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

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.

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

A penny saved is a penny earned.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.

You know people talk about federal money as if it falls from heaven. You know we thank heaven for it, but it came out of people’s pockets – and I’ve driven all over Washington, D.C., I cannot find the money tree.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

There are only three ways to meet the unpaid bills of a nation. The first is taxation. The second is repudiation. The third is inflation.

Watch your finances like a hawk.

When I first starting making money, when I first made my first six-digits, I was – my big thing was I went to put super unleaded in my truck for the first time.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Thrift is of great revenue.

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

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

The time to save is now. When a dog gets a bone, he doesn’t go out and make a down payment on a bigger bone. He buries the one he’s got.

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

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.

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

Money often costs too much.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

Well, I think that California has had a history of always spending more money than it takes in.

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

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 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.

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.

A penny saved is two pence clear.

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.

Give me five minutes with a person’s checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is.

I think that I know the value of a dollar.

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

Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt.

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