Robertson Davies Quotes

Comparatively few people know what a million dollars actually is. To the majority it is a gaseous concept, swelling or decreasing as the occasion suggests.

Money is just a way of keeping score.

Money is the probably the most successful story ever told. It has no objective value... but then you have these master storytellers: the big bankers, the finance ministers... and they come, and they tell a very convincing story.

When you earn it and spend it you do know the difference between three dollars and a million dollars, but when you say it and vote it, it all sounds the same.

Money is just an idea.

Money is only a human invention.

The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended.

Do you know how much a hundred dollars is?' he asked. I said that I did not and he answered, 'It is a hundred dollars.

There is no question that, in 1980, Ronald Reagan had been portrayed as a war-monger, somebody who couldn't do anything off a script. And the one debate with President Jimmy Carter, he stood toe-to-toe and reassured people that he wasn't bound and determined to start World War III on the spot and could make a coherent statement.

I don't think it's the fans, I think it's the fact that they get paid a lot of money for a picture of you doing something wrong. They don't seem to be interested in anything good any more.I think people appreciate what you do.

Money is good for nothing unless you know the value of it by experience.

[Is the Conservative Party still the Nasty Party?] I said it was perceived as the Nasty Party. And is it? I don't think that it's a phrase that people today would apply to the Party. I think that the perception of the Party has changed.

If you become famous and you start making money, then people want to give you things. It's the exact opposite of how it's supposed to be.

Once when Phocion had delivered an opinion which pleased the people, he turned to his friend and said, "Have I not unawares spoken some mischievous thing or other?"

Do you know why I won the last elections? It was because the people liked me, yes, because I had worked, yes, but also because the opposition had behaved badly toward me. And do you know why I won this war? Because my army was able to do it, yes, but also because the Americans were on the side of Pakistan.

You know Lincoln's famous remark about "God must have loved the common people, because he made so many of them?" Well, you are not going to get people's votes nowadays by calling 'em common. Lincoln might have said it, but I bet it was not until after he was elected.

The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth.

Money is really just an idea.

It's just, "Hey,[Barack] Obama's the hero, and he wants Obamacare," and so the coverage is totally devoted to whether or not Obama's gonna get it. Now, in that scenario, who are the villains?Well, your good old, reliable Republicans are the villains, and they are always portrayed as the people trying to deny our beloved hero what he wants.

Haven't you heard the Democrats disparage people who sign up? It's something I've never understood. Okay, you don't like the military, fine and dandy, but why impugn the people that sign up? They're signing up knowing full well they're volunteering. They're offering their lives, potentially. Why impugn 'em? Why go out...? Because it's an opportunity to criticize America; that's why. Because in the Democrat world, nobody would ever join the military. "Good Lord, we'd go to Yale - hell, we'd go to Dartmouth - before we go to the military!

Hillary Clinton lost because of who she is, because of her track record of failure, because there's no resume, there's no record of experience that she's good or qualified at anything. She cannot cite any achievements or accomplishments, other than traveling miles and being named after people she wasn't named after and being told to go join the dogs by somebody at the Marine Corps. She's exposed.

I talked to George Lucas once, not about Star Wars. Everyone wants to talk to him about Star Wars, and I didn't want to be one of those people. In person - at least on this occasion - he wasn't effervescent and giddy, as the Star Wars movies are. He's more focused.

Finally, the president added, 'The American people are idealists, but they also want their leaders to be realistic...'

How is this any different than the big boat argument of people when it came to African-Americans after the Civil War, decided, 'Put them on a boat and send them back where they came from?' You know, he says it in polite language, but that's what Romney's been saying, 'Get home where you came from, start all over again.'

The difference between us and other people is that their money looks bigger and their troubles smaller.