Spending Less Quotes & Sayings

At the time, it seemed to me that Jeremy was spending a lot of time with a piece of plastic pressed against his ear, talking to himself. Which was fine by me. We all have our eccentricities. Jeremy liked talking to plastic; I liked hunting and eating the rats that ventured into the motel room. Or, at least I did like hunting and eating the rats, until Jeremy caught me and promptly kiboshed that hobby. Some of us are less tolerant of eccentricities than others. — Kelley Armstrong

What I support is a whole different approach with regard to drug use, and that is spending less money on the prosecution and incarceration side and more money on prevention and education, which I know works. — Rob Portman

If you spend a lot of time shopping for athletic clothes, you may want to consider spending less time thinking about high school. — Dov Davidoff

The way to build your savings is by spending less each month. — Suze Orman

Living standards in both the public and private sector have to be brought down. The private sector has to sell more abroad and consume less at home. The government sector has to get closer to just spending what it can collect in taxes. — John Redwood

You can be just friends with people, you know," Orla said. "I think it's crazy how you're in love with all those raven boys."
Orla wasn't wrong, of course. But what she didn't realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analyzing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer and longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another or thinking about when next they would be with one another. Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she'd had this kind, she didn't want the other. — Maggie Stiefvater

Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far as government spending is concerned. First, let's make sure we understand what government spending is. Since government has no resources of its own, and since there's no Tooth Fairy handing Congress the funds for the programs it enacts, we are forced to recognize that government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person's property to give it to another to whom it does not belong - in effect, legalized theft. — Walter E. Williams

Like health care, education is something worth spending on and worth investing in, but we're spending more and getting less. — Tom Golisano

Lower taxes, less government spending on domestic programs and fewer regulations mean a better economy for everybody. — Larry Elder

America needs jobs, smaller government, less spending and a president with the courage to offer more than yet another speech. — Rick Perry

While it is true that many people simply can't afford to pay more for food, either in money or time or both, many more of us can. After all, just in the last decade or two we've somehow found the time in the day to spend several hours on the internet and the money in the budget not only to pay for broadband service, but to cover a second phone bill and a new monthly bill for television, formerly free. For the majority of Americans, spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority. p.187 — Michael Pollan

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance — Charles Dickens

Smith shrugged and came over to Cella and Crush. Another shifter, a black bear, waited to lead them out, the security cameras conveniently and temporarily turned off.
"What did you really do to him?" Cella had to ask her.
"Nothin'."
"Smith," she said, stopping by the bear. "The man shit, pissed, and vomited after spending less than thirty minutes with you. There has to be a reason."
"Got me. All I did was stare at him until he told me something I could use."
The bear looked Smith over. "Did you stare at him with those eyes of yours?"
"I have my daddy's eyes."
"Annnnd, we now have our answer," Cella announced before they made their way out of the maximum security prison and headed home. — Shelly Laurenston

In a clean break from the Obama years, and frankly from the years before this president, we will keep federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, or less. That is enough. The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth, or hard limits on the size of government, and we choose to limit government. — Paul Ryan

Leverage your time more by spending a little more time every day imagining and a lot less time every day doing. Do a little more imagining and a little more less doing. Until eventually most of what's happening is happening in the cool, calm, anticipatory state. Just imagine yourself into the successes, and watch what happens. Imagine a little more and act a little less. — Esther Hicks

I'm less worried about accomplishment - as younger people always can't help but be - and more concerned with spending my time well, spending time with my family, and reading, learning things. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Keeping accounts, sir, is of no use when a man is spending his own money, and has nobody to whom he is to account. You won't eat less beef today because you have written down what it cost yesterday. — Samuel Johnson

I apologized to her once for spending less time with her, but she blew it off. You're in love. That makes you actually kind of boring to people who aren't in love. You know, the sane ones. — Claudia Gray

I pay the tax I am required to pay, not a penny more, not a penny less. If anybody in this country doesn't minimize their tax, they want their heads read because, as a Government, I can tell you they're not spending it that well that we should be donating extra. — Kerry Packer

Grimthorpe (v.) To restore or renovate an ancient building with excessive spending rather than with skill. Grimthorpe is a more or less eponymous word, taken from the title of Sir Edmund Beckett (the first Lord Grimthorpe), a lawyer and horologist in London, who also enjoyed attempting restorations of old buildings. His efforts did not meet with widespread approval, and gave birth to this word. Grinagog — Ammon Shea

