Quotes About Priorities

We've had exactly five balanced budgets since Alan Shepherd rode Freedom 7 in 1961. If we had put off space exploration until these earthbound social and economic conundrums were solved, our rocketry would be about where North Korea's is today.

Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life.

Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see another mountain in my life.

It's amazing what we value when we're at our lowest.

But if you start making money at the expense of why you do what you do, or why you were given this gift in the first place, then you need to ask yourself how badly you want that money. In the end, the cost might be more than you can pay.

If your knuckles are bloodier than your knees, then you're fighting the wrong battle.

Used to tell me that people spend money on three things: what they love, what they worship, and what helps ease their pain.

The curious part was this: most students said that they knew that social life would be more important to their happiness than architecture, yet they still put greater weight on physical features. This is the standard mis-weighing of extrinsic and intrinsic values: we may tell each other that experiences are more important than things, but we constantly make choices as though we didn't believe

Home (...) was dominated by work. (page 5)

An unavoidable side effect of ambition is to be gnawed by ambition anxiety about whether you're going to succeed. You're bound to feel it in your twenties and thirties. Put it away in your forties. By that time, you should have learned enough to recognize that fame and wealth are trivial—really, truly trivial—to a life well lived.

It's not just that people sacrifice their love relationships, and the care of their children, to pursue their careers. Something like this has perhaps always existed. The point is that today many people feel called to do this, feel they ought to do this, feel their lives would be somehow wasted or unfulfilled if they didn't do it.

THIS IS A BOOK about the good life—not the good life touted in Budweiser commercials or on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or MTV Cribs, but the good life that you and I want to live when we reflect about what really matters.

Not that I have any little kids running around I need to keep away from the guns. I had any kids I'd get rid of the guns. Nothing more dangerous to the life of a child than a house full of firearms. Nothing more dangerous except maybe a parent.

Elus olulisi otsuseid on tegelikult kolm: kellega koos kavatsete oma elu elada, kuidas te kavatsete seda elada ja mille nimel.

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

People thought that when you got old, you wanted your lost youth, or lost love, or men, or sex. But really you wanted work and you wanted money.

JAMES STILL HADN'T RETURNED Kick's texts, which meant he was deep into programming or, more likely, playing Skyrim. Kick knew he wouldn't deal well with this

Even the most blatant assholes seemed to function in a state of grace when confronted with the brutal loss of a loved one. They moved through the world differently than other people. When they looked at you, you had the feeling that they were really seeing you. Their entire universe was just this one thing, this one event, this one loss. They seemed, for a few weeks, to have things in perspective. Then the inconsequential shit of their lives would start to seep back in.

I suppose it's like newlywed sex. The first few years, you get busy anytime, anywhere, baby. But after a few anniversaries, you'd rather stay up and watch Leno.

Die, damn you! Maybe tomorrow. Just now I'm busy.

Two things I take very seriously in life. My golf game and my relationship with God. Neither one is simple.

Dave had been fun when they'd first dated. Then impending fatherhood had sobered him at the same time Mickle and Company had crooked its finger, turning him from Mr. Right to Mr. Wrong.

There are plenty of things in the world to be sad about. But a boy who doesn't love you shouldn't be one of them.

Honors to me now are not what they once were.