Quotes about spending
page 14

“With all the efforts made by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world!”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

Source: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), Ch. 9

Children, Stupidity, World, Education

“What’s thinking? You live in a grandly appointed house, but spend all your time rummaging around in the attic for any little trinket you hadn’t known was there.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#454
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Thinking, Time, Housing

“My obsession with wolves hadn't helped past relationships. I had split up with Jan, the mother of my four children, after 11 years together, but there was never any animosity; it was more a case of separation by default. Maybe I never gave that relationship a chance. I was so passionate about wolves that I wonder whether any human relationship could have come close. If I'd had to choose between spending a night in the wolf enclosure or at home, I would probably have chosen the wolves.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

I howled for the woman I loved... and she howled back - British wolfman tells how his obsession drove away the love of his life http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1245507/I-howled-woman-I-loved--howled--British-wolfman-tells-obsession-drove-away-love-life.html, Daily Mail, (23 January, 2010)

Children, Home, Wolf, Passion

“Adolf Hitler, while spending three years in jail for the Beer Hall Putsch, writes his famous book “Mein Kampf.””

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Books, Beer

“What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to deceive?”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

How to Save Your Own Life (1977)

Life, Way

“A newspaper reported I spend $30,000 a year buying Paris clothes and that women hate me for it. I couldn’t spend that much unless I wore sable underwear.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

The New York Times (15 September 1960)

Women, Hate, Clothes

“Ye spend all your days contriving forms and rules for the principles of your Faith, while that which profiteth you in all this is to comprehend the good-pleasure of your Lord and unitedly to become well-acquainted with His supreme Purpose.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVII, 2
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

Pleasure, Faith

“You spend so much time wondering who you are, don't you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forget that the answers are found mostly inside yourselves.”

Terry Brooks book The Tangle Box

The Tangle Box

Search, Question, Thinking, Time

“Not many people know this, but on top of writing regularly for every known newspaper and magazine, Anthony Burgess writes regularly for every unknown one, too. Pick up a Hungarian quarterly or a Portuguese tabloid - and there is Burgess, discoursing on goulash or test-driving the new Fiat 500. 'Wedged as we are between two eternities of idleness, there is no excuse for being idle now.' Even today, at seventy, and still producing book after book, Burgess spends half his time writing music. He additionally claims to do all the housework.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Opening paragraph of his review of Little Wilson and Big God: Being the First Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess, p. 123
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

People, Books, Music, Time

“The Animals, you say, were "sent"
For man's free use and nutriment.
Pray, then, inform me, and be candid,
Why came they aeons before Man did,
To spend long centuries on earth,
Awaiting their Devourer's birth?
Those ill-timed chattels, sent from Heaven,
Were, sure, the maddest gift e'er given—
"Sent" for Man's usage (can Man believe it?)
When there was no Man to receive it!”

Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist

The Sending of the Animals, as quoted in The Savour of Salt: A Henry Salt Anthology, Centaur Press, 1989, p. 55.

Birth, Time, Animals

“English students don't spend much time on their studies. They're more interested in partying and having fun.”

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (1947) second wife of Prince Charles

The Duchess of Cornwall compares hardworking Pakistani students to the National Union of Students, October 2006. Guardian, 5 Nov 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2006/nov/05/7days.observermain

Study, Time

“It's my show, and there's no place for opinion on my show. It's uninteresting to me. I don't care what Sean Hannity thinks and I don't care what Alan Colmes thinks and I guarantee they don't care what I think and they don't know, either. You know what's interesting to me? What's interesting to me is that the thing people want to know about is the part on which I spend absolutely no time.”

Shepard Smith (1964) television news anchor from the United States

As quoted in "Interview with Shepard Smith" https://web.archive.org/web/20120501134518/http://www.esquire.com/features/shepard-smith-fox-news-0309-2 (February 10, 2009), by Tom Junod, Esquire, Hearst Communications Inc. 2000s

People, Thinking, Time, Parting

“Kevin Kruse in his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America details how industrialists in the 1930s and 1940s poured money and resources into an effort to silence the social witness of the mainstream church, which was home to many radicals, socialists and proponents of the New Deal. These corporatists promoted and funded a brand of Christianity—which is today dominant—that conflates faith with free enterprise and American exceptionalism. The rich are rich, this creed goes, not because they are greedy or privileged, not because they use their power to their own advantage, not because they oppress the poor and the vulnerable, but because they are blessed. And if we have enough faith, this heretical form of Christianity claims, God will bless the rest of us too. It is an inversion of the central message of the Gospel. You don’t need to spend three years at Harvard Divinity School as I did to figure that out.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"The Suicide of the Liberal Church", January 24, 2016 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_suicide_of_the_liberal_church_20160124

Money, God, Books, School

“… From the age of 13, I was attracted to physics and mathematics. My interest in these subjects derived mostly from popular science books that I read avidly. Early on I was fascinated by theoretical physics and determined to become a theoretical physicist. I had no real idea what that meant, but it seemed incredibly exciting to spend one's life attempting to find the secrets of the universe by using one's mind.”

David Gross (1941) American particle physicist and string theorist

"David J. Gross - Biographical" http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2004/gross-bio.html, Nobel Prize in Physics, nobelprize.org (2004)

Life, Secret, Books, Age

“There is no conservative party in Washington. There is a Democratic Party of tax-and-spend and a Republican Party of guns and butter and tax cuts, too. Washington is all accelerator, the brakes are gone.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

“…evidence-based approach, the U. S. negotiators argued, is interference with free markets, because corporations must have the right to deceive. […] The claim itself is kind of amusing, I mean, even if you believe the free market rhetoric for a moment. The main purpose of advertising is to undermine markets. If you go to graduate school and you take a course in economics, you learn that markets are systems in which informed consumers make rational choices. That's what's so wonderful about it. But that's the last thing that the state corporate system wants. It is spending huge sums to prevent that, which brings us back to the viability of American democracy. For many years, elections here, election campaigns, have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. And quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information, and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method, projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information. The candidates are trained, carefully trained, to project a certain image. Intellectuals like to make fun of George Bush's use of phrases like “misunderestimate,” and so on, but my strong suspicion is that he's trained to do that. He's carefully trained to efface the fact that he's a spoiled frat boy from Yale, and to look like a Texas roughneck kind of ordinary guy just like you, just waiting to get back to the ranch that they created for him…”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

25th anniversary of the International Relations Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 26, 2005
Quotes 2000s, 2005

School, Guy, Democracy, Boy

“The most unacknowledged spending expectation among women is the amount of time spent by single mothers caring for children, not only physically, but psychologically. It is my feeling that only a small percentage of a mother’s time is normally compensated for by child support, given what a woman could make adding these hours to workforce hours… It is why women who have never been married and never had children earn so much more in the workplace than women who have had children.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 222.

