Discretionary Quotes & Sayings

And so we go over the cliff fiscally, and our Republican friends try to pin the blame on discretionary domestic spending, including spending for security. We pass budget resolutions that fall far short. — David Price

My giving is discretionary, but keeping the business going is not. — Michael Hintze

The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man. — Edmund Burke

There is always the potential for a central bank to engage in discretionary monetary policy and to break the one-to-one link between changes in foreign reserves and changes in the money supply. — Steve Hanke

Governing isn't as easy as you think. Many of you have taken pledges that are contradictory - to balance the budget and cut taxes, for example. You must be honest about the numbers, since our annual deficit now exceeds all discretionary spending combined. — Brian Baird

Trust and reputation are not discretionary. They are as necessary in business as the people in whom they reside. — Tony Alessandra

We've incentivized people in the past to maybe turn their vehicles over, you know sooner rather than later. And in the United States with the squeeze on discretionary income and credit that even as the economy comes back there's probably more of a chance than not that it'll be a slower recovery on auto sales. — Alan Mulally

The U.K. government sets a cap on how much can be spent on discretionary housing payments. — Nicola Sturgeon

U.S. military spending, which consumes half of all discretionary spending, has had a profound social and political cost. Bridges and levees collapse. Schools decay. Domestic manufacturing declines. Trillions in debt threaten the viability of the currency and the economy. The poor, the mentally ill, the sick, and the unemployed are abandoned. Human suffering is the price for victory, which is never finally defined or attainable. — Chris Hedges

What if we gave fifty percent of our discretionary budget to the world's poor and then counted on the moral power of that action to protect us? — Anne Lamott

Up until 1950 most families' discretionary income did not cover much more than an occasional meal away from home; a beer or two after work; a weekly trip to the movies, amusement park, or beach; and perhaps a yearly vacation, usually spent at the home of relatives. Few households had washing machines and dryers. Refrigerators had only tiny spaces for freezing ice and had to be defrosted at least once a week. Few houses had separate bedrooms for all the children. — Stephanie Coontz

For what do we live, but to make sport by subjecting our neighbors to endless discretionary review for minor additions? — Jane Austen

The American people elected us here to cut spending so we can create an environment for jobs in America. The House has acted. We have demonstrated that we want to see spending, discretionary spending, brought down to levels of 2008. We've seen no counteraction. We have seen no position that has been expressed by the other side at all. — Eric Cantor

We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power. — Thomas Paine

If you or me go to the gas station to fill up our car and it costs us much more than we expected, it will zap our discretionary income. We won't have the extra money to buy that washing machine or new winter coat-all big ticket items that are important to economic growth. — Maria Bartiromo

People have their constitutional right to contribute to a campaign and if they have discretionary money that they want to contribute to a candidate, whether a Republican or a Democrat, they should be able to do so. — Brian Sandoval

Real wealth is discretionary time. Money is simply fuel for your life. You can always make another dollar, but you can't make another minute. Don't let the pursuit of money erode your wealth. — Alan Weiss

I agree with the idea of cutting [budget], but it should all be coming out of entitlements for the affluent and not out of domestic discretionary, which is welfare, education, all the stuff the government does, parks, FBI, and it shouldn't be coming out of Medicaid. — David Brooks

Domestic discretionary spending on education and health care and the environment has been growing at 2 to 3 percent a year. He says we have to rein it in, but he ignores the spending category that is the big spike in the budget. — John Spratt

It is being alleged that the Federal Government is 'cutting' spending. In fact, we are not 'cutting' anything. Defense spending under this budget would rise by 4.3 percent over last year. Other discretionary spending would also rise. — Craig L. Thomas

Nature takes the decision first, man agrees, reconciles, modifies, refutes, contradicts etc., subsequently. It means the application of reason, the discretionary power of a man, only happens afterwards! — Thiruman Archunan

The Court had repeatedly made clear, though, that the Constitution does not require that racial minorities and women actually serve on juries - it only forbids excluding jurors on the basis of race or gender. For many African Americans, the use of wholly discretionary peremptory strikes to select a jury of twelve remained a serious barrier to serving on a jury. — Bryan Stevenson

We had a strong back-to-school season and discretionary spending on low-priced items has trended higher. These are good indications for Halloween, which typically sets the tone for the rest of the holiday shopping season. — Richard Hastings