I thought I dreamed you." The words whisper from my parched throat.
His head tilts to one side, his mouth shifting to something less sarcastic, more amused. "That may be the most enchanting thing I've ever been told after spending the night with a girl. — Tammara Webber

I think the more we fill our lives with more and more things we have to do, the less and less time we are spending on who we have to be. — Patrick Rhone

Over the past decade, American youth are spending much more time watching TV, listening to music, using a computer and playing video games
a total of 7 1/2 hours every day in front of a screen. The only thing they are spending less time on is reading! — Thomas L. Friedman

What we don't need is more spending, and what we don't need are taxes, and what we do need is a lot less of both. — Ronald Reagan

Motherhood is a great honor and privilege, yet it is also synonymous with servanthood. Every day women are called upon to selflessly meet the needs of their families. Whether they are awake at night nursing a baby, spending their time and money on less-than-grateful teenagers, or preparing meals, moms continuously put others before themselves. — Charles Stanley

[M]any females would, even assuming complete economic equality between the sexes, prefer residing with males or peddling their asses on the street, thereby having most of their time for themselves, to spending many hours of their days doing boring, stultifying, non-creative work for somebody else, functioning as less than animals, as machines, or, at best - if able to get a "good" job - co-managing the shitpile. What will liberate women, therefore, from male control is the total elimination of the money-work system, not the attainment of economic equality with men within it. — Valerie Solanas

Friendship is a strange idea, difficult to quantify and, at times, even more difficult to maintain. Clearly a friend is someone you enjoy spending time with. However, a friend is also someone you continue to support even during periods when they are considerably less pleasurable to be around. The loyalty of friendship often contains a kind of tautology or feedback loop: the longer you are friends the more loyal you become, and the more loyal you become the longer you remain friends. — Jacob Wren

If we start to think about trust as a public good (like clean air and water), we see that we can all benefit from higher levels of trust in terms of communicating with others, making financial transitions smoother, simplifying contracts, and many other business and social activities. Without constant suspicion, we can get more out of our exchanges with others while spending less time making sure that others will fulfill their promises to us. Yet as the tragedy of commons exemplifies, in the short term it is beneficial for each individual to violate and take advantage of the established trust.

I suspect that most people and companies miss or ignore the fact that trust is an important public resource and that losing it can have long-term negative consequences for everyone involved. It doesn't take much to violate trust. Just a few bad players in the market can spoil it for everyone else. — Dan Ariely

The more harder you work, the less you're out spending your money. — Schoolboy Q

What's the return on investment of college? What's the return on investment of having children, spending time with friends, listening to music, reading a book? The things that are most worth doing are worth doing for their own sake. Anyone who tells you that the sole purpose of education is the acquisition of negotiable skills is attempting to reduce you to a productive employee at work, a gullible consumer in the market, and a docile subject of the state. What's at stake, when we ask what college is for, is nothing less than our ability to remain fully human. — William Deresiewicz

Taxing less and spending more.. it's fun in the short run, but it's a recipe for disaster. — William J. Clinton

In their studies, students who successfully acquired one positive habit reported less stress; less impulsive spending; better dietary habits; decreased alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine consumption; fewer hours watching TV; and even fewer dirty dishes. Sustain the discipline long enough on one habit, and not only does it become easier, but so do other things as well. It's why those with the right habits seem to do better than others. They're doing the most important thing regularly and, as a result, everything else is easier. — Gary Keller

If workers have less money in their pockets to put food on the table, they will be spending less money; your economy will suffer. — Martin O'Malley

When women gain control over spending, less family money is devoted to instant gratification and more for education and starting small businesses. — Sheryl WuDunn

The race to make more money to keep up with the rich, he says, is the reason Americans are spending less time with children and less time sleeping. It's also the reason Americans feel less happy, since happiness is partly determined by how well we're doing compared with those around us. The race, he said, will only get more destructive as the rich get richer and more numerous — Robert Frank

As long as we're focused on spending, there are only two ways to do that: One is spend less, and Democrats have no solutions for that. Or we have pro-growth policies that make the economy grow so the dead-weight cost of government becomes a smaller percentage of the economy and therefore less expensive. — Grover Norquist