Women, Children, Feeling, Support

“If you were to spend a month feeding on the precious promises of God, you would not be going about with your heads hanging down like bulrushes, complaining how poor you are; but you would lift up your heads with confidence, and proclaim the riches of His grace because you could not help it.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 261.

God, Confidence, Help

“Welfarism and excessive spending and deficits and socialism divide us, because everybody has to go to Washington. Those who have the biggest clout, whose who are the best lobbyists, those who go and they grab. And whether it's the medical industrial complex, or the banking industry, or the military industrial complex, that's who ends up controlling our government… For so long, conservatives and constitutionalists have lost the argument, they lost the moral highground. Because those who want to give things away, not talking about where they steal it from, but they want to give things and take care of people, they get the moral highground and they come by as being compassionate. And we who believe in liberty, we lack compassion. But the truth is, there's only one compassionate system known to man, and that is freedom and personal responsibility, then there's enough wealth, and then we will all have personal responsibility to use this compassion that we have, first to take care of our families and friends and neighbors, and there would be so much wealth that we could spread this wealth around the world.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

New Hampshire Homeschool Meet and Greet, September 30, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0-OIdm6Z8 2000s, 2006-2009

People, Truth, World, Family

“"Jelly-bean" is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular — I am idling, I have idled, I will idle.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"The Jelly-Bean"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Life, Personality

“They've been spending most their lives
Living in a pastime paradise.
They've been spending most their lives
Living in a pastime paradise.
They've been wasting most their time
Glorifying days long gone behind,
They've been wasting most their days
In remembrance of ignorance oldest praise.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Pastime Paradise
Song lyrics, Songs In The Key of Life (1976)

Time

“Any man who spends his income, whether large or small, benefits the community by putting money in circulation.”

Arthur Kekewich (1832–1907) British judge

In re Nottage (1895), L. R. 2 C. D. [1895], p. 653.

Money, Communication

“You think that you exist because you’re unhappy. Other people exist merely as a function of their problems and spend all their time talking compulsively about their children, their wives and husbands, school, work, friends. They never stop to think: I’m here. I am the result of everything that happened and will happen, but I’m here. If I did something wrong, I can put it right or at least ask forgiveness. If I did something right, that leaves me happier and more connected with the now.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Children, People, School, Forgiveness

“A girl, if she has any pride, is so ashamed of having anything she wishes to say out of the hearing of her own family, she thinks it must be something so very wrong, that it is ten to one, if she have the opportunity of saying it, that she will not.
And yet she is spending her life, perhaps, in dreaming of accidental means of unrestrained communion.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Life, Family, Dreams, Girl

“Questions and answers click into each other like cogs of a machine. Each person has nothing but quite definite tasks. The various professions are concentrated at definite places. One eats while in motion. Amusements are concentrated in other parts of the city. And elsewhere again are the towers to which one returns and finds wife, family, gramophone, and soul. Tension and relaxation, activity and love are meticulously kept separate in time and are weighed out according to formulae arrived at in extensive laboratory work. If during any of these activities one runs up against a difficulty, one simply drops the whole thing; for one will find another thing or perhaps, later on, a better way, or someone else will find the way that one has missed. It does not matter in the least, but nothing wastes so much communal energy as the presumption that one is called upon not to let go of a definite personal aim. In a community with energies constantly flowing through it, every road leads to a good goal, if one does not spend too much time hesitating and thinking it over. The targets are set up at a short distance, but life is short too, and in this way one gets a maximum of achievement out of it. And man needs no more for his happiness; for what one achieves is what moulds the spirit, whereas what one wants, without fulfillment, only warps it. So far as happiness is concerned it matters very little what one wants; the main thing is that one should get it. Besides, zoology makes it clear that a sum of reduced individuals may very well form a totality of genius.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

Love, Life, Happiness, Family

“As technology grows in power, its ability either to disrupt or to heal increases. We can destroy the planet more easily than we can heal the harm we have done so far. To heal, we have to move to new technologies, new social patterns, new types of consumer products, new ways of generating and spending wealth. Such changes will inevitably occur, whether they are brought by healing forethought or mindless destruction. The future will not be a repetition of the past.”

James Martin (author) (1933–2013) British information technology consultant and writer

James Martin (1978) The wired society. p. 3

Way, Change, Past, Future

“The journalist researches a story. The novelist imagines it.
What’s funny is, you’d be amazed at the amount of time a novelist has to spend with people in order to create this single lonely voice. This seemingly isolated world.
It’s hard to call any of my novels “fiction.””

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories (2004)

People, World, Imagination, Time

“Commuter — one who spends his life
In riding to and from his wife;
A man who shaves and takes a train
And then rides back to shave again.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

"Commuter," The Lady Is Cold (1929)

Life, Training

“I'm not saying that all college students are subhuman — I'm just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"The Clash" (December 1977), p. 235
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Art

“Weathermen are the ponchoed buffoons who spend hurricanes outside, buffeted by winds, lashed by rains, struggling to stand erect. A mime's "walking against the wind" routine come horribly to life. Whereas meteorologists - we're the people who sent them out there.”

