Quotes about wasting (1465 quotes, page 8)

“But the projects with which the architects of Russian proletarian architecture present us are not only based on pure imagination, but their construction would, if they were fitted for realization, entail enormous waste of space and materials. The dwelling complex 'Wolkenbügel' [architecture, designed by Lissitzky, with the help of [ w:Emil Roth - Swiss architect, 1924] (assuming that one could live here without either freezing or melting!), shaped like a 4, stands in a very un-constructive way on three legs in which the elevators are located. The latter take up as much space as would one or more skyscrapers. And these 'architects' are to teach the West what architecture is!”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote of Theo van Doesburg, in Architecture and revolution — Revolutionary architecture? Utopian designs by Tatlin, Lissitzky, and others, Theo van Doesburg, in 'Het Bouwbedrijf' (1928)
1926 – 1931

Way , Imagination , Help

“Although I am not averse to wasting a few hours playing computer games, I have never tried my hand at Doom. Judging by sales figures and testimonials, playing the game has to be an infinitely preferable experience to watching this pathetic excuse for a movie.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=928 of Doom (2005).
One-star reviews

Game

“Sometimes I think dent-resistant side panels are a waste of money, but then I remember ladies be always throwing themselves at my car, and titties can wreak havoc on a paint job.”

Joey Comeau book Overqualified

Letter to Credico, pg 45.
Overqualified

Money , Cars , Thinking , Painting

“At best Americans give but limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"The Golden Age, Time Past" (1959), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 239.

Pleasure , History

“4) It is a sin to waste the reader's time.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Niven's Laws, Niven's Laws For Writers

Time

“If you're not spending every waking moment of your life radically rethinking the nature of the world - if you're not plotting every moment boiling the carcass of the old order - then you're wasting your day.”

Douglas Coupland book Girlfriend in a Coma

Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)

Life , World , Nature

“‘ Is the war coming to Eldacre, my lord?’ asked Ramus, as he settled into the chair.
'I fear it is. A more stupid and wasteful business there never was. Fields will not be planted, food will run low, tax revenues will dry up — save from the makers of swords and munitions.”

David Gemmell book Stormrider

Source: Rigante series, Stormrider, Ch. 15

War , Stupidity , Fear , Food

“At any rate we may be sure that the political instinct of our bourgeois opponents, as soon as their class interests come into play, will lead them to take a position hostile to us. A classical example is furnished by Belgium, where, as already remarked, a compromise was concluded under the most favorable circumstances conceivable, between the socialists and the liberals. Our party was in undisputed possession of the leadership and was therefore in no danger of being cheated out of the fruits of the common victory. The end sought was universal, equal and direct suffrage. But the clerical party knows its boys, knows its Pappenheimers. It knows that the bourgeoisie has no class interest in giving the laborers, who, in modern industrial states, constitute a majority of the population, the universal suffrage and thereby the prospect of winning a majority and getting political supremacy. It made a counter demand for proportional representation with plural voting, that is, giving more votes to the rich, and thereby granting to the radical bourgeoisie a share in the government, if it would assist in defeating universal and direct suffrage. And behold, without a minute’s hesitation the gentlemen of the radical bourgeoisie broke their agreement with the socialists and joined the clericals in their fight against universal suffrage and the social democracy. Whoever is not convinced by this example that the emancipation struggle of the proletariat is a class struggle is one on whom further arguments would be wasted.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Hostility , Democracy , Boy , Universe

“Yet today our military is still organized more for Cold War threats than for the challenges of a new century -- for industrial age operations, rather than for information age battles. There is almost no relationship between our budget priorities and a strategic vision. The last seven years have been wasted in inertia and idle talk. Now we must shape the future with new concepts, new strategies, new resolve.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

1990s, A Period of Consequences (September 1999)

War , Age , Future

“We can reckon the cost of misdirected emotions by the price which the past has paid for them. We know the full significance of that irresponsible sympathy which … admits no difference between attack and resistance, between a war of aggression and a war of defence; which confuses moral issues, ignores experience, and insults the intelligence of mankind. The reformer whose heart is in the right place, but whose head is elsewhere, represents a waste of force; and we can not afford any waste in the conservation of honour and goodness.”

Agnes Repplier (1855–1950) American essayist

in "The Cost of Modern Sentiment" (1916)

War , Intelligence , Past , Heart

“It will all come back — the wasted splendor,
The heart's lost youth like a breaking flower,
The dauntless dare, and the wistful, tender
Touch of the April hour.”

Edwin Markham (1852–1940) American poet

Source: The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems (1913), The Crowning Hour, III

Youth , Flowers , Heart

“As the city continues to grow, the costs of congestion – to our health, to our environment, and to our economy – are only going to get worse. The question is not whether we want to pay but how do we want to pay. With an increased asthma rate? With more greenhouse gases? Wasted time? Lost business? And higher prices? Or, do we charge a modest fee to encourage more people to take mass transit?”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/environment_sustainability/mayor_michael_bloomberg_delivers_planyc_a_greener_greater_new_york
Environment

People , Health , Question , Business

“Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

Source: Thanatopsis (1817–1821), l. 43

“I live my life in the city / There's no easy way out / The day's moving just too fast for me"
I live my life for the stars that shine/People say it's just a waste of time.
In my mind my dreams are real
You're not down with who I am / look at you now, you're all in my hands tonight"”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Rock'n'Roll Star
Definitely Maybe (1994)

Life , People , Dreams , Way

“This wasteful governing by fear, by contempt for the basic dignities of life, this steady asphyxiation of a dependent people, should be the very last means to be adopted by those who themselves know too well the awful significance, the unforgettable suffering of such an existence. It is unworthy of my great people, the Jews, who have striven to abide by a code of moral rectitude for some 5,000 years, who can create and achieve a society for themselves such as we see around us but can yet deny the sharing of its great qualities and benefits to those dwelling amongst them.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: Americans for Justice in the Middle East A J M E News, Volumes 14-17 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=lTVtAAAAMAAJ, 1988, p. 30

