The end of labor is to gain leisure.

We all knew this. We all knew that it would take more time than any of us want to dig ourselves out of this hole created by this economic crisis.

I am results-oriented.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and… the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

Taking in a baseball game on TV is also a big treat.

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.

I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run.

As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.

Time is the least thing we have of.

Adjusting to the passage of time, I think, is a key to success and to life: just being able to roll with the punches.

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.

I have so much that I want to do. I hate wasting time.

We live in a time-crunched world, and just about everything we do seems to be urgent.

There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.

Your life must be a progression towards ownership – first mentally of your independence, and then physically of your work, owning what you produce.

Movies are fun, but they are no cure for cancer.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

One of the things I realized is that if you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list, your kids fall lower and lower on your list.

Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.

If you continue to keep low performers on your team, that are actually dragging the team down; you’re failing the whole team, and eventually, the whole team is going to fail.

That’s one of the biggest things. Never being home, always traveling, having different interests and focusing on different things, just the time aspect of going back home and seeing them, you don’t have that at all. It was a big sacrifice but, at the end of the day, it was worth it.

On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes – ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

A lot of times, people have something that they’re afraid of. They’ve got a client that’s mad at them. They’ve got a project that’s due. And they let that stress hang over their head. I don’t let that happen.

I’m a day-to-day-type person.

I get very little sleep when the court is sitting.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

It’s pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

The real minimum wage is zero.

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

I love being busy.

I like to take it easy.

Spend more time in study and prayer. That’s the secret of successful evangelism.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

I can have people around a lot more because I’m not always chasing them away so I can work on my novel. My non-novel, I mean.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

My work and my family are very important to me.

I just hate meetings. Though it’s true that once you’ve made a lot of money, people around you might be full of ideas about ways to make lots more money and might be disappointed that you don’t want to seize every opportunity to do so.

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

The most effective way to do it, is to do it.

I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

A man should never neglect his family for business.

I’ve said this time and again: My greatest concern coming into the White House was making sure my girls came out whole and normal, and decent and kind, just like I would expect them to if we were living on the South Side of Chicago. And it takes work to keep White House life normal for the kids.

I’m just a kid – I’ve got a lot of stuff to do yet.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be.