It always comes back to our insecurities, as we say, "Oh, I'm not as good as you." So instead of accepting that perhaps I am not as good as someone else in some ways and being comfortable with who I am as I am, I spend all my time denigrating you, trying to cut you down to my self-perceived size. The sad problem is that we see ourselves as being quite terribly small. Instead of spending my time being envious, I need to celebrate your and my different gifts, even if mine are perhaps less spectacular than yours. — Desmond Tutu

Owning a dog is like having a demanding manner-less friend who never bathes themselves but which somehow ends up spending every single night on your couch. — Matte Resist

If we are genuinely interested in our kids spending less time on their devices, we need to curb our own habit of multitasking and resist the temptation to stay in constant contact and check responses. We also need to keep having conversations with our kids about the benefits of taking a break from screen time. — Cindy Pierce

Why, when people are leaving their partners because they're having an affair with someone else, do they think it will seem better to pretend there is no one else involved? Do they think it will be less hurtful for their partners to think they just walked out because they couldn't stand them any more and then had the good fortune to meet some tall Omar Sharif-figure with a gentleman's handbag two weeks afterwards while the ex-partner is spending his evenings bursting into tears at the sight of the toothbrush mug? It's like those people who invent a lie as an excuse rather than the truth, even when the truth is better than the lie. — Helen Fielding

The rich pay more in total taxes now than ever before - ever. It's true. Just like it's true that when the rich are convinced they're going to be taxed more, they spend less. And when the top few percenters don't spend, there goes all your spending, because they account for half of all retail spending. — Neil Cavuto

For me, I think being a conservative means you are focused on all four key principles: strong defense, lower taxes, less spending, and defending traditional American values. — Jim Jordan

Time, place, and space for all things, but spending [the] majority of one's time playing in outer places, and far less time exploring inner space, is perhaps the worst form of neglect. Don't play yourself; the real you awaits. — T.F. Hodge

Candidates who win while spending less than their opponents still usually have to spend quite a lot. While not a surefire guarantor of victory, a large war chest -even if not the largest-is usually a necessary condition. Money may not guarantee victory, but the lack of it usually guarantees defeat. Without large sums, there is rarely much of a campaign, as poorly funded 'minor' candidates have repeatedly discovered. — Michael Parenti

I will continue my consistent record of voting for lower taxes, less spending and fewer regulations to make our government more effective and efficient while upholding our Constitution. — Roscoe Bartlett

We have a conservative government that only thinks in terms of efficiency. They are spending a lot of money on military expenses and less and less on culture. My position is that culture can actually be economically viable. When I make a film, the film costs $3 million. Now, in Quebec, it grossed $3.5 million, which is a small film. It's not a comedy. There are no stars in it. And, it still grosses $3.5 million. That's just in Quebec. — Philippe Falardeau

Conservatives don't merely want less government. They want to raise spending for the military - even bring back Star Wars - not reduce it. They want to build more prisons. There is no move to eliminate the drug enforcement agency. — George Lakoff

Consider spending less time talking, and more time prototyping, especially if you're not very good at talking. — Paul Buchheit

We have an idea that if something we're doing isn't actually earning money, or spending it, then it's completely worthless. But if you start to work less, you can actually start to give more to society, but on a local level. — Tom Hodgkinson

What else would you expect? Whites never go inside black's homes. Much less inside their thoughts and feelings. And blacks are just as ignorant of whites. What white kid could hate blacks after spending five minutes in the Beale's house? And what bleak kid could hat whites after answering Mrs. Pickwell's dinner whistle? But the East Enders stayed in the east and the West Enders stayed in the west, and the less they knew about each other, the more they invented. — Jerry Spinelli

I am fighting vigorously for less spending, less waste and limited government. I strongly believe that the more government grows, the less freedom Americans have. — Ed Royce

We have a spending problem, not a taxing problem. The less we spend, the more jobs we have the potential to create. — Dan Webster