John Hodgman book The Areas of My Expertise

September 30, 2006
The Areas of My Expertise (2005), Appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Life, People

“We believe as Democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy in the world's history, one that can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be able to help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do it, room at the table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute. And we proclaim as loudly as we can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze, if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war because life is better than death.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Democratic National Convention Address (1984)

Life, Death, War, Truth

“The greatest American industry—why has no one ever said so?—is the industry of using words. We pay tens of millions of people to spend their lives lying to us, or telling us the truth, or supplying us with a nourishing medicinal compound of the two. All of us are living in the middle of a dark wood—a bright Technicolored forest—of words, words, words. It is a forest in which the wind is never still: there isn’t a tree in the forest that is not, for every moment of its life and our lives, persuading or ordering or seducing or overawing us into buying this, believing that, voting for the other.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”, pp. 27–28
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Life, People, Truth, Lying

“Global military spending levels constitute an unconscionable use of resources and remain at an all-time high, reaching a total of USD 1.75 trillion in 2012, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations expert urges states to cut military spending and invest more in human development http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B9C2E/(httpNewsByYear_en)/D5D061E9891363C1C1257CB7003055E0?OpenDocument. 2014

Peace, Time

“When a movie is this bad, it's hard to adequately describe its awfulness in words. The temptation exists to write something along the lines of: "Something this horrible has to be seen to be believed." Of course, that kind of advice would lead to e-mail death threats and other assorted nasty comments from those who spend money on The Devil's Rejects. … Aside from its poor production values, horrendous acting, and ignoble morality, The Devil's Rejects isn't engaging cinema. Even if the simple act of sitting in a movie theater watching people get hacked up for 90 minutes doesn't bother you, the dullness and repetition is likely to.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=934 of The Devil's Rejects (2005). Half-star reviews

Death, Money, People

“Spending comes just as natural to liberals in Minnesota and the Minnesota legislature as bashing decency comes to the editorial board of our major metropolitan newspapers.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Edwatch conference, October 10-11, 2003
2000s

Nature

“One would like to see mankind spend the balance of the century in a total effort to clean up and groom the surface of the globe — wipe out the jungles, turn deserts and swamps into arable land, terrace barren mountains, regulate rivers, eradicate all pests, control the weather, and make the whole land mass a fit habitation for Man. The globe should be our and not nature's home, and we no longer nature's guests.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

The Temper of Our Time (1967)

Home, Mountain, Nature, Effort

“The future is too good to waste on lies. And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting.”

Bowe Bergdahl (1986) American soldier captured by the Taliban in 2009 and released in 2014 as part of a prisoner swap

Last e-mail to parents (2009)

Life, Fools, Way, Idea

“The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said, in future what are you going to tax when you will want more money? He also not merely assumed but stated that you could not depend upon any economy in armaments. I think that is not so. I think he will find that next year there will be substantial economy without interfering in the slightest degree with the efficiency of the Navy. The expenditure of the last few years has been very largely for the purpose of meeting what is recognised to be a temporary emergency. … It is very difficult for one nation to arrest this very terrible development. You cannot do it. You cannot when other nations are spending huge sums of money which are not merely weapons of defence, but are equally weapons of attack. I realise that, but the encouraging symptom which I observe is that the movement against it is a cosmopolitan one and an international one. Whether it will bear fruit this year or next year, that I am not sure of, but I am certain that it will come. I can see signs, distinct signs, of reaction throughout the world. Take a neighbour of ours. Our relations are very much better than they were a few years ago. There is none of that snarling which we used to see, more especially in the Press of those two great, I will not say rival nations, but two great Empires. The feeling is better altogether between them. They begin to realise they can co-operate for common ends, and that the points of co-operation are greater and more numerous and more important than the points of possible controversy.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1914/jul/23/finance-bill on the day the Austrian ultimatum was sent to Serbia (23 July 1914); The "neighbour" mentioned is Germany. Chancellor of the Exchequer

Money, World, Feeling, Thinking

“Suppose you have two friends, James and Joanna, who are becoming increasingly fond of each other. At some point you realize that in their hearts they both have made a commitment to spending the rest of their lives together. But James has not yet admitted this to himself, or declared himself to Joanna. What is holding him back is a certain exaggerated trust in his own rationality, preventing him from acknowledging the validity of any impulse in himself he cannot completely understand. You are sure that once he comes to see how misplaced this trust is, he will realize that he has in fact been committed to a life with Joanna for some time and this commitment has been controlling the way he already lives his life and his decisions about how to spend his time and devote his energies. Now does James believe he is going to get married to Joanna? You are not clear what to say. If you ask him to profess such a belief, he will probably say he does not know, one way or the other. But his life-choices indicate the condition of his heart, and in that sense he does already have the belief. Another thing you do not know is how things are actually going to turn out for James. It all depends on which of the two dispositions prevails, his love for Joanna or his pride in his intellect.”

John E. Hare (1949) British philosopher

Source: "Kant on the Rational Instability of Atheism" (2006), pp. 63-64

Love, Life, Way, Understanding

“The next president will appoint and delegate over 5,000 people in government who will fill positions in 500 agencies, and will spend 18 trillion pesos over a six-year term.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2015, Speech: Declaration as Vice Presidential Candidate

People

“Deficit financing proper is rather the process whereby a Government spends more money that it withdraws from the economy by taxation, borrowing, running down reserves, etc.; thereby causing in most circumstances, and very acutely in ours, monetary inflation and severe pressure on the balance of payments.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

March 29, 1967, page 249.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Money

“[Voters] "sent me to Washington to vote no against excessive Federal spending, against forced busing of little schoolchildren, and to vote no against the forces who have driven God out of the classroom.”

Jesse Helms (1921–2008) American politician

News & Observer, June 26, 1983 quoted in The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/27/weekinreview/word-for-word-jesse-helms-north-carolinian-has-enemies-but-no-one-calls-him.html (1994) 1980s

God

“There's that kind of money in the world. It aggravates you to have it, makes you miserable to spend it, and you hate yourself when it's gone. And when you hate yourself, you feel like spending money. Except there's no money left. And no hope.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)

Money, Hate, World, Hope

“I spend… twenty times more for you people than any other commercial I've ever made. You are such pests! Now what is it you want? In your… depths of your ignorance, what is it you want? Whatever it is you want, I can't deliver, 'cause I just don't see it.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

The Findus Foods "Frozen Peas" Session Out-Takes

People, Time

“To be neurotic is to spend one’s life perpetually replacing one worry with the next.”

David H. Levy (1948) Canadian astronomer

Humor in Psychotherapy (2007)

Life

“As a child, everyone dreams of finding treasure. There’s romance and drama. But as an adult most people aren’t going to spend their lives trying to find it.”

E. Lee Spence (1947) German anthropologist, photographer, archaeologist, historian, photojournalist and academic

Diving Into Sunken-Treasure Investing http://www.cnbc.com/id/39342234, CNBC Special Report by Shelly K. Scwartz, Published: October 18, 2010.