Life , People , Fear , Suffering

“I'm reading a very quaint American book, The Power of Positive Thinking, written, I'd suppose, by a sectarian minister, presumably of Methodist dye. (Norman Vincent Peale).. He's full of stories of prayers heard - and extols the power of prayer.."Before leaving for an important business conference I brace myself with texts like 'If God be for us, who can be against us?'… Then I stalk into the conference room, sure of my victory, and carry off the most marvellous deal.." This, in essence is the burden of the whole book. That's what people call Christian optimism. But it's wasted on us - we've been spoilt for this sort of thing… But isn't it rather self suggestion than authentic religious impulse? It doesn't seem to have dawned on him that suffering, disappointment, defeat or loss might also have some point too, or that God's designs could sometimes be hidden…”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

God , People , Books , Disappointment

“A dangerous tendency has shown itself of late among many of our personnel -- an unwillingness to share weal and woe with the masses, a concern for personal fame and gain. This is very bad. One way of overcoming it is to streamline our organizations in the course of our campaign to increase production and practice economy, and to transfer cadres to lower levels so that a considerable number will return to productive work. We must see to it that all our cadres and all our people constantly bear in mind that ours is a large socialist country but an economically backward and poor one, and that this is a very big contradiction. To make China prosperous and strong needs several decades of hard struggle, which means, among other things, pursuing the policy of building up our country through diligence and thrift, that is, practicing strict economy and fighting waste.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 在我们的许多工作人员中间，现在滋长着一种不愿意和群众同甘苦，喜欢计较个人名利的危险倾向，这是很不好的。我们在增产节约运动中要求精简机关，下放干部，使相当大的一批干部回到生产中去，就是克服这种危险倾向的一个方法。要使全体干部和全体人民经常想到我国是一个社会主义的大国，但又是一个经济落后的穷国，这是一个很大的矛盾。要使我国富强起来，需要几十年艰苦奋斗的时间，其中包括执行厉行节约、反对浪费这样一个勤俭建国的方针。

People , Way , Strong , Fight

“Howdy! That's a great question, actually. The reason we fart is due to needing to periodically release gases that build up during digestion. During the digestion process of the foods you eat, naturally occurring beneficial bacteria in your body metabolize (i. e. convert the food in your body to useable energy) and produce waste as a result, some of which is the gas that makes up farts. This is typically where the methane (CH4) in farts comes from, the rest of the fart volume being from air swallowed during the course of the day. For animals like spiders and insects, there are similar processes! Some animals like termites, for example, better match us as they, too, have methane-producing bacteria in their guts which helps them break down wood! For other animals, other digestive processes make waste products and sometimes gas, so yes, spiders (and insects) do fart, in a sense! Since their exoskeletons are generally rigid, though, they may not produce the sound we associate with farting, thus, you might say that most spider and insect farts are "silent but deadly!"”

Ben Eisenkop (1986) American biologist and redditor

Posted https://www.reddit.com/r/UnidanFans/comments/1mubgx/q_for_unidan_from_my_8yo_daughter_do_spiders_fart/cccqton in response to "Do spiders fart?" (2013)

Food , Question , Nature , Sense

“When the late king, Ibrahim Kootb Shah, had settled the countries of the Hindoos on his southern frontier, and despatched his commander, Ameer Shah Meer, to oppose the armies of his Mahomedan neighbours, he vested the management of the affairs of his government in the hands of one Moorhary Row, a Marratta bramin, to whom was attached a body of ten thousand infantry, under the command of Mahomedan officers of rank, with permission to beat the nobut. Moorhary Row was in every respect the second person in the state, not even excepting the princes of the blood-royal. In the latter end of the late king’s reign, this unprincipled infidel proceeded with a force towards a famous temple near Adony, where he attacked the inhabitants, laid waste the country, and sacked it of its idols, made of gold and silver, and studded with rubies. He levied also four lacks of hoons (160,000l.) from the inhabitants. At sight of the idols the King was taken seriously ill, and never recovered. He died on Thursday the 21st of Rubbeeoos-Sany, AH 988 (AD June 2, 1580) AD…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Ibrãhîm Qutb Shãh of Golconda (AD 1550-1580) Adoni (Karnataka)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Personality , Country

“You know, some people like to call me Mad Max like in the movie.
They may believe it’s an insult. But let me tell you something:
It’s true. I am mad!
I’m mad about government waste!
I’m mad about government borrowing money on the backs of future generations, to benefit big corporations!
I’M MAD THAT THE LIBERALS ARE RUNNING OUR COUNTRY’S FINANCES, AND OUR NATION’S FUTURE, INTO THE GROUND!
I’M MAD THAT THE LIBERAL GOVERNMENT SHRINKS OUR PAYCHECK WITH HIGHT TAXES AND TAKES AWAY OUR FREEDOM.
I’m mad about the federal government constantly meddling in provincial jurisdictions!
I’m mad at politicians who promise anything to get elected!
So yes, you can call me Mad Max.
I don’t mind!
I’m asking you to get mad like me and take your future into your hands.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

3 October 2016 Facebook post https://www.facebook.com/hon.maximebernier/posts/10154565323228703 quoted 28 May 2018 on Toronto Sun https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/bonokoski-mad-maxs-dustup-over-a-liberal-mps-skin-colour-comments
About

Money , People , Freedom , Future

“each generation wastes a little more
of the future with greed and lust for riches”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

archy and mehitabel (1927), what the ants are saying

Future

“It is amusing to think how much conservative ingenuity has been wasted in the defence of the House of Lords by men who were desperately endeavouring to prove that the House of Lords consisted of clever men. There is one really good defence of the House of Lords […] and that is, that the House of Lords, in its full and proper strength, consists of stupid men. It really would be a plausible defence of that otherwise indefensible body to point out that the clever men in the Commons, who owed their power to cleverness, ought in the last resort to be checked by the average man in the Lords, who owed their power to accident.”

G. K. Chesterton book Heretics

Heretics (1905)

Men , Stupidity , Thinking , Housing

“Ninety percent of paid work is time-wasting crap. The world gets by on the other ten.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Source: Wishing I’d Played the Ponies http://takimag.com/article/wishing_id_played_the_ponies/print#axzz3xNaU2RAk, Taki's Magazine, June 16, 2011.

