Time Is Scarce Quotes & Sayings

Yule is supposed to be a celebration and a consolation, a moment of warm brightness in the heart of winter, a time to eat because you know that the lean times are coming when food will be scarce and ice locks the land, and a time to be happy and get drunk and behave irresponsibly and wake up the next morning wondering if you will ever feel well again, but the West Saxons handed the feast to the priests who made it as joyous as a funeral. — Bernard Cornwell

everything in the area of law enforcement, including criminal law, has at one time or another been handled by the private sector quite adequately, and in some places it's occurring even today. The second reason is that in fact the law and law enforcement are not public goods. Public goods are supposed to be goods that everyone has equal access to and that the private sector will not provide. As I said, the private sector does provide these things, and furthermore the idea of equal access to justice is just not true. We have scarce resources being used in law enforcement and adjudication and prosecution and in punishment, and so the use of these resources for one thing means they are not being effectively used for something else. There are tradeoffs. The vast majority of crimes that are reported to police are never resolved. The vast majority of crimes committed are never reported to police. So the belief that law and law enforcement are public goods simply doesn't stand up to reality. — Anonymous

Time is life. When we experience time as scarce, we experience life as short and poor. — Charles Eisenstein

You cannot imagine how time ... can be ... so still. It hangs. It weighs. And yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly, and yet it is so scarce. — Margaret Edson

With all the abundance we have of computers and computing, what is scarce is human attention and time. — Satya Nadella

There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season to give a mark of enmity and ill-will: a word
a look, which at one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the heart, and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object aimed at. — Laurence Sterne

The career world is like an ecological system: People occupy particular fields within which they must compete for resources and survival. The more people there are crowded into a space, the harder it becomes to thrive there. Working in such a field will tend to wear you out as you struggle to get attention, to play the political games, to win scarce resources for yourself. You spend so much time at these games that you have little time left over for true mastery. You are seduced into such fields because you see others there making a living, treading the familiar path. You are not aware of how difficult such a life can be. — Robert Greene

Busy people all make the same mistake: they assume they are short on time, which of course, they are. But time is not their only scarce resource. They are also short on bandwidth. By bandwidth I mean basic cognitive resources - psychologists call them working memory and executive control - that we use in nearly every activity. — Sendhil Mullainathan

There are two ways to look at the Planet Earth: (1) It is contracting and shrinking - therefore my chances are scarce. Colloquially put, "there ain't enough to go 'round so I've got to get mine!" (2) It is expanding and growing with opportunity - my chances are based on abundance. The choice is mine, and time is my ally.26 — Caroll Michels

It takes time
loose, unstructured dreamtime
to experience nature in a meaningful way. Unless parents are vigilant, such time becomes a scarce resource, not because we intend it to shrink, but because time is consumed by multiple, invisible forces; because our culture currently places so little value on natural play. — Richard Louv

They are a testament not only to the Afghans' hunger for literacy, but also to their willingness to pour scarce resources into this effort, even during a time of war. I have seen children studying in classrooms set up inside animal sheds, windowless basements, garages, and even an abandoned public toilet. We ourselves have run schools out of refugee tents, shipping containers, and the shells of bombed-out Soviet armored personnel carriers. The thirst for education over there is limitless. The Afghans want their children to go to school because literacy represents what neither we not anyone else has so far managed to offer them: hope, progress, and the possibility of controlling their own destiny. — Greg Mortenson

In a completely different era and domain, Charles Darwin hypothesized that the emergence of each new species was a gradual process, taking place through the slow transformation of existing species into their somewhat-modified offspring. Yet evidence for such continuous change was not only lacking back then but is scarce even today, having prompted Darwin to label it "the gravest objection [that] can be urged against my theory." Instead, over millions of years species in the fossil record show little or no evolutionary change. New species tend to appear over periods spanning tens of thousands of years, a split second in terms of all evolutionary time. Evolution proceeds in bursts, which are in turn preserved in the fossil record. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

... ... , but as I am a scholar I feel obliged to document what it is like here, most of the time, between the dramatic climaxes. In truth it is like this: You cannot imagine how time can be so still. It hangs. It weighs, and yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly and it is so scarce. If I was writing this scene it would last a full 15 minutes. I would lie here and you would sit there. — Margaret Edson

Confronted with the choice between having time and having things, we've chosen to have things. Today it is a luxury to read what Socrates said, not because the books are expensive, but because our time is scarce. — Gabriel Zaid

Whatever Juice this sky will pour this gaping parched old throat will drain; What time the Harper harps I'll dance: 'tis He, not I, who shall complain. Meal may be scarce and cakes be burnt, yet I weep not nor even scold: The sun is food enough for me, 't is large, and has not yet grown cold. — Ridgely Torrence

