sleep on the Embankment, with their filthy tattered clothes, their bodies wasted by disease, a living reprimand to the Parliament in whose shadow they lie.

Night

“As we grow up we learn that even the person that wasn't supposed to ever let
you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once
and it gets harder every time. You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt
when yours was broken. You'll fight with your best friend. You'll blame a new
love for things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and
you'll eventually lose someone you love, so take many pictures, laugh too much
and love like you've never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is one minute of happiness you'll never get back.”

Andrew Biersack (1990) American singer-songwriter

Hurt, Time, Personality, Heart

“The great enemy of human freedom is the Government. By taking money out of our pockets and spending it, it destroys our freedom.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

The National Times, Australia, (March 1, 1977)

Money, Freedom

“In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: “Bookshop Memories” in Fortnightly (November 1936)

Money, Time

“Explore Nature. Go for a walk in nature. Collect leaves and flowers from your walk. Look at pictures of things, from nature, which move you. Spend time tumbling and playing with a pet. Listen to music with nature sounds. Help your child understand that since ALL comes from God and ALL is God, interacting with nature is a way of communicating with and hearing God.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

God, Communication, Flowers, Time

“Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it.”

T. Alan Armstrong

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”

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

A comment he made in persuading John Sculley to become Apple's CEO, as quoted in Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple: A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future (1987) by John Sculley and John A. Byrne
1980s

Life, World, Water, Change

“Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.”

Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature

Peace, Search

“I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Thinking, Time, Personality

“We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Dreams, Parting

“My ancestors were Brahmins. They spent their lives in search of god. I am spending my life in search of man.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Educational Thinkers http://books.google.com/books?id=O6Fp2zaQVVMC&pg=PA151&dq=Muhammad+Iqbal+Brahmin&hl=en&ei=hJQaTKPPKMewcfnqzIEK&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Muhammad%20Iqbal%20Brahmin&f=false

Life, God, Search

“Life's too short to pretend and play games like that. I want to spend my time hanging out with people who make me feel good about myself. People who make me happy.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

Life, People, Feeling, Game

“How can you spend hours every day trying in small ways to figure out who you are, then have a near-stranger give you a sentence of yourself that says it better than you ever could?”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Way

“I don't know about you, but I only have one life, and I don't want to spend it in a sewer of injustice.”

Wallace Shawn (1943) American actor, playwright, and essayist

Life

“You spend your life getting walked on, you learn to recognize the tread.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Life, Learning

“Raven: So Alexander, now we know what we do all day. What do you do? Alexander: I spend it thinking about you.”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

Variant: Raven: So Alexander, now we know what we do all day. What do you do?
Alexander: I spend it thinking about you.
Source: Love Bites

Thinking

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, The Chance for Peace (1953)
Context: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. … Is there no other way the world may live?

Money, Hunger, Children, World

“Either one does not dream, or one does so interestingly. One should learn to spend one's waking life in the same way: not at all, or interestingly.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 232
Variant: We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way — not at all or in an interesting manner.
Source: The Gay Science (1882)

Life, Dreams, Way, Learning

“Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

People, Thinking, Time

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: " The Writing Life http://www.tikkun.org/mediagallery/download.php?mid=20090505114218282" (link is to PDF download), Tikkun magazine, Volume 3, Number 6, 1988

“Choking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

Depressing, Love, Death, World

“The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can't save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Problem, Time

“The only true test of friendship is the time your friend spends on you.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: Circle of Flight

Friendship, Time

“There is only one success … to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

Christopher Morley Where the Blue Begins

Where the Blue Begins (1922)

Success, Cute, Graduation, Life

“As I have yet to meet a gentleman I wished to spend the rest of my days with, I would say the failure was on their part rather than mine.”

Victoria Alexander (1965) Author

Failure, Parting

“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Variant: Then she kissed him. Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 11

love, Relationship, Good Night, Cute

“Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

For Men, People, Problem, Time

“Think about it: what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Variant: Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
Source: Fire from Within

Men, Feeling, Thinking

“Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it. Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you go, and fix it along the way…”

Paul Arden (1940–2008) writer

People, Way, Time, Waiting

“The trouble is if you don’t spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you.”

Peter Shaffer (1926–2016) English playwright and screenwriter

Source: Five Finger Exercise

Life, People