People, Dreams

“We're going to see passengers in space stations in 15 years, who will be able to buy a ticket and spend a weekend in space.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

The Dallas Morning News staff (July 28, 1986) "People", The Dallas Morning News, p. 2A.

“It was clear that if I didn't spend the rest of my life concentrating on string theory, I would simply be missing my life's calling.”

Edward Witten (1951) American theoretical physicist

as quoted by John Horgan, The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (1996)

Life

“Seven kinds of people will be sheltered under the shade of God on the Day of Judgment…They are: a just ruler, a young man who passed his youth in the worship and service of God…one whose heart is attached to the mosque…two people who love each other for the sake of God…a man who is invited to sin…but declines, saying 'I fear God'…one who spends his charity in secret, without making a show…and one who remembers God in solitude so that his eyes overflow.”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, Hadith 376
Sunni Hadith

Love, God, People, Secret

“The dialogue consists almost entirely of terse screams: Watch it! Incoming! Move! Look out! Fire! Move! The only characters I remember having four sentences in a row are the anchors on cable news. … Young men: If you attend this crap with friends who admire it, tactfully inform them they are idiots. Young women: If your date likes this movie, tell him you've been thinking it over, and you think you should consider spending some time apart.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/battle-los-angeles-2011 of Battle: Los Angeles (9 March 2011) Reviews, Half-star reviews

Women, Men, Thinking, Time

““A book,” says Vandos of Ur-Amakir, “is a fortress, a place of weeping, the key to a desert, a river that has no bridge, a garden of spears.” Fanlewas the Wise, the great theologian of Avalei, writes that Kuidva, the God of Words, is “a taskmaster with a lead whip.” Tala of Yenith is said to have kept her books in an iron chest that could not be opened in her presence, else she would lie on the floor, shrieking. She wrote: “Within the pages there are fires, which can rise up, singe the hair, and make the eyelids sting.” Ravhathos called the life of the poet “the fair and fatal road, of which even the dust and stones are dear to my heart,” and cautioned that those who spend long hours engaged in reading or writing should not be spoken to for seven hours afterward. “For they have gone into the Pit, into which they descend on Slopes of Fire, but when they rise they climb on a Ladder of Stone.” Hothra of Ur-Brome said that his books were “dearer than father or mother,” a sentiment echoed by thousands of other Olondrians through the ages, such as Elathuid the Voyager, who explored the Nissian coast and wrote: “I sat down in the wilderness with my books, and wept for joy.” And the mystic Leiya Tevorova, that brave and unfathomable soul, years before she met her tragic death by water, wrote: “When they put me into the Cold, above the white Lake, in the Loathsome Tower, and when Winter came with its cruel, hard, fierce, dark, sharp and horrible Spirit, my only solace was in my Books, wherein I walked like a Child, or shone in the Dark like a Moth which has its back to a sparkling Fire.””

Sofia Samatar book A Stranger in Olondria

Source: A Stranger in Olondria (2013), Chapter 3, “Doorways” (p. 19; the first sentence is echoed on p. 273)

Life, Death, God, Lie

“The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Consolation to Apollonius

Life

“It really doesn't matter whether I'm right or wrong: the war is going to end because we're gonna have such a political and financial havoc here with the devaluation of our dollar, because we just can't keep affording it. This is usually how empires end, by spending too much money maintaining their empire. We're in 130 countries, we have 700 bases around the world, and it's going to come to an end. I want it to come to an end more gracefully and peacefully, follow the constitution, and follow a more sensible foreign policy.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, CNN, December 2, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTj3STZqviY 2000s, 2006-2009

Money, War, World, Country

“There were often times
when we had no wine to drink,
However, this morning
we fill the empty beakers.
Over the new spring wine
midges hover—
When will we ever
taste its like again?
Tables with funeral meats
stand piled high before us,
Old friends and relatives
come and weep beside us.
We try to speak
but cannot utter words,
We try to see
but our eyes are dim.
Once he used to sleep
within the lofty hall,
Now he will spend the night
out on the lonely moor.
Leaving the city gate
we accompanied him thither
But we were back again
before midnight had come.”

Tao Yuanming (365–427) Chinese poet

"Written in Imitation of an Ancient Bearers' Song"
Translated by William Acker; T'ao the Hermit: Sixty Poems by T'ao Ch'ien (1952), p. 102

Spring, Drink, Sleep, Wine

“What is scarce is money. The lack of money to spend on goods is what keeps the unemployed resources from producing more goods. Work, moreover, instead of being a curse, is desired more than anything else because the alternative is not enjoyment of leisure but the suffering of unemployment and deprivation. Of course, if people could get income without they would not object too much (although their self-respect in feeling they are useful members in society who are earning their income is too easily underestimated). But it is only by finding work they can obtain the necessary income they need.”

Abba Lerner (1903–1982) American economist

On the causes of unemployment (1951, pg.147-48) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=174849

Money, People, Feeling, Suffering

“Under the Enrichment Laws, consumers have to spend a fixed quota of dollars each month, depending on their strata. Hoarding is an anti-corpocratic crime.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"An Orison of Sonmi~451", p. 237
Cloud Atlas (2004)

Law, Dependency

“Quite honestly, we get one new civil case every business day of the year. We spend so much of our time reading the law and interpreting the law, that that does not leave much time for consideration of whether the law is prudent or might be written in a better way. I spend all of my time, with the assistance of my law clerks, trying to read the law and interpret it and apply it to the facts presented in any particular case. So I cannot say that I have spent much time at all considering the propriety of the laws that I have had occasion to interpret.”

Thomas Hardiman (1965) American judge

Judicial and Executive Nominations (November 14, 2006)

Law, Way, Business, Time

“In Mussolini's Italy of the nineteen-thirties, when it meant long terms of improsonment, and perhaps torture or even death, to be in any way connected with the Communist Party, and when not only all the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, but the works of all Italian and foreign democrats and progressive were strictly banned from Italian libraries and bookshops, the works of Trotsky, on the "new kind of communism" were "freely" and widely translated and distributed. I remember vividly how in 1938, passing through Italy on the way to meet the anti-fascist and Communist students of Belgrade University, and spending a few hours in Mussolini's Milan, the word "communism" caught my eye on a number of books prominently displayed in a bookshop window. They were the newly translated works of Trotsky.”