World , Time

“Muslim historians credit all their heroes with many expeditions each of which “laid waste” this or that province or region or city or countryside. The foremost heroes of the imperial line at Delhi and Agra such as Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak (1192-1210 A. D.), Shamsu’d-Dîn Iltutmish (1210-36 A. D.), Ghiyãsu’d-Dîn Balban (1246-66 A D.), Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî (1296-1316 A. D.), Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325-51 A. D.), Fîruz Shãh Tughlaq (135188 A. D.) Sikandar Lodî (1489-1519 A. D.), Bãbar (1519-26 A. D.) and Aurangzeb (1658-1707 A. D.) have been specially hailed for “hunting the peasantry like wild beasts”, or for seeing to it that “no lamp is lighted for hundreds of miles”, or for “destroying the dens of idolatry and God-pluralism” wherever their writ ran. The sultans of the provincial Muslim dynasties-Malwa, Gujarat, Sindh, Deccan, Jaunpur, Bengal-were not far behind, if not ahead, of what the imperial pioneers had done or were doing; quite often their performance put the imperial pioneers to shame. No study has yet been made of how much the human population declined due to repeated genocides committed by the swordsmen of Islam. But the count of cities and towns and villages which simply disappeared during the Muslim rule leaves little doubt that the loss of life suffered by the cradle of Hindu culture was colossal.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Life , God , Study , Light

“GARDEN OF URANIUM: I moved to a house in Lincolnshire. The government were threatening to dump "low level" nuclear waste about fifteen miles away. The plans were dropped a few months before the last general election. The proposals now seem to have resurfaced somewhere under the North Sea!”

Roy Harper (singer) (1941) British musician

among other sites proposed since the election

Housing , Sea

“I'm here to change the world, and if I am not, I am probably wasting my time.”

Utah Phillips (1935–2008) American labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller and poet

Kupfer, David, "Utah Phillips" http://progressive.org/mag/interview/utahphillips, The Progressive. September 2003. Web. August 6, 2013.

World , Change , Time

“Should I give up,
Or should I just keep chasing pavements?
Even if it leads nowhere,
Or would it be a waste?
Even if I knew my place should I leave it there?
Should I give up,
Or should I just keep chasing pavements?
Even if it leads nowhere.”

Adele (singer) (1988) British singer-songwriter

Chasing Pavements, written by Adele and Eg White
Song lyrics, 19 (2008)

“To drink pure water from a shallow pond one should gently take the water from the surface without disturbing the pond in the least. If it is disturbed, the sediments rise up and make the whole water muddy. If you desire to be pure, have firm faith, and slowly go on with your devotional practices, without wasting your energy in useless scriptural discussions and arguments. Your little brain will otherwise be muddled.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 580

Faith , Drink , Water

“The assertion that a problem unstated is a problem unsolved seem to have escaped many builders… All too often, design and implementation begins before the real needs and system functions are fully known. The results are skyrocketing costs, missed scheduled, waste and duplication, disgruntled users and endless series of patches and repairs euphemistically called "systems maintenance"”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

D.T. Ross and K.E. Schoman (1977) "Structured analysis for requirements definition" IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. Vol 3. (1) p. 6-15; as cited in: G. Agyekum-Mensah et al. (2012) "Adaption of structured analysis design techniques methodology for construction project planning".

Problem

“To me [Sydney Opera House] looks like a portable typewriter full of oyster shells, and to the contention that it echoes the sails of yachts on the harbour I can only point out that the yachts on the harbour don't waste any time echoing opera houses.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Postcard from Sydney'
Essays and reviews, Flying Visits (1984)

Time , Housing

“And what have I to give my friends in the last resort?
An awkwardness, a shyness, and a scrap,
No thing that's truly me, a bootless waste,
A waste of myself and them, for my life is mine
And theirs presumably theirs, and cannot touch.”

Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) English writer and gardener

"Days I enjoy" quoted in Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf (1993) by Suzanne Raitt, p. 89

Life

“This legible lesson, this ritual recording, must be repeated as often as possible; the punishments must be a school rather than a festival; an ever-open book rather than a ceremony. The duration that makes the punishment effective for the guilty is also useful for the spectators. They must be able to consult at each moment the permanent lexicon of crime and punishment. A secret punishment is a punishment half wasted. Children should be allowed to come to the places where the penalty is being carried out; there they will attend their classes in civics. And grown men will periodically relearn the laws. Let us conceive of places of punishment as a Garden of the Laws that families would visit on Sundays.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter Three, The Gentle Way in Punishment

Men , Children , Secret , Books

““It’s no use!” it was the custom of his grandfather to say. “There’s not a bit o’ use in having brains! All they do is get you into trouble! A lucky idiot’s ten times better off than a brainy man with a jinx on him! A smart man starts thinkin’, and he thinks himself into a jail cell if his luck is bad, and good luck’s wasted on him because it ain’t reasonable and he don’t believe in it when it happens! It’s taken me a lifetime to keep my brains from ruinin’ me! No, sir! I hope none o’ my descendants inherit my brains! I pity ‘em if they do!”
Hoddan had been on Darth not more than four hours. In that time he’d found himself robbed, had resented it, had been the object of two spirited attempts at assassination, had ridden an excruciating number of miles on an unfamiliar animal, and now found himself in a stone dungeon and deprived of food lest feeding him obligate his host not to cut his throat. And he’d gotten into this by himself! He’d chosen it! He’d practically asked for it!
He began strongly to share his grandfather’s disillusioned view of brains.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 4

Food , Hope , Thinking , Time

“Count yourself lucky,” the potter went on, “that you have understood this now and not spent your years in vain hope. This much have you learned, and no learning is wasted.”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book IV: Taran Wanderer (1967), Chapter 19 (Annlaw)

Hope , Learning

“I figure that, given our “thrownness,” as Heidegger called it, we should work hard to become as bewildered as possible by this strange state of affairs, asking the most impertinent and audacious questions we can imagine. To do otherwise—and instead hand over the mystery of it all to dubious cults of expertise—is to waste one’s life, I feel.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), P. S. (p. 14)

Life , Feeling , Imagination , Question

““Yes, Mr. Lee.” Superintendent Sugden did not wast time on explanations. “What’s all this?””

