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

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.

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

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

A penny saved is two pence clear.

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

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

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

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

Watch your finances like a hawk.

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

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.

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

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

Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Money often costs too much.

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

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I think that I know the value of a dollar.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 penny saved is a penny earned.

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

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

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.

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.