James Klugmann (1912–1977) British writer

From Trotsky to Tito (1951)

Death, Books, Way, Communication

“We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives..., not looking for flaws, but for potential.”

Ellen Goodman (1941) American journalist and writer

Attributed

Drawing, New Year

“You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafés.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Bill Gorton to Jake Barnes, in Book 2, Ch. 12
The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Death, Sex, Drink, Time

“The whole society is obsessed…. I'm not complaining — I'm just saying, "Don't be too impressed with me. Don't try to dress like me or wear your hair like mine. Find your own style. Don't spend your savings trying to be someone else. You're not more important, smarter, or prettier because you wear a designer dress." I only wear the expensive clothes because I get them free and I'm too lazy to go out and look for my own.”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

O interview (2003)
Context: The whole society is obsessed.... I'm not complaining — I'm just saying, "Don't be too impressed with me. Don't try to dress like me or wear your hair like mine. Find your own style. Don't spend your savings trying to be someone else. You're not more important, smarter, or prettier because you wear a designer dress." I only wear the expensive clothes because I get them free and I'm too lazy to go out and look for my own. I, a rich girl from Mexico, came here with designer clothes. And one day when I was starving in an apartment in Los Angeles, I looked at my Chanel blouses and said, "If only I could pay the rent with one of these." … In those days, the rag I used to dry my dishes was more useful. Now many who start in this business come to me for advice and ask, "How do I get started?" And I have to say, "I honestly have no idea." I think it's a bunch of accidents that happen to you and somehow you survive them and take advantage of them and something magical happens — and you have an agent.

Clothes

“I regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the most important issues in this campaign.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Campaign Address on the Federal Budget at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (October 19, 1932), quoted in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume 1, p. 809. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=ppotpus;cc=ppotpus;q1=I%20regard%20reduction%20in%20Federal%20spending;rgn=full%20text;idno=4925052.1928.001;didno=4925052.1928.001;view=image;seq=00000861 http://books.google.com/books?id=LD13AAAAMAAJ&q=%22I+regard+reduction+in+Federal+spending+as+one+of+the+most+important+issues+%22&dq=%22I+regard+reduction+in+Federal+spending+as+one+of+the+most+important+issues+%22&hl=en&ei=Zj0nTsuYAc3isQLHrKk7&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAjgU http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=88399#ixzz1LgbHf7LQ 1930s Context: I regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the most important issues in this campaign. In my opinion it is the most direct and effective contribution that Government can make to business.

“I am a little late getting around to it, but confession is good for the soul. I have sometimes voted to spend more taxpayer's money for worthy Federal projects in Grand Rapids, Michigan, while I vigorously opposed wasteful spending boondoggles in Oklahoma.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, Address to Congress (12 August 1974)
Context: I am a little late getting around to it, but confession is good for the soul. I have sometimes voted to spend more taxpayer's money for worthy Federal projects in Grand Rapids, Michigan, while I vigorously opposed wasteful spending boondoggles in Oklahoma. [Laughter]
Be that as it may, Mr. Speaker, you and I have always stood together against unwarranted cuts in national defense. This is no time to change that nonpartisan policy.

Money, Soul

“Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting Hillary in charge of making it cheaper. (This is what I always do when I want to spend less money — hire a lawyer from Yale.) If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

The Liberty Manifesto (1993)

Money, Health, Thinking, Waiting

“I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1929–1940 (2009), p. 362
Context: I think the next little bit of excitement is ﬂying. I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.

Life, Books, Feeling, Reading

“Respect for mother and father is good, generosity to friends, acquaintances, relatives, Brahmans and ascetics is good, not killing living beings is good, moderation in spending and moderation in saving is good.”

Ashoka (-304–-232 BC) Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty

Edicts of Ashoka (c. 257 BC)
Context: Respect for mother and father is good, generosity to friends, acquaintances, relatives, Brahmans and ascetics is good, not killing living beings is good, moderation in spending and moderation in saving is good. The Council shall notify the Yuktas about the observance of these instructions in these very words.

“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.”

Theophrastus (-371–-287 BC) ancient greek philosopher

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Book 5.

Time, For Men

“For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life.”

James C. Collins book Good to Great

Highlighted section cited in: Lisa Marshall (2004), Speak the Truth and Point to Hope: The Leader's Journey to Maturity. p. 32
Good to Great, 2001
Context: For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.

Love, Life, People, Time

“Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verse 18.
To Demonicus
Context: If you love knowledge, you will be a master of knowledge. What you have come to know, preserve by exercise; what you have not learned, seek to add to your knowledge; for it is as reprehensible to hear a profitable saying and not grasp it as to be offered a good gift by one's friends and not accept it. Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty.

Way, Learning, Time

“That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those… of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

"Simon Stimson"
Our Town (1938)
Context: That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those... of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know — that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness.

Feeling, Passion, Time

“Growth is a good thing, up to about seven feet tall, then it starts to get inconvenient. People eight feet tall bang their heads, their backs ache, their circulation slows, they spend more for food and clothes, and when they fall it really hurts. Who can they make love to? ---The same is true of cities.”

Paul Glover (1947) Community organizer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; American politician

http://www.paulglover.org/8709.html (“What’s Next for Ithaca?”), The Grapevine, cover story, 1987-09-15 Context: “Growth is a good thing, up to about seven feet tall, then it starts to get inconvenient. People eight feet tall bang their heads, their backs ache, their circulation slows, they spend more for food and clothes, and when they fall it really hurts. Who can they make love to? ---The same is true of cities. After a certain size they get more frustrating than exciting: People collide and anger turns to crime. Streets become dangerous, housing costs more, tax rates rise, schools teach less, structures dwarf people, air smells stale, water fouls and traffic slows no matter how wide the roads.”