Even our behavior and emotions seem to have been shaped by a prankster. Why do we crave the very foods that are bad for us but have less desire for pure grains and vegetables? Why do we keep eating when we know we are too fat? And why is our willpower so weak in its attempts to restrain our desires? Why are male and female sexual responses so uncoordinated, instead of being shaped for maximum mutual satisfaction? Why are so many of us constantly anxious, spending our lives, as Mark Twain said, "suffering from tragedies that never occur"? Finally, why do we find happiness so elusive, with the achievement of each long-pursued goal yielding not contentment, but only a new desire for something still less attainable? The design of our bodies is simultaneously extraordinarily precise and unbelievably slipshod. It is as if the best engineers in the universe took every seventh day off and turned the work over to bumbling amateurs. — Randolph M. Nesse

On April 1, armed SA men took up positions in front of Jewish businesses and tried to prevent customers from spending money in them. Some troops painted anti-Semitic slogans and Stars of David on display windows; others were content to hold up signs calling for a boycott and to curse at Jewish businessmen. Some areas also saw looting and acts of violence.
All in all, this display of activism made a very negative impression on most people, and the thuggish SA men with their uneducated bellowing were left even less popular among the general population than they had been before. Although very few Germans openly declared their solidarity with their Jewish fellow citizens, the boycott did not, as it was intended to do, set German gentiles against German Jews. On the contrary, ordinary people felt sorry for them, and if reports by the Nazis, who were disappointed by the boycott, are to be believed, the amount of commerce done afterward by Jewish-owned business did not decline at all. — Rudolph Herzog

If you're looking for work and have a choice of a job, choose a job that allows the opportunity for some creativity, and for spending time with your family. Even if it means less pay ... — Dalai Lama

Whoever stole it is spending less money than my wife. — Ilie Nastase

Every major country on earth, whether it's the U.K., whether it's France, whether it's Canada, has managed to provide healthcare to all people as a right and they are spending significantly less per capita on health care than we are. So I do not accept the belief that the United States of America can't do that. — Bernie Sanders

As it turns out, people who cut their work hours often take a smaller hit financially than they expect. That is because spending less time on the job means spending less money on the things that allow us to work: transport, parking, eating out, coffee, convenience food, childcare, laundry, retail therapy. A smaller income also translates into a smaller tax bill. In one Canadian study, some workers who took a pay cut in return for shorter hours actually ended up with more money in the bank at the end of the month. — Carl Honore

When I write a book, I put everything I have into it; so the more I have, the more the books become. Some people get freaked out by them: mostly the people who believe, mistakenly, that fantasy is about escaping reality. To them I say: If you have a problem with reality, you should be spending more time dealing with your life, and less time reading popcorn fantasy. — Matthew Woodring Stover

I don't go to conferences quite as much as I used to: having a child and movin away from the university leaves me with less time, but I've tried to balance things out - not just spending time with Linux all the time, but having a real job and a real life at the same time. — Linus Torvalds

The quest for a contemplative life can actually be self-absorbed, focused on my quiet and me. If we love people and have the power to help, then we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn't offer us a less busy life, it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of outer business we can develop an inner quiet. Because we are less hectic on the inside, we have a greater capacity to love ... and thus to be busy, which in turn drives us even more into a life of prayer. By spending time with our Father in prayer, we integrate our lives with his, with what he is doing in us. Our lives become more coherent. They feel calmer, more ordered, even in the midst of confusion and pressure. — Paul E. Miller

Americans for Tax Reform is a national taxpayer organization dedicated to opposing any and all tax increases. We work at the national, state and local level for lower taxes, less government spending and limited government. — Grover Norquist

At twenty years old, Michael had vague plans to make changes in his life, but turning blue whilst stood in a walk-in bath in an old people's home wasn't one of them. Usually boys of his age might consider changes along the lines of smoking less grass at home, at college or at work, to be a good idea. Or maybe spending less time on that solitary pursuit common to men of his age across the globe. Enjoyable though he found it, he was going to cut back on the procrastination, but that was going to have to wait. — Dylan Perry

What nobody tells you is that spending an entire day being paid to do something you love is sometimes a lot less fun than spending an entire day doing something you love for free. — Allison K. Williams

What I Value What's most satisfying to me: saving time, or money, or effort? Does it bother me to act differently from other people, or do I get a charge out of it? Do I spend a lot of time on something that's important to someone else, but not to me? If I had $500 that I had to spend on fun, how would I spend it? Do I like to listen to experts, or do I prefer to figure things out for myself? Does spending money on an activity make me feel more committed to it, or less committed? Would I be happy to see my children have the life I've had? — Gretchen Rubin

