Paul Newman Quotes

What chiefly governs the military budget is the need to spend enormous sums of money in a useless way. The allegedly powerful Pentagon is simply a receptacle for wasteful expenditure, just as a city dump is the receptacle for the refuse of a city.

I spent money on all the wrong things. Private airfare. Things like that.

The F-22 is a shameful, disgraceful boondoggle and it revolts me.

A lot of the money spent in the name of relief has nothing to do with relief.

There is so much crap [waste] going on over there [the Pentagon], I could run the Navy Department on the cost-of-living increases alone.

Every dollar needlessly spent on our military … diminishes our overall security.

What I think is wrong is spending £9m of taxpayers' money on one particular piece of one-sided propaganda.

I probably spent more money trying to do things that I didn't need to do.

The negative effects of greedy politicians have haunted the north-east for years; it's very apparent.

That's the very essence of pork barrelism, when you give a huge lump sum to a person and say, 'Well, tell us what you want it for, but you are free to decide where to spend it on.'

The first sign of extravagance is to buy trousers that one does not need.

The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don't turn

I don't think the press has done a very good job dealing with government spending.The Defense Department with the $9,500 toilet seat, that's not the problem anymore. Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are the problem. That's us. That's our generation. There the press never says a word.

In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.

Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.

To build is to be robbed.

Militarism is the most energy-intensive, entropic activity of humans, since it converts stored energy and materials directly into waste and destruction without any useful intervening fulfillment of basic human needs. Ironically, the net effect of military, as opposed to civilian, expenditures is to increase unemployment and inflation.

That cannot be a true religion which needs carnal weapons to uphold it.

We would like to see, in the future, what we will probably call needs-based licensing of all weapons. ...Where it would make it much more difficult for anybody to be able to purchase handguns.

Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.

Sending money to Washington to have it administered and sent back is like getting a blood transfusion from your right arm to your left arm with a leaky valve.

To defend Western Europe we have to let the Pentagon buy all these tanks and guns and things, and the Pentagon is unable to buy any object that that costs less than a condominium in Vail. If the Pentagon needs, say, fruit, it will argue that it must have fruit that can withstand the rigors of combat conditions, and it will wind up purchasing the FX-700 Seedless Tactical Grape, which will cost $160,000 per bunch, and will have an 83 percent failure rate.

I'm very skeptical of the amount of money that goes into military expenditure, not just in the poor countries [but] also in the rich. I think it's one of the most massive wastes in the world, but education is [at the] other end. It's the bearer of the greatest fruits that mankind has ever known.

We do know, with absolute certainty, that Saddam Hussein is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain. Fancy giving money to the Government! Nobody will see the stuff again. Well, they've not idea what money's for- Ten to one they'll start another war. I've heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor'! Fancy giving money to the Government!