Love, People, Making love, Food

“The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay. In foreign policy, Republicans intend to pursue the war in Iraq but to do so with a minimal number of troops on the ground. This is not to be confused with the disastrous Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld policy of using a minimal number of troops on the ground to pursue the war in Iraq. Democrats intend to end the war, but they don't know when. Democrats are making the 'high school sex promise': I'll pull out in time, honest!”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

"Letter to Our European Friends" (4 February 2008)

War, School, Sex, Time

“I believe myself, that there is a great deal too much hasty writing in our magazines and pamphlets. No matter how kindly and well disposed we are when we write we cannot get rid of the essential conditions under which really good literature is produced, love for the art of expression in itself; a feeling for the music of sentences, so that they become mantrams, and the thought sings its way into the soul. To get this, one has to spend what seems a disproportionate time in dreaming over and making the art and workmanship as perfect as possible.
I could if I wanted, sit down and write steadily and without any soul; but my conscience would hurt me just as much as if I had stolen money or committed some immorality. To do even a ballad as long as The Dream of the Children, takes months of thought, not about the ballad itself, but to absorb the atmosphere, the special current connected with the subject. When this is done the poem shapes itself readily enough; but without the long, previous brooding it would be no good.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

Letter to Mrs. T. P. Hyatt (1895)
Context: There are heaps of things I would like to do, but there is no time to do them. The most gorgeous ideas float before the imagination, but time, money, and alas! inspiration to complete them do not arrive, and for any work to be really valuable we must have time to brood and dream a little over it, or else it is bloodless and does not draw forth the God light in those who read. I believe myself, that there is a great deal too much hasty writing in our magazines and pamphlets. No matter how kindly and well disposed we are when we write we cannot get rid of the essential conditions under which really good literature is produced, love for the art of expression in itself; a feeling for the music of sentences, so that they become mantrams, and the thought sings its way into the soul. To get this, one has to spend what seems a disproportionate time in dreaming over and making the art and workmanship as perfect as possible.
I could if I wanted, sit down and write steadily and without any soul; but my conscience would hurt me just as much as if I had stolen money or committed some immorality. To do even a ballad as long as The Dream of the Children, takes months of thought, not about the ballad itself, but to absorb the atmosphere, the special current connected with the subject. When this is done the poem shapes itself readily enough; but without the long, previous brooding it would be no good. So you see, from my slow habit of mind and limited time it is all I can do to place monthly, my copy in the hands of my editor when he comes with a pathetic face to me.

Love, Money, Children, Dreams

“I accuse the present Administration of being the greatest spending Administration in peacetime in all American history”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

one which piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission, and has failed to anticipate the dire needs or reduced earning power of the people. Bureaus and bureaucrats have been retained at the expense of the taxpayer. We are spending altogether too much money for government services which are neither practical nor necessary. In addition to this, we are attempting too many functions and we need a simplification of what the Federal government is giving the people."
"Campaign Address on Agriculture and Tariffs at w:Sioux City, Iowa (29 September 1932)
1930s

History

“Instead of spending our money on preparedness to fight, we should pour out billions in a common effort to solve common problems around the earth… on the scale of present preparations for total war.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)
Context: Instead of spending our money on preparedness to fight, we should pour out billions in a common effort to solve common problems around the earth... on the scale of present preparations for total war.... This vast sum should be spent on food, clothing, shelter, medicine, seed, fertilizer, livestock, machinery, tools and other requirements of efficient production and distribution.... Instead of spending billions on preparedness to wage war with pestilence, vast sums should be spent on health measures and the eradication of plague from the face of the earth.

Money, War, Problem, Effort

“Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.”

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

Fox News interview (May 2004)
Context: There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.

Money

“The world is spending some three or four thousand million pounds sterling every year on preparations for what we all know will be, if it comes to pass, a tremendous danger to the whole of our civilization, whoever wins and whoever loses. And again we see rising up as the active principle of policy the idea that might is right; that the only thing that counts in international affairs is force; that the virtues of truth and mercy and tolerance are really not virtues at all, but symptoms of the softness and feebleness of human nature; and that the old conception of blood and iron is the only thing that is really true and can really be trusted.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

The Future of Civilization (1938)
Context: The world is spending some three or four thousand million pounds sterling every year on preparations for what we all know will be, if it comes to pass, a tremendous danger to the whole of our civilization, whoever wins and whoever loses. And again we see rising up as the active principle of policy the idea that might is right; that the only thing that counts in international affairs is force; that the virtues of truth and mercy and tolerance are really not virtues at all, but symptoms of the softness and feebleness of human nature; and that the old conception of blood and iron is the only thing that is really true and can really be trusted. Accompanied by and causing this kind of revival of reaction, we see the revival of that extreme form of nationalism which believes not only that your own nation is superior to other nations but that all other nations are degenerate and inferior, and that the only function of the government of each country is to provide for the safety and welfare of that country, without regard to what may happen to other countries, adopting the ancient, pernicious, and devilish text: "Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost."
At present these doctrines have not been accepted by the great majority of the peoples of the world. And even in those countries where they have most acceptance, they are put forward with a certain hesitation and coupled with the advocacy of peace — but, alas, peace based on the triumph of nationalistic ideas.

Truth, World, Idea, Nature

“I shall spend very little time in the purely ornamental part of the office. In point of fact, I will tell you, first of all others, the policy I intend to adopt, and that is, to make the matter a business engagement between the people of the State and myself, in which the obligation on my side is to perform the duties assigned me with an eye single to the interest of my employers.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

Letter to his brother Rev. William N. Cleveland (7 November 1882); published in The Writings and Speeches of Grover Cleveland (1892), p. 534.
Context: I feel as if it were time for me to write to someone who will believe what I write.
I have been for some time in the atmosphere of certain success, so that I have been sure that I should assume the duties of the high office for which I have been named. I have tried hard, in the light of this fact, to appreciate properly the responsibilities that will rest upon me, and they are much, too much underestimated. But the thought that has troubled me is, can I well perform my duties, and in such a manner as to do some good to the people of the State? I know there is room for it, and I know that I am honest and sincere in my desire to do well; but the question is whether I know enough to accomplish what I desire.
The social life which seems to await me has also been a subject of much anxious thought. I have a notion that I can regulate that very much as I desire; and, if I can, I shall spend very little time in the purely ornamental part of the office. In point of fact, I will tell you, first of all others, the policy I intend to adopt, and that is, to make the matter a business engagement between the people of the State and myself, in which the obligation on my side is to perform the duties assigned me with an eye single to the interest of my employers. I shall have no idea of re-election, or any higher political preferment in my head, but be very thankful and happy I can serve one term as the people's Governor.

People, Business, Time, Parting

“Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must either then obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)
Context: No, no, never send interim reports. Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must either then obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.

Problem, Time

“The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Rolling Stone #1078 (14 May 2009), p. 45
Context: It's peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with cellphones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self-identity. It's a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that's got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.