For small businesses, you need less taxes, less federal spending, and you need less regulation that blocks their growth. — David Malpass

I think it was seen as a symptom that the Chinese leadership may be really scared about their economy.Why would you want to depend more on exports if you're a country that has a stated policy of relying less on exports and more on consumer spending, domestic spending? — David Wessel

In fact, I think we're less safe. We get so distracted by all of the information, we're not spending enough time getting specific immigration - specific information on terrorists. — Ted Cruz

The answer to many of the domestic problems we face is not higher taxes and more spending. It is less waste, more results and greater freedom for the individual American to earn a rightful place in his own community - and for States and localities to address their own needs in their own ways, in the light of their own priorities. — Richard M. Nixon

To blindly trust government is to automatically vest it with excessive power. To distrust government is simply to trust humanity - to trust in the ability of average people to peacefully, productively coexist without some official policing their every move. The State is merely another human institution - less creative than Microsoft, less reliable than Federal Express, less responsible than the average farmer husbanding his land, and less prudent than the average citizen spending his own paycheck. — James Bovard

We will be spending less in the transfer market in future years — Roman Abramovich

I was sowing wild oats and doing the kind of things that you should do when you don't have kids. Now, I'm just doing less of that, but I earned it, you know. I feel like just spending quiet evenings with my wife and son and sitting in bed in the morning and watching him marvel over the curtains opening or whatever little thing. That all feels really good. And so, I've changed because I'm impressed. — Chris Pratt

If the amount of times we get up is just one less than the amount of times that we've been knocked down, then we're spending our lives lying down. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

What does it mean when Republicans and Democrats alike warn us about the 'pain' involved in cutting government spending - in their spending less of our money? For the average citizen, what pain is there in his keeping more of his money to invest it the way he wants? Taxes cost people. Tax cuts do not cost government. — Theodore J. Forstmann

I haven't reported my missing credit card to the police because whoever stole it is spending less than my wife. — Ilie Nastase

Two years ago, George Bush felt prompted to address this issue. More spending on public education, said the president, isn't "the best answer." Mr. Bush went on to caution parents of poor children who see money "as a cure" for education problems. "A society that worships money ... ," said the president, "is a society in peril." The president himself attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts - a school that spends $11,000 yearly on each pupil, not including costs of room and board. If money is a wise investment for the education of a future president at Andover, it is no less so for the child of poor people in Detroit. But the climate of the times does not encourage this belief, and the president's words will surely reinforce that climate. — Jonathan Kozol

People say 'teenage girls aren't so clever. Your characters should be less articulate to reflect our youth.' People who say that aren't spending time with teenagers. — Diablo Cody

With the dramatic increase in ease of transportation and the incredible decrease in the amount of time required to travel between far-flung areas of the United States, representatives began spending more and more time in Washington and less and less time in their home districts. — Ben Shapiro

To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above. — Ben Bernanke

Living a connected life ultimately is about setting boundaries, spending less time and energy hustling and winning over people who don't matter, and seeing the value of working on cultivating connection with family and close friends. — Brene Brown

Our country is failing to live up to its promise of opportunity and fairness. It used to be true that if you went to college and you worked hard, you could count on having a decent middle-class life - but that's just not true anymore. Economic and political changes that have occurred over the past three decades have made the middle-class American dream for today's twenty- and thirtysomethings far less possible than it was for their parents' generation. It's not that we're lazy, that we have no work ethic, or that we have outrageous spending habits. It's that we've been screwed. — Camille Perri

In the name of compassion, Obama advocates seemingly endless extensions of unemployment benefits because his economic theology holds that by paying people not to work, you will create jobs. It not only fails to factor in the obvious deterrent that extended benefits have on their recipients but also falsely assumes that transferring money from one pocket to the next generates more spending - by some mythical multiple factor, no less. Back on planet Earth, studies reveal that extending unemployment benefits results in more unemployment. — David Limbaugh

I miss my kids sometimes and that can get me down when I've been away working, but then I wake up and recognize how incredibly lucky I am. Spending time being down is less time out there achieving and enjoying. — Sean Combs

Lemons contain hydroxy acid. This acid is commonly used in products designed to get rid of dead skin, unclog pores and eliminate acne and scarring. Instead of spending money on these expensive products, you can treat acne and acne scars using lemons. Juice a lemon and soak a cotton ball in the juice. Gently wipe the juice on your face and leave for several minutes before rinsing off. Some people are sensitive to this technique, so you might want to test a small area before applying lemon juice to your whole face. If burning, peeling or irritation occurs, discontinue use. To make the juice a little less potent and potentially irritating, you can dilute it with water. — Pamesh Y.

