Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.

It costs governments money to keep fuel prices low. Oil-rich Yemen, for instance, devotes 9 percent of its GDP to making sure its people don’t riot when oil prices rise.

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.

You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.

I believe – we all pay taxes. I’m happy to pay it, but I hate to have it abused, money wasted, no accountability. That’s going to bother you.

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.

When I was a kid, there were no credit cards. Instead, retailers offered layaway plans. My mom would go to a store, such as a furniture outlet, choose the sofa she wanted, and put it on layaway. That meant she put a little money down to hold the sofa, and every payday she’d pay a little toward the purchase.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

I haven’t been as wild with my money as somebody like me might have been. I’ve been very safe, very conservative with investments. I don’t blow money. I don’t have a ton of houses. I know things can go away. I’ve already had that experience.

It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

Watch your finances like a hawk.

We can’t get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can’t just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.

Clearly this is a tough economic time, and a lot of families are hurting. So when we talk to parents, we talk about small changes for kids and things that don’t cost extra money. Like adding water and eliminating sugary drinks and sodas. That’s going to save money right there. Or adding a few more vegetables.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

I always try to be smart. I try to treat all the money I’m making like it’s the last time I’m going to make it.

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.

Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.

I would say raising capital is one of the weakest things for most entrepreneurs.

A penny saved is two pence clear.

It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.

Fuel prices are at the center of our lives. They affect our ability to travel, stay warm, and feed ourselves.

Something’s very wrong with a nation that would rather spend money on war than take care of its children.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.

A penny saved is a penny earned.

Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury.

Nobody was ever meant, To remember or invent, What he did with every cent.

I’m not really conservative. I’m conservative on certain things. I believe in less government. I believe in fiscal responsibility and all those things that maybe Republicans used to believe in but don’t any more.

On ‚Mystic River,‘ I had to cut my salary and everyone else’s to get it made.

The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.

We need earmark reform, and when I’m President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.

I’m interested in movement, and I’m interested in money, and I’m interested in the movement of money.

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

Thrift is of great revenue.

Money is like an arm or leg – use it or lose it.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

I cap myself when I shop; I don’t like to spend extravagant amounts on clothes. But, I do get lent clothes for events, it’s scary to wear something so expensive, but I feel really pampered.

I know it’s going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we’re in. You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money.

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.

I think that I know the value of a dollar.

Don’t forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

When you look at how much we spend on social programs in our country, it separates us from a lot of countries. In our country, if you’re hungry, we’ll feed you. If you’re homeless, we’ll house you. If you’re too poor to be sick, we’ll pay for your doctor. But all of that comes at a cost.

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.

First grade is very cheap. It’s the later grades where you have to spend a lot of money if you don’t do it right.

Money often costs too much.

Money has always been in politics. And I’m not sure you’d want money to be completely out of politics.

If you’re worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it’s almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.

Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.