Life, People, Understanding

“I am not worried about the future at all. I don't like to run it down. I don't like to think of it being too dark because I expect to spend all the rest of my life there and I don't want to have a nasty end to it.”

Charles Kettering (1876–1958) American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 140 patents

"Mr. Kettering's Talk", News and Views, General Motors Acceptance Corporation, General Exchange Insurance Corporation, Motors Insurance Corporation, 1936, p. 46 https://books.google.com/books?id=G2hEAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22the+rest+of+my+life+there%22 Variants: I object to people running down the future. I am going to live all the rest of my life there, and I would like it to be a nice place, polished, bright, glistening, and glorious. Quoted in Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering, by T. A. Boyd 1957, pp. 3–4 ( Internet Archive https://archive.org/stream/professionalamat013190mbp/professionalamat013190mbp_djvu.txt, Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=42Ohg0wKaWsC&pg=PA4&dq=%22I+object+to+people+running+down+the+future%22) My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. Common, since 1947. Examples: Instruments and Control Systems, Volume 20, 1947, p. 374 https://books.google.com/books?id=gBonAAAAMAAJ&q=%22my+interest+is+in+the+future+because+i+am+going+to+spend+the+rest+of+my+life+there%22+kettering; " Biography: Charles Kettering http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/streamliners-kettering/", American Experience, PBS; The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives, by Eric Schmidt, , 2014, p. 337 https://books.google.com/books?id=SSWODQAAQBAJ&pg=PA337&q=kettering#v=onepage Context: You know, you read about the future. You can't help that. I don't look upon the future. I am not a politician. I am not worried about the future at all. I don't like to run it down. I don't like to think of it being too dark because I expect to spend all the rest of my life there and I don't want to have a nasty end to it.

Life, Thinking, Future

“We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Paul Tanner, in "Free Women: 1"
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse. They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave. They have known it. We know it. But do the great enlightened mass of the British people know it? No. It is our task, Ella, yours and mine, to tell them. Because the great men are too great to be bothered. They are already discovering how to colonise Venus and to irrigate the moon. That is what is important for our time. You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we’ll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.

Men, People, Truth, Stupidity

“Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke.”

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

Attributed in Watergate and the White House, Volumes 1-2 (1973) by Edward W. Knappman, p. 100; this has also become paraphrased as "Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke".
Attributions

“When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvelous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

As quoted in Claude Debussy: His Life and Works (1933) by Léon Vallas, p. 225
Variant translation: Before the passing sky, in long hours of contemplation of its magnificent and ever-changing beauty, I am seized by an incomparable emotion. The whole expanse of nature is reflected in my own sincere and feeble soul. Around me the branches of trees reach out toward the firmament, here are sweet-scented flowers smiling in the meadow, here the soft earth is carpeted with sweet herbs. … Nature invites its ephemeral and trembling travelers to experience these wonderful and disturbing spectacles — that is what I call prayer.
As quoted in The Life of the Creative Spirit (2001) by H. Charles Romesburg, p. 240
Context: I do not practise religion in accordance with the sacred rites. I have made mysterious Nature my religion. I do not believe that a man is any nearer to God for being clad in priestly garments, nor that one place in a town is better adapted to meditation than another. When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvelous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening the meadow, the gentle grass-carpetted earth, … and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration. … To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! … that is what I call prayer.

Beauty, Soul, Nature, Change

“As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage.”

John Danforth (1936) American politician

Op-Ed essay "In the Name of Politics", in The New York Times (30 March 2005) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/30danforth.html Context: As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.

Marriage

“Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.
Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

Way

“There is a persistent myth that a wife has control over her husband’s money because she gets to spend it. Actually, she does not have much more financial authority than the employee of a corporation who is delegated to buy office furniture or supplies.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Women and the Myth of Consumerism," Ramparts (1969)
Context: There is a persistent myth that a wife has control over her husband’s money because she gets to spend it. Actually, she does not have much more financial authority than the employee of a corporation who is delegated to buy office furniture or supplies. The husband, especially if he is rich, may allow his wife wide latitude in spending — he may reason that since she has to work in the home she is entitled to furnish it to her taste, or he may simply not want to bother with domestic details — but he retains the ultimate veto power. If he doesn’t like the way his wife handles his money, she will hear about it.

Money

“Never interested in impressive edifices, Irish monks preferred to spend their time in study, prayer, farming—and, of course, copying. …a little hut for each monk… a refectory and kitchen; a scriptorium and library; a smithy, a kiln, a mill, and a couple of barns; a modest church—and they were in business.”

Thomas Cahill book How the Irish Saved Civilization

Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found

Business, Study, Time

“So now I'm praying for the end of time
To hurry up and arrive
Cause if I gotta spend another minute with you
I don't think that I can really survive.”

Jim Steinman (1947) American musician

Bat out of Hell (1977), Paradise by the Dashboard Light
Context: So now I'm praying for the end of time
To hurry up and arrive
Cause if I gotta spend another minute with you
I don't think that I can really survive.
I'll never break my promise or forget my vow
But God only knows what I can do right now.
I'm praying for the end of time
It's all that I can do
Praying for the end of time, so I can end my time with you!

Thinking, Time

“We spend so much time defending the Qur’an from attacks that it’s sexist, we rant and rave about how Islam gave rights to women over 1400 years ago, but our sisters are still not in position of leadership within our community.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

On various concerns about writing his song "The Veil", and reactions to it.
Beating the drums of hope and faith (2004)
Context: We spend so much time defending the Qur’an from attacks that it’s sexist, we rant and rave about how Islam gave rights to women over 1400 years ago, but our sisters are still not in position of leadership within our community. Our sisters are still praying next to the shoe-racks while the men have plush carpets beneath their lazy foreheads and our public women’s shelters are full of Muslim women fleeing from abusive husbands and dead-beat dads. The sad reality is that our community does display sexist attitudes to women. Writing a song about Hijab seemed pretty shallow to me in light of the other issues surrounding women that we Muslims are too self-righteous to face. … I began to see that some Muslim women look down on others for not covering, or that many Muslim men judge sisters who wear hijab differently from those who don’t. A sister shows up at the mosque one day without hijab and she is treated rudely; she shows up the next day with hijab and she is treated like a queen. Such a scenario is a blatant treatment of the woman as an object, no different than the judgements we see made in secular society of women’s appearances. In the end, it is not about the piece of cloth. It is about the relationship with God, and I know I don’t want anybody judging me so I don’t think it is right for us to judge each other.