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

Murder for Christmas (1939, Holiday for Murder, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas)

Time

“If they leave college thinking, as they usually do, that science offers a full, accurate, and literal description of man and Nature; if they think scientific research by itself yields final answers to social problems; if they think scientists are the only honest, patient, and careful workers in the world; if they think that Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, and Faraday were unimaginative plodders like their own instructors; if they think theories spring from facts and that scientific authority at any time is infallible; if they think that the ability to write down symbols and read manometers is fair grounds for superiority and pride, and if they think that science steadily and automatically makes for a better world — then they have wasted their time in the science lecture room; they live in an Ivory Laboratory more isolated than the poet's tower, and they are a plain menace to the society they belong to. They are a menace whether they believe all this by virtue of being engaged in scientific work themselves or of being disqualified from it by felt or fancied incapacity.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

On students, in Teacher in America (1945)

World , Spring , Nature , Problem

“That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind.”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

New York Times (28 May 2005) "The Endgame in Iraq".
"The next … months" in Iraq

Time , Help

“Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose,
And sometimes the blues just get a hold of you.
Just when you thought you had made it,
All around the block people will talk.
But I want to give it all that I've got.
I just don't want, I don't want to waste it.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Sweet Seasons, co-written with Toni Stern
Song lyrics, Music (1971)

People

“If you wanna play it like a game,
well, come one, come on, let's play.
Cause I'd rather waste my life pretending;
than have to forget you
for one whole minute …”

Hayley Williams (1988) American singer-songwriter and musician

crushcrushcrush (2007)
Lyrics

Life , Game , Forgetting

“We aspire to a new world order, one based on justice, fairness and peace; one that will replace the unjust and unequal system of prevailing today, in which, as the final summit declaration states: "Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few powers whose wasteful economies are maintained by the exploitation of workers as well as by the transfer and plunder of of the natural and other resources of the peoples of Africa, Latin America, Asia and other regions of the world."”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

On Behalf of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries (1979)

People , World , Peace , Justice

“Just so is the case of many; God gives them precious time in which they are to provide for a kingdom, and they waste this time of life and cut it all into chips. Let this excite violence in the things of God. It is the main errand of our living here…”

Thomas Watson (1616–1686) English nonconformist preacher and author

Heaven Taken By Storm

Life , God , Time

“I've got to continue the process with some candidates, some very strong candidates that are left. Let's get rid of the no-hopers. No chance. Don't waste my time. (to Ella Jade Bitton after firing Sarah Dales before the first ever triple firing in the series).”

Alan Sugar (1947) British business magnate, media personality, and political advisor

The Apprentice, Series 10

Strong , Chance , Time

“The idea that God speaks to some illiterate merchant warlord in Arabia, and he’s able to write this down perfectly and it contains the answers to all — don’t waste my time with that bulls**t. Also, the archangel Gabriel speaks only Arabic, it seems? Crap.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

http://www.inquisitr.com/1735647/christopher-hitchens-islam-comments-resurface-after-charlie-hebdo-its-the-most-depraved-religion/
2010s, 2010

God , Idea , Time

“The entire center of her life was a blackened waste, its long years not to be recovered nor replaced.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 125

Life

“donlad trump reportedly says that normal type pokemon are a waste of time. they're just dirty birds & rats who have no right being a pokemon”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/615199946980110336]
Tweets by year, 2015

Bird , Time

“Alas! the praise given to the ear
Ne'er was nor e'er can be sincere—
And does but waste away the mind
On which it preys: in vain
Would they in whom its poison lurks
A worthier state attain.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

 Poetical Portrait III
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Sincerity

“To stand still is torture; a thousand paces are wasted before the start, the heavy hoof strikes the absent flat.”
Stare adeo miserum est, pereunt vestigia mille ante fugam, absentemque ferit grauis ungula campum.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book VI, Line 400

“My whole life has been a waste - I've been a failure.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2005-06-02-tyson-saraceno_x.htm
On himself

Life , Failure

“There will have to be three objects for farming and farm products. First, we must end over-production. The over-production that is taking place in Europe and the United States is damaging and obscenely wasteful. It is damaging to the environment, and it is obviously obscenely wasteful when products that are the result of over-production are being burnt in an attempt to maintain prices…Secondly, we must end export dumping. Instead, we must promote aid and trade policies that encourage self-reliant production, which is more protective of the local economy and less dependent on the economies of western Europe and of the United States…Thirdly, what happens to the political sovereignty of poor countries that do not have the infrastructure that is available in Europe and north America when they are told that, because of the debt crisis, they must open up their economies to multinational capital to do whatever it will, and when the IMF and the World bank tell them that they must cut social expenditure? They are now told that they must pursue free trade policies for farm products. Those policies add up to disaster for poor countries.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/nov/23/general-agreement-on-tariffs-and-trade-1 in the House of Commons (23 November 1990).
1990s

World , Dependency , Country

“How can anyone believe that you can "learn" how to feel and learn how to express it? How can anyone teach another person how to laugh and how to cry? How to be cheerful and how to be sad? Teach them what pain is, and despair, and desire, and passion? Hate and love? How can anyone waste their own and somebody else's time with that idiocy? But far worse than the morons who think they can learn these things are the people who claim they can teach them. In the end, they teach bad manners. If one of their trained poodles sits down in public, he doesn't sit, he slouches - which is supposed to mean that his behavior is "natural." He or she scratches his or her head then picks his or her nose, which is supposed to mean that he or she has no complexes and acts very spontaneously. So this is what New York talk shows look like.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On method acting. p. 313
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)

Love , Pain , Hate , People

“A great man's manias must be respected, because the time required to combat them is too precious to waste. A departmental head and his chief reach a state of symbiosis; the clever official knows that words must never be spoken in the chief's presence because they stir up painful complexes or rouse his anger. He knows how to present a proposition so that the chief will be interested and give a favorable opinion. He is clearly aware of the latter's mistakes and weaknesses, respects him no less for them, but he does his best to make up for deficiencies.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Pain , Time , Anger

“When raging love with extreme pain
Most cruelly distrains my heart;
When that my tears, as floods of rain,
Bear witness of my woful smart;
When sighs have wasted so my breath
That I lie at the point of death:
I call to mind the navy great
That the Greeks brought to Troyè town:
And how the boisterous winds did beat
Their ships, and rent their sails adown;
Till Agamemnon's daughter's blood
Appeased the gods that them withstood.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

"The Lover Comforteth Himself with the Worthiness of his Love", line 1.