The people of Sydney who can speak of my work [on flying-machine models] without a smile are very scarce; it is doubtless the same with American workers. I know that success is dead sure to come, and therefore do not waste time and words in trying to convince unbelievers. — Lawrence Hargrave

In a time when nothing is more certain than change, the commitment of two people to one another has become difficult and rare. Yet, by its scarcity, the beauty and value of this exchange have only been enhanced. — Robert Sexton

When everything is subject to money, then the scarcity of money makes everything scarce, including the basis of human life and happiness. Such is the life of the slave - one whose actions are compelled by threat to survival. Perhaps the deepest indication of our slavery is the monetization of time. — Charles Eisenstein

Literature is the voice of the age and the state; the character, energy, and resources of the country are reflected and imaged forth in the conceptions of its great minds; they are organs of the time; they speak not their own language, they scarce think their own thoughts; but under an impulse like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they must feel and utter the sentiments which society inspires. — Edward Everett

To live means to experience-through doing, feeling, thinking. Experience takes place in time, so time is the ultimate scarce resource we have. Over the years, the content of experience will determine the quality of life. Therefore one of the most essential decisions any of us can make is about how one's time is allocated or invested. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work. — Anonymous

Vexation of spirit is a waste of time
Negative thinking, don't you waste your thoughts
Verbal conflict is a waste of word
Physical conflict is a waste of flesh
People will always be who they want
And that's what really makes the world go round
Unconditional love is scarce ... — Damian Marley

With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose, for good books are as scarce as good companions, and in both instances, all that we can learn from baad ones is, that some much time has been worse than thrown away. — Charles Caleb Colton

Hunter-gathers, by nature, store information for use, understanding that there may be a time when information is scarce. — Brian C. O'Connor, Jud H. Copeland, Jodi L. Kearns

When was the last time you heard an insightful, inspiring piece of oratory from an Australian political leader, an appeal to what is pure and true within humanity: a statement of belief backed by ideas for change betterment, a call to those immutable values wherein lie the potential greatness of people individually and collectively? Such exhortation, such leadership is lamentably scarce. — Michael Short

Our time and attention is scarce. Art is not that important to us, no matter what we might like to believe ... Our love of art is often quite temporary, dependent upon our moods, and our love of art is subservient to our demand for a positive self image. How we look at art should account for those imperfections and work around them.
Keep in mind that books, like art museums, are not always geared to the desires of the reader. Maybe we think we are supposed to like tough books, but are we? Who says? Many writers (and art museums) produce for quite a small subsample of the ... public. — Tyler Cowen

Many governments are giving subsidies to fossil fuel production and consumption that encourage greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time as they are spending on projects to promote clean energy. This is a wasteful use of scarce budget resources. — Jose Angel Gurria

The 2011 legislation was an effort to decrease the number of students competing with families and working people for scarce housing. San Francisco is home to 82,000 full-time students in 31 colleges and universities, but its institutes of higher learning provide housing for only about one-tenth of that population. In contrast, Boston successfully pushed its schools to meet the housing needs of 50 percent of students. The Board of Supervisors passed the law that made student housing exempt from the affordable-housing fee developers must pay. But with the exception of Kennedy, who has been building student housing in Berkeley for 20 years, no developers have stepped up to take advantage of the law. — Anonymous

'Untitled' is a time machine that can transport you to 1992, an edgy moment when the art world was crumbling, money was scarce, and artists like Tiravanija were in the nascent stages of combining Happenings, performance art, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, and the do-it-yourself ethos of punk. Meanwhile, a new art world was coming into being. — Jerry Saltz

Meanwhile, time is one of our most scarce resources. At the moment, you are reading instead of working, playing with the dog, applying to law school, shopping for groceries, or having sex. Life is about trade-offs, and so is economics. — Charles Wheelan

When time is scarce, use what you have. When time is plenty, remember, it will soon be scarce. — Matshona Dhliwayo

savoring the words, and then aloud to me: "'Reckon not upon long life: think every day the last, and live always beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth his Expectation lives many Lives, and will scarce complain of the shortness of his days. Time past is gone like a Shadow; make time to come present - '" " - So — Bill Hayes

I must talk to Kennit first. He will tell me when he is ready for us to have a baby."
"Never," Bolt said flatly.
"What?"
"Never wait for a male on any such decision. You are the queen. You decide. Males are not made for such decisions. I have seen it time and time again. They would have you wait for days of sunshine and wealth and plenty. Yet to a male, enough is never sufficient, and plenty never reached. A queen knows that when times are hardest and game most scarce, that is when one must care most about the continuance of the race. Some things are not for males to decide. — Robin Hobb

More time on the problem isn't the way. More guts is. When you expose yourself to the opportunities that scare you, you create something scarce, something others won't do. — Seth

I accept the fact that there is always a way out in every situation we find ourselves but, until we begin to ponder, panacea will be very scarce — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah