Priorities Quotes

I remember my mother and father arguing about light bulbs because my father thought he could save money by putting 25-watt bulbs instead of 60-watt bulbs and my mother was trying to explain to him that her children needed to learn to read so that they could go to college. He couldn't see that.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Whatever you think matters - doesn't. Follow this rule, and you will add decades to your life. Rodger Rosenblatt As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings.

To the person with a toothache, even if the world is tottering, there is nothing more important than a visit to a dentist.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night's sleep for the chance of extra profits.

Always remember, money isn't everything - but also remember to make a lot of it before talking such fool nonsense.

...and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay parties.

Money is not the most important thing, but when you need it, there are few substitutes. So while I like the things money can buy, I love what money won't buy. It bought me a house but it won't buy me a home. It would buy me a companion but it won't buy me a friend.

Wealth can't buy heath, but heath can buy wealth.

He burned his house down for the fire insurance and spent the proceeds on a telescope.

The kids are a big part of my schedule.

It's more important to get along with people than to get ahead of them.

It's a marriage. If I had to choose between my wife and my putter, well, I'd miss her.

The immediate is often the enemy of the ultimate.

I cannot but say a word and look my disapproval when I hear that my country is spending millions for war and war engines-more, I have heard, than twice as much as the entire public school system costs the nation.

What does a black man look like begging for a cup of coffee in a white restaurant, and doesn't have a job to back up his - to pay for it when, when - when he does get the coffee? It's putting the cart before the horse.

That's the trouble with our charities; we are always saving somebody away off, when the fellow next to us ain't eating.

I've decided life is too fragile to finish a book I dislike just because it cost $16.95 and everyone else loved it. Or eat a fried egg with a broken yolk (which I hate) when the dog would leap over the St. Louis Arch for it.

Time is our most valuable asset, yet we tend to waste it, kill it and spend it rather than invest it.

It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in.

If you continually ask yourself, "What's important now?", you won't waste time on the trivial.

Once a man has some money, peace begins to sound good to him.

El mundo habrá acabado de joderse -dijo entonces- el día en que los hombres viajen en primera clase y la literatura en el vagón de carga.

It's much more important to write than to be written about.

I may lose a battle but I will never lose a minute.

Days are expensive. When you spend a day you have one less day to spend. So make sure you spend each one wisely.

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.

We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society.

We take care of our health; we lay up money; we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all, -friends?

Making the family a top priority will invariably bring success.

I've learned that it doesn't matter how your husband squeezes the toothpaste, the important thing is how he squeezes you.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

Foreign languages, I think they are important but I don't think it should be required because-actually I think they should be teaching you English and then teaching you how to understand double talk-a politician's double talk-not teaching you how to understand French and Spanish and German, when am I going to Germany? I can't even afford to pay my rent in America, how am I going to Germany?

Young people: I understand this is important to you, but as you be thinking about climate change, the economy and jobs, war and peace, maybe way at the bottom you should be thinking about marijuana.

We need to remember what's important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work, it doesn't matter. But work is third.

I myself have never been concerned with whether we are considered known or unknown. It's no problem of ours.

If this government can send 20 billion dollars to Latin America to some peasants who have never fought for this country or worked for this country or have - or - and is sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Africa and Asia to try and buy friendship of people who will never be friendly toward them, then they should be even more quick to spend some - whatever amount of money is necessary to get inside of their house straight, before it's too late.

When you know what's important, it's a lot easier to ignore what's not.

I tell a person, "If I could go home with you tomorrow and you and I could spend the day together from maybe 8:00 to 6:00, and we went out to a restaurant at 6:30, I could tell you with a high degree of accuracy how successful you're going to be." That's huge because I'm just going to look and see, what kind of attitude do you have, how do you relate to people, how well do you prioritize your life? I'm going to see all of those things in the process of a day.

I've read something that Bill Gates said about six months ago. He said, ‘I worked really, really hard in my 20s.’ And I know what he means, because I worked really, really hard in my 20s too. Literally, you know, 7 days a week, a lot of hours every day. And it actually is a wonderful thing to do, because you can get a lot done. But you can't do it forever, and you don't want to do it forever, and you have to come up with ways of figuring out what the most important things are and working with other people even more.

Whatever you want to achieve is secondary: the business, the exchange of information, whatever it may be. Yes, you do that also, but there is a deeper foundation - meeting that human being in a state of shared presence.

We do what we have to so we can do what we want to.

At certain times each year, we journalists do almost nothing except apply for the Pulitzers and several dozen other major prizes. During these times you could walk right into most newsrooms and commit a multiple axe murder naked, and it wouldn't get reported in the paper because the reporters and editors would all be too busy filling out prize applications.

It's not essential for me to have a big debut week; it's not essential for me to have big radio records.

Some people have learned to earn well but they haven't learned to live well.

Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what.

It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery.

A sense of contentment is crucial to being happy. Physical health, material wealth and friends contribute to this, but contentment governs our relations with them all.

I’ve never believed in risking what my family and friends have and need in order to pursue what they don’t have and don’t need.

No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes: yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

Without denying the value of scientific endeavor, there is a striking absurdity in committing billions to reach the moon where no people live, while only a fraction of that amount is appropriated to service the densely populated slums.

Some people take better care of their pets than they do themselves. Their animals can run like the wind and they can barely make it up a flight of stairs.

Time is more valuable than money, because time is irreplaceable.

The greatest privilege and greatest duty for any man is to be happily married, and no other form of success or service, for either man or woman, can be wisely accepted as a substitute or alternative

Blood's not thicker than money.

By worrying as little as possible about fame.

It's a good idea not to major in minor things.

Pity the man who has a favorite restaurant, but not a favorite author. He's picked out a favorite place to feed his body, but he doesn't have a favorite place to feed his mind!