Love , Death , God , Pain

“To stimulate the brain or not to stimulate? Whether 'tis nobler to take the exam after the sleepless night, with the brain darkened, but not stimulated, or in the chemicals to seek help? To waste a year or to pay health for quick success? I will not advise you.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Vetulani, Jerzy (2010): Mózg: fascynacje, problemy, tajemnice. Homini, Kraków, pp. 221–229.

Health , Success , Help , Night

“After the rainy season was over, he made up his mind to take possession of the fort of Narwar which was in the domain of Mãlwã. He ordered Jalãl Khãn Lodî, the governor of Kãlpî, to go there and besiege the fort… The Sultãn himself reached Narwar after some time… He kept the fort under siege for an year… The soldiers went out to war everyday and got killed… “Thereafter the inhabitants of the fort were in plight due to scarcity of water and dearness of grains, and they asked for forgiveness. They went out with their wealth and property. The Sultãn laid waste the temples and raised mosques. Men of learning and students were made to reside there and given scholarships and grants. He stayed for six months under the walls of the fort.”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Sikandar Lodî (AD 1489-1517) Narwar (Madhya Pradesh)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

Men , War , Forgiveness , Learning

“Maybe I'm just a selfish maniac who is wasting his time trying to transfer feelings which perhaps no one cares about onto a fretboard and a piece of magnetic tape. Maybe it's the modern petroglyph, or the modern way to write on the wall of your cave: "I was here." Maybe it is a cry to God about how much I hate the bad things and how much I love the good things.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary

Love , God , Hate , Way

“The Coalition will end the waste, repay the debt, stop the big new taxes and, above all else, stop the boats.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

2010

“Economic analysis is the first principle of Marxism. Professors who were genuine leftists would have challenged the entire economics-driven machinery of American academe — the wasteful multidepartmental structure, the divisive pedantry of overspecialization, the cronyism and sycophancy in recruitment and promotion, the boondoggling ostentation of pointless conferences, the exploitation of graduate students and part-time teachers, the subservience of faculty to overpaid administrators, the mediocrity and folly of the ruling cliques of the Modern Language Association.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), p. xix

Teachers , Time , Parting

“Disarmament conference. Many times I have expressed my desire to see the work of the Washington Conference on Limitation of Armaments appropriately supplemented by further agreements for a further reduction M for the purpose of diminishing the menace and waste of the competition in preparing instruments of international war. It has been and is my expectation that we might hopefully approach other great powers for further conference on this subject as soon as the carrying out of the present reparation plan as the established and settled policy of Europe has created a favorable opportunity. But on account of proposals which have already been made by other governments for a European conference, it will be necessary to wait to see what the outcome of their actions may be. I should not wish to propose or have representatives attend a conference which would contemplate commitments opposed to the freedom of action we desire to maintain unimpaired with respect to our purely domestic policies.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

War , Freedom , Time , Waiting

“Well, I can’t waste a morning arguing with ten-year olds. Needless to say, I was ten myself once and just as silly.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 71

“The best shot in this film is the first one. Not a good sign… After the screening was over and the lights went up, I observed a couple of my colleagues in deep and earnest conversation, trying to resolve twists in the plot. They were applying more thought to the movie than the makers did. A critic's mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-1997 of I Know What You Did Last Summer (17 October 1997)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Light

“You will probably have noticed that three of the defendants have very wisely chosen to exercise their inalienable right not to go into the witness box to answer a lot of impertinent questions. I will merely say that you are not to infer from this anything other than that they consider the evidence against them so flimsy that it was scarcely worth their while to rise from their seats and waste their breath denying these ludicrous charges…”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

The Secret Policeman's Ball (1979)

Exercises , Question , Box

“ Now, to use the famous metaphor by Alfred Korzybski in his Science and Sanity (1933), this verbal world ought to stand in relation to the extensional world as a map does to the territory it is supposed to represent. If a child grows to adulthood with a verbal world in his head which corresponds fairly closely to the extensional world that he finds around him in his widening experience, he is in relatively small danger of being shocked or hurt by what he finds, because his verbal world has told him what, more or less, to expect. He is prepared for life. If, however, he grows up with a false map in his head […] he will constantly be running into trouble, wasting his efforts, and acting like a fool. He will not be adjusted to the world as it is: he may, if the lack of adjustment is serious, end up in a mental hospital. (editor's link) ”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), Maps and Territories, p. 31

Life , World , Fools , Effort

“To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Variant: Learning without reflection is a waste, reflection without learning is dangerous.
Source: The Analects, Chapter II

Thinking , Study

“The greatest misunderstandings occur as to the aims of scientific management. Its fundamental aim is the elimination of waste, the attainment of worth-while desired results with the least necessary amount of time and effort. Scientific management may, and often does, result in expansion, but its primary aim is conservation and savings, making an adequate use of every ounce of energy of any type that is expended.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: Applied Motion Study (1917), p. 4.

Effort , Time

“What I'm continuing to do is cutting out the equation that wastes the most amount of time — and that is working within the system.”

Rod Coronado (1966) Native American eco-anarchist and animal rights activist

Activists Uncaged http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=23918

Time

“Which do you think came first—the blood or the heart—and why? Did the heart in all these different species of fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals evolve before there were blood vessels throughout their bodies? When did the blood evolve? Was it before or after the vessels evolved? If it was before, what was it that carried blood to the heart, if there were no vessels? Did the heart beat before the blood evolved? Why was it beating if there was no blood to pump? If it wasn’t beating, why did it start when it had no awareness of blood? If the blood vessels evolved before there was blood, why did they evolve if there was no such thing as blood? And if the blood evolved before the heart evolved, what was it that caused it to circulate around the body? The marvelous human body (and the bodies of all the other creatures) consists of so many amazingly interdependent parts: a heart, lungs (to oxygenate the blood), kidneys (to filter wastes from the blood), blood vessels, arteries, blood, skin (to protect it all), etc. The intricate codependence of just the respiratory system and the circulatory system—not to mention all the other bodily systems—is difficult to explain.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Bird , Thinking , Fish , Heart

“Alone! — that worn-out word,
So idly spoken, and so coldly heard;
Yet all that poets sing and grief hath known
Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word ALONE!”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician

The New Timon, (1846). Part ii.