Without constant suspicion, we can get more out of our exchanges with others while spending less time making sure that others will fulfill their promise to us. — Dan Ariely

If people eat healthy food, they will save enough to compensate for the food price being healthier and spending less on healthcare. — Michael Pollan

We in Tennessee know that low taxes, less government, and less spending are the ways to grow our economy. — Marsha Blackburn

Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very, very good. Spending $1,000 for a ham sandwich would feel very, very bad. Spending $19,000 for a small family car would feel, well, more or less right. But as with physical pain, fiscal pain can depend on the individual, and everyone has a different threshold. — Jeffrey Kluger

To computer purchasers, it looks like they're spending more money for more CPUs and the computer is doing less work! — Anonymous

Life was about spending time together , about having the time to walk together holding hands, talking quietly as the sun go down. It wasn't glamorous, but it was, in many ways, the best that life has to offer. Wasn't that how the old saying went? Who, on their deathbed, ever said they wished they had worked harder? Or spent less time enjoying a quiet afternoon? Or spent less time with their family? — Nicholas Sparks

When you're in an economic downturn, what you want is to create jobs and economic growth. And the recipe isn't Republican or Democrat. It's low taxes, low spending, less regulation, free trade. — Nancy Pfotenhauer

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.
Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. — William Wordsworth

Scientists and shamans alike know that all of life is woven into a web of infinite connections, contributing to the larger whole in a system that is complex beyond our imagining. When we sit quietly at the edge of a lake, or hike through a wildflower-strewn meadow, or walk through a cool, dark forest, we quickly become aware of our unity with the natural world. We fall back into natural rhythms--rhythms we are no longer in synch with as a result of living by the clock and spending much of our time in man-made spaces lit by electricity. Nature has a way of recalibrating us and helping us gain a new perspective on our stressors so that they seem less overwhelming. — Carl Greer

On the contrary, the inflation itself is partly a response to the reaction. As it has become politically less attractive to vote higher taxes to pay for higher spending, legislators have resorted to financing spending through inflation, a hidden tax that can be imposed without having been voted, taxation without representation. That is no more popular in the twentieth century than it was in the eighteenth. — Milton Friedman

Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there's a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you're writing your poem, there's one less scoundrel in the world. And I'd like a world, wouldn't you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I'm certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don't think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say 'We loved the earth but could not stay. — Ted Kooser

I run a taxpayer group - the most powerful guy in D.C., nonsense. OK? There are buildings with thousands of people in them, all lobbying for more spending and higher levels of spending and more government commitments. And there are a handful - a handful of groups that fight for less spending. — Grover Norquist

Frankly, I fail to see how going for a six-month, thousand-mile walk through deserts and mountains can be judged less real than spending six months working eight hours a day, five days a week, in order to earn enough money to be able to come back to a comfortable home in the evening and sit in front of a TV screen and watch the two-dimensional image of some guy talking about a book he has written on a six-month, thousand-mile walk through deserts and mountains. — Colin Fletcher

Why, if economic freedom has proven itself time and time again to be the engine of prosperity, do we keep moving toward Big Government? Why is a pro-freedom agenda so hard to come by and to defend? Why, no matter the rhetoric, no matter the mood of the electorate, no matter how much the weight of Big Government pulls down economic progress, do we get more regulations, more government spending, less economic freedom? The answer might surprise you. It has to do with something we don't often talk about in explicit terms. It has to do with morality. — Yaron Brook

Inequality makes everyone unhappy, the poor most of all, and that is well within the remit of the state. More money gives less extra happiness the richer we get, yet we are addicted to earning and spending more every year. — Polly Toynbee

We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education. We're starting to put more and more textbooks into our schools. We've become accustomed of late of putting little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons. We're spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text in our schools. The Bible states these great moral lessons better than any other man-made book. — Fisher Ames