- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.
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Quotations about spending
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
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)
(Source)
She ate her trifle, reflecting that grinding poverty, though loathsome while one is in it, has the advantage of making one enjoy money in a way denied to the rich-from-birth.
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)
I am not sure what it means when one says that he is a conservative in fiscal affairs and a liberal in human affairs. I assume what it means is that you will strongly recommend the building of a great many schools to accommodate the needs of our children, but not provide the money.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
News conference (Fall 1955)
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)
(Source)
PASTORE: Is there anything connected in the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of this country?
WILSON: No sir; I do not believe so.
PASTORE: Nothing at all?
WILSON: Nothing at all.
PASTORE: It has no value in that respect?
WILSON: It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with those things. It has nothing to do with the military, I am sorry.
PASTORE: Don’t be sorry for it.
WILSON: I am not, but I cannot in honesty say it has any such application.
PASTORE: Is there anything here that projects us in a position of being competitive with the Russians, with regard to this race?
WILSON: Only from a long-range point of view, of a developing technology. Otherwise, it has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country, except to make it worth defending.
Robert R. Wilson (1914-2000) American physicist
Testimony, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (17 Apr 1969)
Dialog between Senator John Pastore (D-RI) and Wilson regarding the funding for FY 1970 of Fermilab's first particle accelerator. Pastore was actually a proponent of Fermilab, but was seeking arguments to use with some of his colleagues.
The exchange is frequently portrayed as more hostile, and Wilson's answer is often paraphrased / elided as: "It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending."
See here for more background.
The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) American essayist and novelist
Backlog Studies, ch. 11 (1872)
(Source)
A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
William Shenstone (1714-1763) English poet
“Of Men and Manners,” sec. 86, Men and Manners (1804)
(Source)
Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought poor.
William Cobbett (1763-1835) English politician, agriculturist, journalist, pamphleteer
Advice to Young Men and (Incidentally) to Young Women, Letter 2, #58 (1829)
(Source)
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, orator
“Beyond Vietnam,” speech, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Riverside Church, New York City (4 Apr 1967)
(Source)
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.
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.
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."