My son is 12 now, and is really getting into girls. A lot. But the thing about twelve year old boys is that they don't possess what I like to call that ... discretionary gene yet. We were walking home from the ballfield the other day and there was a woman walking towards us who was ... gifted. I saw them, and I saw him see them. But she was too close for me to go, "Dude, shut up." She hadn't walked two feet behind us and he goes "God dang, did you see the SIZE of those things?" And all I could say was "Yeah, I did!" — Bill Engvall

Trust, of necessity, is discretionary when dealing with vampyres." -- The Slayer Prince — Elizabeth Brockie

There is a Western phenomenon called the male midlife crisis. Very often it is heralded by divorce. What history might have done to you, you bring about on purpose: separation from woman and child. Don't tell me that such men aren't tasting the ancient flavors of death and defeat.
In America, with divorce achieved, the midlifer can expect to be more recreational, more discretionary. He can almost design the sort of crisis he is going to have: motorbike, teenage girlfriend, vegetarianism, jogging, sports car, mature boyfriend, cocaine, crash diet, powerboat, new baby, religion, hair transplant.
Over here, now, there's no angling around for your male midlife crisis. It is brought to you and it is always the same thing. It is death. — Martin Amis

Profits are related to customer retention. Customer retention is related to employee retention. Employee retention may or may not be related to benefits, but benefits could be part of the package that causes people to stay and
by the way
engage in discretionary effort.. If you go into any organization that's customer-facing, you can tell in five minutes when the employees are feeling abused. They retaliate on the customers. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

Nothing can preserve the integrity of contact between individuals, except a discretionary authority in the state to revise what has become intolerable. The powers of uninterrupted usury are too great. If the accretions of vested interests were to grow without mitigation for many generations, half the population would be no better than slaves to the other half. — John Maynard Keynes

Know the difference between your necessary and discretionary expenses. — Alexa Von Tobel

The great flaw of all these administrative techniques is that, in the name of equality and democracy, they function as a vast "antipolitics machine", sweeping vast realms of legitimate public debate out of the public sphere and into the arms of technical, administrative committees. They stand in the way of potentially bracing and instructive debates about social policy, the meaning of intelligence, the selection of elites, the value of equity and diversity, and the purpose of economic growth and development. They are, in short, the means by which technical and administrative elites attempt to convince a skeptical public--while excluding the public from debate--that they play no favorites, take no obscure discretionary action, and have no biases but are merely taking transparent technical calculations. — James C. Scott

Defense is not like other discretionary spending. — Robert M. Gates

In the budget, the president will call for a five-year freeze on discretionary spending other than for national security. This will reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade and bring this category of spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president. — Jacob Lew

Does it sound outrageous to you that military spending for fiscal year 2000 will be almost $290 billion and all other domestic discretionary spending, such as education, job training, housing, Amtrak, medical research, environment, Head Start and many other worthwhile programs will total $246 billion, the biggest disparity in modern times ? — Dale Bumpers

Positive reinforcement generates more behavior than is minimally required. We call this discretionary effort, and its presence in the workplace is the only way an organization can maximize performance. — Aubrey Daniels

Family entertainment is really very necessary in our culture. Look how profitable they are. It's almost not discretionary. You need to take your family to the movies. — Gary Ross

The proposition that primitive dream imagery might reproduce, albeit imperfectly, the experience of one's ancestors, including their terrors, was rather too existentially charged for post-modern sensitivities, for which the meaningless hypothesis of memory de-junking was much more appealing. Even worse, the notion that one's own ideation, one's own monsters, or indeed oneself as a monster, might be transmitted forward to future generations threatened deeply assumptions about the privacy of the mind and an individual's discretionary power of inviolable concealment over unedifying thoughts. — Robert Edeson

The point is that this is not only for the rich; it is for those who prioritize healthy, naturally raised food over other discretionary spending. — Tim Young

We have concentrated wealth and capital to such a degree that the vast majority of us don't have the discretionary dollars to make our economy go and grow. — Martin O'Malley

By right, as the word is employed in this subject, has always been understood discretion, that is, a full and complete power of either doing a thing or omitting it, without the person's becoming liable to animadversion or censure from another, that is, in other words, without his incurring any degree of turpitude or guilt. Now in this sense I affirm that man has no rights, no discretionary power whatever. — William Godwin