Hope , Singing

“I think everybody has the same concerns about helping people when they're having trouble. The question is whether it should be done through coercion, or voluntary means, or local government. And I opt out from the federal government doing it, because that involves central economic planning. So even if we accept the gentleman's moral premise, in a practical way it's a total failure. We'd have been better off taking the amount of money and giving every single family $20,000, and they'd all been better off, than the way we did it. We bought all these trailer homes and they sat out in the open, so the whole thing is insane, it's a total waste. And besides, the reason I don't like these federal government programs, it encourages people like me to build on the beach. I have a house on the beach in the gulf of Mexico. But why don't I assume my own responsibility, why doesn't the market tell me what the insurance rates should be? Because it would be very very high. But, because we want it subsidized, we ask the people of Arizona to subsidize my insurance so I can take greater danger, my house gets blown down, and then the people of Arizona rebuild it?! My statement back during the time of Katrina, which was a rather risky political statement: why do the people of Arizona have to pay for me to take my risk… less people will be exposed to danger if you don't subsidize risky behavior… I think it's a very serious mistake to think that central economic planning and forcibly transferring wealth from people who don't take risks to people who take risks is a proper way to go.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The Charles Goyette Show, March 30, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6RMVUOaeA8
2000s, 2006-2009

Money , People , Family , Way

“The English themselves hardly conceived that their mind was either economical, sharp, or direct; but the defect that most struck an American was its enormous waste in eccentricity. Americans needed and used their whole energy, and applied it with close economy; but English society was eccentric by law and for sake of the eccentricity itself.The commonest phrase overheard at an English club or dinner-table was that So-and-So "is quite mad." It was no offence to So-and-So; it hardly distinguished him from his fellows; and when applied to a public man, like Gladstone, it was qualified by epithets much more forcible. Eccentricity was so general as to become hereditary distinction. It made the chief charm of English society as well as its chief terror.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Law , Madness

“Reptiles and amphibians are sometimes seen as simple, primitive creatures. That's a long way from the truth. The fact that they are solar-powered means that their bodies require only 10% of the energy that mammals of a similar size require. At a time when we ourselves are becoming increasingly concerned about the way in which we get our energy from the environment and the wasteful way in which we use it, maybe there are things that we can learn from "life in cold blood."”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
Life in Cold Blood (2008)

Life , Truth , Way , Learning

“Full little knowest thou that hast not tride,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.
.........
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires; 13
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendance spend!”

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) English poet

Mother Hubberds Tale, line 895; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life , Fear , Hope , Soul

“Medicine, guarded too by preliminary impediments, and frightful medusa-heads of quackery, which deter many generous souls from entering, is of the half-articulate professions, and does not much invite the ardent kinds of ambition. The intellect required for medicine might be wholly human, and indeed should by all rules be,—the profession of the Human Healer being radically a sacred one and connected with the highest priesthoods, or rather being itself the outcome and acme of all priesthoods, and divinest conquests of intellect here below. As will appear one day, when men take off their old monastic and ecclesiastic spectacles, and look with eyes again! In essence the Physician's task is always heroic, eminently human: but in practice most unluckily at present we find it too become in good part beaverish,—yielding a money-result alone. And what of it is not beaverish,—does not that too go mainly to ingenious talking, publishing of yourself, ingratiating of yourself; a partly human exercise or waste of intellect, and, alas, a partly vulpine ditto;—making the once sacred… Human Healer, more impossible for us than ever!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Men , Money , Exercises , Soul

“I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things. First, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mister Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Though Mister Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery. The man who could say, 'Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue till all the wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether', gives all needed proof of his feeling on the subject of slavery. He was willing, while the south was loyal, that it should have its pound of flesh, because he thought that it was so nominated in the bond; but farther than this no earthly power could make him go.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

About Abraham Lincoln https://web.archive.org/web/20150302203311/http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=4071#_ftnref57.
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

God , Hate , War , People

“Masculine process has at its foundation externalization. The young boy is focused away from his inner and personal self and into achievement, performance, competition, success, emotional control (being "cool"), autonomy (not being dependent or needy), fearlessness, action, and an ethic that only values time spent in doing. Anything else is suspect and viewed as lazy, worthless, time-wasting, or meaningless.Externalization, or the process of being pushed outside of oneself, amplifies and eventually becomes disconnection. Personal relationships are then objectified and founded on the role another can play in his life. Relationships are based on doing and are therefore fairly readily interchangeable with anyone else who can do.Disconnection leads men to the experience of being loners, where it's "lonely at the top," and freedom, space, and "doing one's thing," are the rationalized values. Disconnection transforms a man into someone who has everything he wanted externally, but has nothing that is bonded or connected on a personal level. He is "out of touch," so he doesn't know why he's unhappy, and may conclude that the cause of his malaise is that he needs "more." He sets out to get it, but when he gets it he feels deader and more isolated than ever.The end stage of this journey of masculine process is personal oblivion, which can occur early in his life or may not appear full blown until he's an older man, depending on how extreme his externalized process is. At this point, personal connection becomes impossible. He doesn't know he rationalizes his personal emptiness with cynical philosophies and escapes painful awareness through non-relationships he can control by buying. In the end state of oblivion, he is beyond personal reach and can only relate in abstract, depersonalized, intellectualized ways. The only way he is "loved" is in return for providing or taking care of others.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Personal Journey of Masculinity: From Externalization to Disconnection to Oblivion, pp. 10–11
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Love , Life , Men , Pain

“The truest words are never wasted
I'm letting go just show me how
I'm getting closer I can taste it
This time, our time.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Apology
Resurrection (2014)

Time

“I strongly support Donald Trump for President. I think only Trump has the financial independence to take on the special interests. Trump doesn't need the lobbyists or the special interest money with the strings attached. He is the only one who can fix a broken system. Trump's pro-growth tax reform plan will supercharge the economy. Trump can actually cut waste because he is not beholden to the special pleaders. Trump will get in Hillary's face and confront her with her lies. Jeb gave Hillary a medal. The Bush and Clinton families profiteer off public service together. Is it civility or shared criminality? Only Trump can make America great again!”

