A man is rich whose income is larger than his expenses, and he is poor if his expenses are greater than his income.
[Celui-là est riche, qui reçoit plus qu’il ne consume; celui-là est pauvre, dont la dépense excède la recette.]Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
The Characters [Les Caractères], ch. 6 “Of Gifts of Fortune [Des Biens de Fortune],” § 49 (6.49) (1688) [tr. Van Laun (1885)]
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(Source (French)). Alternate translations:He is rich whose Receipt is more than his Expences, and he is poor whose Expences are more than his Receipt.
[Bullord ed. (1696)]He is rich, whose Income is more than his Expences; and he is poor whose Expences are more than his Income.
[Curll ed. (1713)]He is rich, whose Income is more than his Expences; and he is poor whose Expences exceed his Income.
[Browne ed. (1752)]That man is rich, who gets more than he spends; that man is poor, whose expenses exceed his receipts.
[tr. Stewart (1970)]
Quotations about:
budget
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He that is rich need not live sparingly, and he that can live sparingly need not be rich.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1734 ed.)
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Why is austerity in a depressed economy a bad idea? Because an economy is not like a household, whose income and spending are separate things. In the economy as a whole, my spending is your income and your spending is my income. What happens if everyone tries to cut spending at the same time, as was the case in the aftermath of the financial crisis? Everyone’s income falls.
Paul Krugman (b. 1953) American economist, author
“The Legacy of Destructive Austerity,” New York Times (20 Dec 2019)
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The art of living easily as to money, is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means.
Henry Taylor (1800-1886) English dramatist, poet, bureaucrat, man of letters
Notes from Life, “Of Money” (1853)
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Abstaining is favorable both to the head and the pocket.
Horace Greeley (1881-1872) American newspaper editor, reformer, politician
(Attributed)
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Quoted in Maturin Murray Ballou, Edge-Tools of Speech (1886).
We need an adequate defense, but every arms dollar we spend above adequacy has a long-term weakening effect upon the nation and its security.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-1961 (1965)
Do you remember the ’60s and ’70s? You didn’t have to go more than a week before there was an article in Life magazine — “The Home of Tomorrow,” “The City of Tomorrow,” “Transportation of Tomorrow.” All that ended. In the 1970s, after we stopped going to the Moon, it all ended. We stopped dreaming. And so I worry that decisions that Congress makes doesn’t factor in the consequences of those decisions on tomorrow. Tomorrow’s gone. They’re playing for the quarterly report, they’re playing for the next election cycle, and that is mortgaging the actual future of this nation, and the rest of the world is going to pass us by.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (b. 1958) American astrophysicist, author, orator
Real Time with Bill Maher, Ep. 223 (5 Aug 2011)
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The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
Orson Welles (1915-1985) American writer, director, actor
Comment to Henry Jaglom
Quoted by Jaglom in his essay "The Independent Filmmaker" in Jason E. Quire, ed. The Movie Business Book (1992). See here for more information. Sometimes paraphrased in reverse ("The absence of limitations is the enemy of art").
ARCHITECT, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money; who estimates the whole cost, and himself costs the whole estimate.
But now Nixon has come along and everything I’ve worked for is ruined. There’s a story in the paper every day about him slashing another one of my Great Society programs. I can just see him waking up in the morning, making that victory sign of his and deciding which program to kill. It’s a terrible thing for me to sit by and watch someone else starve my Great Society to death. She’s getting thinner and thinner and uglier and uglier all the time; now her bones are beginning to stick out and her wrinkles are beginning to show. Soon she’ll be so ugly that the American people will refuse to look at her; they’ll stick her in a closet to hide her away and there she’ll die. And when she dies, I, too, will die.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Comment (1971) to Doris Kearns Goodwin
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Quoted in Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, ch. 10 "Things Go Wrong" (1976). Kearns was an intern and staff member in the Johnson White House, and worked with him on his memoirs.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
“Beyond Vietnam,” speech, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Riverside Church, New York City (4 Apr 1967)
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Reprinted (or the phrase repeated) in Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967) and The Trumpet of Conscience (1968). See also this.
National budgets are a nation’s theology walking.
Joan D. Chittister (b. 1936) American Benedictine nun, author and lecturer
“From Where I Stand,” column, National Catholic Reporter (17 Feb 2005)
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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
“The Chance for Peace,” address to American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington (16 April 1953)
Also known as the "Cross of Iron" speech.
The budget is a mythical bean bag. Congress votes mythical beans into it, and then tries to reach in and pull real beans out.
Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
Column (1933-02-24), “Daily Telegram”
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Written while in Beverly Hills. Collected in The Autobiography of Will Rogers, ch. 18 (1949) [ed. Donald Day].
A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Everett Dirksen (1896-1969) American politician
(Attributed)
Frequently attributed to Dirksen, but not found in his writings or speeches. An anonymous reference is made in "Topics of the Times," New York Times (10 Jan 1938): "Well, now, about this new budget. It's a billion here and a billion there, and by and by it begins to mount up into money."
The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn’t want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
(Spurious)
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One of several related paraphrases of this "quote" from Taylor Caldwell's novel about Cicero, A Pillar of Iron, ch. 51 (1965):Antonius heartily agreed with him [sc. Cicero] that the budget should be balanced, that the Treasury should be refilled, that public debt should be reduced, that the arrogance of the generals should be tempered and controlled, that assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt, that the mobs should be forced to work and not depend on government for subsistence, and that prudence and frugality should be put into practice as soon as possible.
See here and here for more discussion.
