We All Have To Pay Our Dues Quotes & Sayings

You got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues ... And you know it don't come easy. — Ringo Starr

Let me tell you something: I have members in my charter who, after paying their rent and house bills and taking care of their families, don't even have enough money left over to pay the fifteen dollars a week dues. — Chuck Zito

Posterity will pay everyone their due. — Tacitus

What you want is for music to love you back. That's why you pay your dues. You want to feel like you belong and are part of this symbiosis, metamorphosis, whatever you want to call it. — Tom Waits

I think the fear of being seen as childish or crazy severely limits our enjoyment of the world around us, thus inducing a state of boredom that in turn gives rise to much of the stupidity and meanness that oftem seem to epitomize the human condtion. In fact, these ills merely signify that the dues we pay for adult respectability are far too high, and bring some 'benefits' of questionable value. — D. Patrick Miller

You got to pay your dues, too. So you be careful how you live and what goes in that Bank of Life. You are going to get it back ... someday. I can sure tell you that! — J. California Cooper

Writing screenplays is incredibly hard. I can't call it joy. Writing Novels? Joy. Directing? Joy. Writing Screenplays? That's where you pay all your dues. — Stephen Chbosky

I also believe that member states of the United Nations should live up their obligations to pay their dues. — Alex Morrison

I'm in five guilds; that's a lot of dues to pay. So I have to keep on working. — Griffin Dunne

Bands should definitely pay some dues and go through it, go to small clubs, build a fan base, all that kind of stuff, because it's not real, otherwise. — Brian Bell

I can act. I've been acting for a long time, but like anything else, don't nobody owe you nothing. You've go to pay your dues. You go from A to Z; you don't go from M to Z. — Bernie Mac

When the country's indebtedness is so colossal and where the budget deficit is so huge, there is a moral obligation on people to pay their fair and reasonable dues. — John Caudwell

The unions claim the deck is stacked against them when it comes to labor laws, but the truth is many private and public sector workers are forced to pay union dues as a condition of their employment, yet they have little say in how the unions spend their money. — Linda Chavez

Ultimately, the artist and the revolutionary function as they function, and pay whatever dues they must pay behind it because they are both possessed by a vision, and they do not so much follow this vision as find themselves driven by it. Otherwise, they could never endure, much less embrace, the lives they are compelled to lead. — James Baldwin

The Government as Substitute Husband did for women what labor unions still have not accomplished for men. And men pay dues for labor unions; the taxpayer pays the dues for feminism. Feminism and government soon become taxpayer-supported women's unions. — Warren Farrell

Actors and writers need to come back to the theater because it's a place where you can learn. You have to pay your dues, and people who haven't paid their dues in the theater, I think, have a hard time creating a whole career. — Joanne Woodward

I always had hopes of being a big star. But as you get older, you aim a little lower. Everybody wants to make an impression, some mark upon the world. Then you think, you've made a mark on the world if you just get through it, and a few people remember your name. Then you've left a mark. You don't have to bend the whole world. I think it's better to just enjoy it. Pay your dues, and just enjoy it. If you shoot a arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you. — Dorian Corey

Back when I was a devout Pharisee, I scowled at those who talked about grace, assuming they wanted both salvation and permission to do whatever they pleased. And when I came to discover grace as a biblical concept, it frightened me at first. The old idea of being saved by works has its benefits. It's a system where God owes you. You've been helping him out with all your good deeds. He can't very well put you through difficulty, since you're a taxpayer. You've paid your dues, you have your rights. But the beyond-belief teaching of grace is that we get what we can never pay for and more, including joy and hope and the desire to please him. I like living by God's grace a lot better than relying on my own efforts. — Phil Callaway

When I was really little, I was skinny and people laughed at me for being skinny, so, we all pay our dues for the bodies we're in one way or another. But thank god I haven't needed to alter it to feel good about myself. — Sandra Bernhard

No one can say I didn't pay my dues in life, — James Robertson

Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations but do not pay our dues. We complain of terrorism, yet our empire is now the greatest terrorist of all. We bomb, invade, subvert other states. — Gore Vidal

In order for a musician to grow, he's got to pay his dues. Some musicians ask me, 'well, what do you mean? You're saying I have to 'starve' and pay all these dues just to play jazz?' And my answer to them is, well, to some degree, yes! Because in order to play jazz you have to live it. Those notes mean something. They don't just come from your brain, they come from your heart and soul too. And in order to have that heart and soul you have to experience life. So I relate my music to my life and my life style. You can't separate the two. — Woody Shaw

The idea that we need to "pay our dues" is a lie told to us by people who wanted our efforts and labor on the cheap. — James Altucher

For 200 years, the dominant powers have also been the colonial powers: the European countries, the U.S. and Japan. They have never been required to pay their dues for what they did to those whom they possessed and treated with contempt. — Martin Jacques

Two hours a day for two days per week. Four hours. At $7.25 an hour, that gave him a gross income of $29 a week. He is also now a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers International, the union that represents food workers, retail clerks, and farm workers. His monthly dues for the UFCW are $25, all taken out of his first week's check. That makes Owen arguably the most selfless labor activist in America, with 86 percent of his pay going to support his union. — Ron Suskind

I believe if an individual wants to join organized labor and work under a union contract, they should have the legal right to do so. At the same token, a person who does not want to work under organized labor and wants to work should have the ability to do so without the threat of having to join and having to pay dues to organized labor. — Paul LePage

You got to pay your dues to get the joke. Besides, laughter is cheap and very portable. If there's a pogrom, or they're blaming you for the plague, nothing is easier to pack than a sense of humor. — Lenny Bruce

The structure that is currently in place, inside government, forcing government employees to pay union dues, even if they don't want to be in a union
that is fundamentally unconstitutional and it is against the American system of freedom of choice. — Bruce Rauner

The religious heritage sort of suggests implicitly and explicitly that you pay your dues and you get your reward later on, that's a little inconsistent with the notion of personal, happiness. I am a strong believer in a set of values that are rooted in the notion of happiness and personal fulfillment. — Hugh Hefner

You've got to clock the hours and pay your dues. Then eventually, people will come to you. You have to be patient and appreciative. — Elisabeth Rohm

I vow to serve, to pay my dues
And train myself for Legal use.
I vow to bear the Surplus shame
And repay Nature for the same
I vow to listen, not to speak;
To steel myself when I am weak.
I vow to work and most of all
To serve the State if it should call. — Gemma Malley

Nonsense,' said Bjartur, 'there's nothing lucky about it at all. I will have no truck with superstition. She can lie where she is, the old bitch.' 'Let me down to give her a stone, Bjartur.' 'What the devil does she want with a stone? No stone from me or mine. We pay our dues to the living, which is more to the point than pandering to people that have been fried in hell for centuries. — Halldor Laxness

A lot of people feel that way. That if you didn't pay your dues by being ostracized then you're not *really* a geek.
I don't think that though. It's not an exclusive club that you need to pay some social price to get in. Being a geek is about loving something passionately beyond all reason or sense. And it need not necessarily be related to science fiction, fantas, superheroes, etcetera. You can be a gardening geek, a model train geek, stamp collecting geek, a baby geek ...
It's about enthusiasm, in my opinion.
From his blog RE: Thirty years of D&D — Patrick Rothfuss

Many blue-collar families struggling to pay rent would be happy to skip paying optional union dues. — Kevin O'Leary