Roger Stone (1952) American lobbyist

Wikinews interviews three figures from Donald Trump's political past (October 2015)

Money , Family , Support , Thinking

“I must tell you that in this moment all doubt as to my attested worth went out of me, who had redeemed a kingdom, and begotten a king, and created a god. So you waste time, my friend, in trying to convince me of all human life's failure and unimportance, for I am not in sympathy with this modern morbid pessimistic way of talking. It has a very ill sound, and nothing whatever is to be gained by it.”

James Branch Cabell book Figures of Earth

Manuel, in Ch. XXXIX : The Passing of Manuel
Figures of Earth (1921)

Life , God , Way , Failure

“My life has been a total waste.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-11621981-details/I'm+a+street+bum,+says+broke+Tyson/article.do;jsessionid=dZGvFJZGkLvsnbWWXZrVhsZ2kJlny8kkygtqYThr5ZL2nyWzmSjJ!-686754952
On himself

Life

“Are we making more mistakes now? I don't think so. Science is a high-risk activity. And when you do science—this is very important incidentally for the general public, and for policy makers—if you are not wasting some of your money, you are not doing good science. It's a funny way to say this. You've got to back high-risk opportunities. And high-risk opportunities means some fraction of them are going to fail. And I think in any science funding scenario, you've got to say, 10, 20, maybe even 30% of your funds are going to be invested in failures.”

Leon M. Lederman (1922–2018) American mathematician and physicist

Comments on need for failure in scientific research.
From the Winding Your Way through DNA symposium http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/CC/lederman.php at the University of California, San Francisco in 1992 (URL accessed on October 20, 2008)

Money , Way , Failure , Thinking

“There are, while human miseries abound,
A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth,
Without one fool or flatterer at your board,
Without one hour of sickness or disgust.”

John Armstrong (1709–1779) British poet

Book II, line 195.
The Art of Preserving Health (1744)

Fools , Way , Wealth

“I have known fellows to whom the earth was so full of little pleasures that after the worst clouts they rose like larks from a furrow. A wise philosophy—but I had none of it. I always saw the little pageant of man's life like a child's peep-show beside the dark wastes of eternity.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. VIII "The Hidden City"

Life , Pleasure

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. … This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not before.”

Rahm Emanuel (1959) politician, investment banker, White House Chief of Staff

Interview to the Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mzcbXi1Tkk About the quote: Emanuel was not the first to express this idea, as pointed out in a 2009 New York Times Magazine article https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02FOB-onlanguage-t.html. However this statement - which proposed a way the Obama administration could actually harness the chaos of the Financial Crisis of 2008 - became a frequently-repeated slogan https://www.forbes.com/2008/11/24/global-crisis-management-lead-management-cx_snj_1124joni.html#1ac549f65e5e for many economists, policy makers and business people who sought to improve the world's financial and economic systems.
/ 2000s

“Let them sit in Australia and talk about their pitches. Tell them not to waste their time about Indian tracks. Come and play here. After a 103 Test matches, I deserve a voice and I will have that voice for the betterment of cricket. And there some terrific reactions. For example, Ravi Shastri just said the popular view 'Go back home and worry about your own pitches. Non-Indian commenting on the conditions in India and I reckon probably 80 percent said 'mind your business and go back to Australia and worry about your own country' which is fair enough. But 20 percent of the people that understand the game and have a great passion for the game, a comment like mine whether they like or not is from the base of loving this sport, from the base of loving conditions and also experiencing diverse conditions across the world.”

Matthew Hayden (1971) Australian cricketer

Quoted on Sports.ndtv.com (December 5, 2015), "Matthew Hayden Lashes Out at Ravi Shastri, Says He has Right to Speak on Game's Betterment" http://sports.ndtv.com/india-vs-south-africa-2015-16/news/252607-matthew-hayden-lashes-out-at-ravi-shastri-says-he-has-right-to-speak-on-game-s-betterment

Love , People , World , Home

“The theatre was full — crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there; palace and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if she would justify her renown: with strange curiosity, with feelings severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and new planet she was: but in what shape? I waited her rising.She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos — hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing — half lava, half glow.I had heard this woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness and grimness — something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.For awhile — a long while — I thought it was only a woman, though an unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I recognized my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength — for she was but a frail creature; and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate she stood.It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation.It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral.Swordsmen thrust through, and dying in their blood on the arena sand; bulls goring horses disembowelled, made a meeker vision for the public — a milder condiment for a people's palate — than Vashti torn by seven devils: devils which cried sore and rent the tenement they haunted, but still refused to be exorcised.Suffering had struck that stage empress; and she stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor in finite measure, resenting it: she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular like sculpture. A background and entourage and flooring of deepest crimson threw her out, white like alabaster — like silver: rather, be it said, like Death.”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Ch. XXIII: Vashi

Death , Hate , People , Feeling

“Mayor Macbeth, of Charleston, told General Howard that he did not believe that a bureau at Washington could manage the social relations of the people from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. But the answer to Mayor Macbeth is that he and his companions have managed those relations at a cost to the country of four years of civil war, three thousand millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of lives. The Freedmen's Bureau will hardly be as expensive as that. And while such a bureau merely defends the rights of a certain class under the laws, the aid societies give them that education which in the present state of local feeling would be inevitably withheld. The mighty arch of Sherman, wasting and taming the land, is followed by the noiseless steps of the band of unnamed heroes and heroines who are teaching the people. The soldier drew the furrow, the teacher drops the seed. There is many and many a devoted woman, hidden at this moment in the lowliest cabins of the South, whose name poets will not sing nor historians record, but whose patient toil the eye that marks the sparrow's fall beholds and approves. Not more noble, not more essential, was the work of the bravest and most famous of the heroes who fell in the wild storm of battle, than that of many a woman to us unknown, faithful through privation and exposure and disease, and perishing at the lonely outpost of duty in the act of helping the nation keep its word.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