Women, Communication, Sister, Time

“When a society spends more on advertising than it does on education, where is it headed?”

Stanley Knowles (1908–1997) Canadian politician

Source: The New Party - (1961), Chapter 8, The Forecast Is Good, p. 102
Context: What shall it profit us, unless life in the midst of it all has meaning? When a society spends more on advertising than it does on education, where is it headed?

Education

“The first and most necessary topic in philosophy is that of the use of moral theorems, such as, "We ought not to lie;" the second is that of demonstrations, such as, "What is the origin of our obligation not to lie;" the third gives strength and articulation to the other two, such as, "What is the origin of this is a demonstration." For what is demonstration? What is consequence? What contradiction? What truth? What falsehood? The third topic, then, is necessary on the account of the second, and the second on the account of the first. But the most necessary, and that whereon we ought to rest, is the first. But we act just on the contrary. For we spend all our time on the third topic, and employ all our diligence about that, and entirely neglect the first.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

51
The Enchiridion (c. 135)

Truth, Lie, Time

“I think we're going through those difficult economic times for a purpose, to bring us back to those Biblical principles of you know, you don't spend all the money.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

2011
Context: I think in America from time to time we have to go through some difficult times — and I think we're going through those difficult economic times for a purpose, to bring us back to those Biblical principles of you know, you don't spend all the money. You work hard for those six years and you put up that seventh year in the warehouse to take you through the hard times. And not spending all of our money. Not asking for Pharaoh to give everything to everybody and to take care of folks because at the end of the day, it's slavery. We become slaves to government.

Money, Thinking, Time

“…if wheat were at this moment subject to a duty of twenty shillings the quarter, and if Indian corn were virtually excluded, next winter would not pass without a convulsion endangering the whole frame of society, without the humiliation of constituted authorities forced to yield after a disgraceful struggle…if their [the Protectionists] advice had been taken, we should have had famine prices for many articles, and a state of exasperated public feeling and just agitation, which it would require wiser heads than theirs to allay. So far from regretting the expulsion from office, I rejoice in it as the greatest relief from an intolerable burden. To have your own way, and to be for five years the Minister of this country in the House of Commons, is quite enough for any man's strength. He is entitled to his discharge, from length of service. But to have to incur the deepest responsibility, to bear the heaviest toil, to reconcile colleagues with conflicting opinions to a common course of action, to keep together in harmony the Sovereign, the Lords and the Commons; to have to do these things, and to be at the same time the tool of a party—that is to say, to adopt the opinions of men who have not access to your knowledge, and could not profit by it if they had, who spend their time in eating and drinking, and hunting, shooting, gambling, horse-racing, and so forth—would be an odious servitude, to which I will never submit. I determine to keep aloof from party combinations.”

Robert Peel (1788–1850) British Conservative statesman

Letter to Lord Hardinge (24 September, 1846).
Charles Stuart Parker (ed.), Sir Robert Peel from His Private Papers. Volume III (London: John Murray, 1899), pp. 473-474.

Men, Way, Feeling, Drink

“So many people spend so much of their life energy "sweating the small stuff" that they completely lose touch with the magic and beauty of life.”

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

Lesson 1, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all Small Stuff (1997)
Context: Often we allow ourselves to get all worked up about things that, upon closer examination, aren't really that big a deal. We focus on little problems and blow them out of proportion. … Whether we had to wait in line, listen to unfair criticism, or do the lion's share of the work, it pays enormous dividends if we learn not to worry about little things. So many people spend so much of their life energy "sweating the small stuff" that they completely lose touch with the magic and beauty of life.

Life, People, Beauty

“After spending nearly 20 years contracted to a major label, I have mixed feelings about their demise.”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Quotes from NatalieMerchant.com
Context: After spending nearly 20 years contracted to a major label, I have mixed feelings about their demise. These companies have profited immensely from your insatiable desire for listening and helped musicians for several decades to reach you. They grew fat and excessive. They exploited and they monopolized. They edited and censured. They’ve been rapidly losing their means of production, distribution and promotion to the internet. They have been economizing by dropping artists, cutting staff and folding into one another but they can’t keep up with the pace of disintegration. You might not have ever heard my name if Elektra Records hadn’t made me one of their artists for hire. I’m both grateful and resentful and you probably are too.

Feeling

“The less important an issue is, the more time managers spend discussing it.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 2000s, A little book of f-laws: 13 common sins of management, 2006, p. 16, bold text cited in: Gerald Haigh (2008) Inspirational, and Cautionary Tales for Would-be School Leaders. p. 142.
Context: The less important an issue is, the more time managers spend discussing it. More time is spent on small talk than is spent on large talk. Most talk is about what matters least. What matters least is what most of us know most about.

Time

“I'm a vegetarian. I'm not strict; I eat fish, and duck. Well, they're nearly fish, aren't they? They're semi-submerged a lot of the time, they spend a lot of time in the water, they're virtually fish, really. And pigs, cows, sheep, anything that lives near water, I'm not strict. I'm sort of like a post-modern vegetarian; I eat meat ironically.”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Part Troll (2004)

Fish, Water, Time

“To worry about tomorrow is to detract from your work today. Time you spend thinking about tomorrow is time you're not spending thinking about what to do today.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), To Plan or Not To Plan
Context: To worry about tomorrow is to detract from your work today. Time you spend thinking about tomorrow is time you're not spending thinking about what to do today. The place you leave in the code because you think you'll need it tomorrow, is actually a waste of time today — and a liability tomorrow. It does more harm than good.

Thinking, Time

“You don't spend twenty years of your life in the service and not have a warm, nostalgic feeling left in you”

Alex Haley (1921–1992) African American biographer, screenwriter, and novelist

On his career in the US Coast Guard, as quoted http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/cgcAlexHaley/history.asp at the official site for the Medium Endurance Cutter USCGC Alex Haley http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/cgcAlexHaley/default.asp Context: You don't spend twenty years of your life in the service and not have a warm, nostalgic feeling left in you … It's a small service, and there's a lot of esprit de corps.

Life, Feeling

Quotes about spending page 14

Quotes about spending
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