War , People , Education , Disease

“The misleading character of the accident theory is evident from the fact that even now the “error” involved from the standpoint of U. S. policy-makers and American leaders generally is neither one of purpose nor method – it is strictly a case of unexpectedly large expense. For the U. S. leadership, in other words, Vietnam is simply another, painfully large “cost over-run.” In terms of basic U. S. objectives and methods employed, in the Third World – essentially establishment of reliable client states, increasingly managed by military elites, with generous financial and military support (arms, advisors, Green Berets, and more extensive military intervention when junta control is threatened, as in Santo Domingo) – Vietnam is a facet of a completely rational policy. The policy may be vicious and catastrophic, from the perspective of the Vietnamese; and it may be a sordid and disruptive waste of human and material resources from the standpoint of the real interests of the ordinary American; but to the Rostows, Westmorelands and Nixons, the Vietnam War is a noble endeavor (“one of our finest moments”) that we cannot afford to abandon without achieving our original ends. The evidence is compelling that this leadership is entirely capable of destroying every village in Vietnam (and in the process, every Vietnamese) if this is required to attain the original political objectives.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities, 1970, pp. 87-88.

War , World , Error , Support

“Save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts. Have to do it. Get rid of the fraud. Get rid of the waste and abuse, but save it. People have been paying it for years. And now many of these candidates want to cut it. You save it by making the United States, by making us rich again, by taking back all of the money that's being lost.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

Money , People , Fraud

“Militarism! Here is the monstrous leech that is incessantly sucking the blood of the people and its best energy! Here is the target for our attacks! We must put an end to barbarism, proclaim that the army is now a highly organized school of crime and that it exists solely to protect bourgeois capital and profits. We must not be deterred from proclaiming ourselves international socialists. We recognize no borders and no flags, we hate all steel, every institution that exist to kill men, waste energy, strangle the advance of the workers.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Mussolini's article, (April 11, 1909), quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, Jacob Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 487,
1900s

Men , Hate , People , School

“It is said the South will never submit — that we cannot conquer the rebels — that they will suffer themselves to be slaughtered, and their whole country to be laid waste. Sir, war is a grievous thing at best, and civil war more than any other; but if they hold this language, and the means which they have suggested must be resorted to; if their whole country must be laid waste and made a desert, in order to save this Union from destruction, so let it be. I would rather, Sir, reduce them to a condition where their whole country is to be re-peopled by a band of freemen, than to see them perpetrate the destruction of this people through our agency. I do not say it is time to resort to such means, and I do not say that the time will come, but I never fear to express my sentiments. It is not a question with me of policy, but a question of principle.”

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) American politician

As quoted in Thaddeus Stevens: Commoner (1882) by E. B. Callender, Ch. VI : Heroic Epoch, p. 113
1860s

War , People , Fear , Question

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

XVIII, p. 484
1810s, Letters to John Taylor (1814)

Men , Democracy , History , Fraud

“I can't waste time so give me the moment
I realize nothing's broken
No need to worry about everything I've done
Lived every second like it was my last one.”

Jordin Sparks (1989) American singer, winner of 2007 American Idol

Tattoo

Time

“I believe that we must not waste this moment. A responsible foreign policy must look outward from a stance of forward engagement, to our broadest hopes for the world — not just inward, to our narrowest fears.
A responsible foreign policy must harness all our economic and military might — but it must also make use of our values and principles.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, IPI speech (2000)

World , Fear , Hope

“So the temples were attacked “all along the way” as the armies of Islam advanced; they were “robbed of their sculptural wealth”, “pulled down”, “laid waste”, “burnt with naptha”, “trodden under horse’s hoofs”, and “destroyed from their very foundations”, till “not a trace of them remained”. Mahmûd of Ghazni robbed and burnt down 1,000 temples at Mathura, and 10,000 in and around Kanauj. One of his successors, Ibrãhîm, demolished 1,000 temples each in Hindustan (Ganga-Yamuna Doab) and Malwa. Muhammad Ghûrî destroyed another 1,000 at Varanasi. Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak employed elephants for pulling down 1,000 temples in Delhi. “Alî I ‘Ãdil Shãh of Bijapur destroyed 200 to 300 temples in Karnataka. A sufi, Qãyim Shãh, destroyed 12 temples at Tiruchirapalli. Such exact or approximate counts, however, are available only in a few cases. Most of the time we are informed that “many strong temples which would have remained unshaken even by the trumpets blown on the Day of Judgment, were levelled with the ground when swept by the wind of Islãm.””

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Way , Strong , Time , Horse

“The struggle for existence in a universe we did not choose, and the burden of being a member of the only race which values objective, verifiable truth as an end in itself, makes us sometimes long for escape from reality -- in some cases through a literature of the fantastic, of marvelous dream worlds, of free-ranging fantasy. But we must not confuse that necessary escape with what is real. Permit me to suggest to the reader that it is a waste of his time and energy to play with fantasies that lack the literary and aesthetic charm of poetry and imaginative prose fiction.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Orage and New Age Consciousness", private letter, February 1977, published on National Vanguard http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=6657 (October 25, 2005)
1970s

Truth , World , Dreams , Imagination

“She hath wasted with fire thine high places,
She hath hidden and marred and made sad
The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces
Of gods that were goodly and glad.
She slays, and her hands are not bloody;
She moves as a moon in the wane,
White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,
Our Lady of Pain.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne book Poems and Ballads

"Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)", line 353.
Poems and Ballads (1866-89)

Love , God , Pain , Sadness

“I think I made essentially a mistake in staying in movies but it’s a mistake I can’t regret because it’s like saying I shouldn't have stayed married to that woman but I did because I love her. I would have been more successful if I hadn't been married to her, you know. I would have been more successful if I'd left movies immediately, stayed in the theatre, gone into politics, written, anything. I've wasted a greater part of my life looking for money and trying to get along, trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paintbox which is a movie. And I've spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. I'ts about two percent movie-making and ninety-eight percent hustling. It's no way to spend a life.”

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

Interview with Leslie Megahey for The Orson Welles Story (1982); transcribed in Mark Estrin's Orson Welles: Interviews. Jackson. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2002, page 209.

Love , Life , Money , Way