Ben Edwards Quotes

The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all 'bottom line' editors; everything depends on the money.

Time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

Even on a $100 million film, people will complain that they haven't got enough money and enough time, so that's always going to be an element in filmmaking.

Cost effectiveness and effectiveness are not always the same thing in government.

Prioritizing spending and maximizing the effectiveness of taxpayer dollars is absolutely essential. We must draw the line, realigning programs when necessary and also eliminating failed programs.

We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good... Meals on Wheels sounds great.

If you spend your time, worth $20-25 per hour, doing something that someone else will do for $10 per hour, it's simply a poor use of resources.

Business is a string of seemingly impossible problems looking for solutions. Each problem you solve creates a new barrier to entry for your next competitor.

We will pay any price that we are instructed to. But the money has to come from somewhere.

I'm not interested in more money for the sake of it. You're aware that if you're nicking all the budget, somebody else is getting threepence ha'penny, or the production values aren't going to be so high.

You know, in a workplace, when you shrink the size of a workforce, there is pain there. But there is no question: we have a government that we can no longer afford. That is the cold, hard fact. So we have to make this more efficient. We have to sunset programs that no longer work. We have to eliminate waste and fraud. We must do this.

Let's not go through that again. Redirect it, reduce the amount of money spent, but let's not destroy it. Because you don't know 10 years out what you're going to face.

Intelligence collection has its place—no question—… But no matter how important collection is, in the short and even the long run, it just doesn’t cost very much.

More than fifty cents on the dollar in our public school system in the United States is spent on Administration. If you know of a private industry that spends more than fifty cents on the dollar on administration and is still making a profit, I would like to know what it is.

Never base your budget requests on realistic assumptions, as this could lead to a decrease in your funding.

[The] up-and-down pattern of [defense] spending over the last 18 years averages out to below zero percent real growth. In other words, if defense spending had followed a path of zero percent real growth, the U.S. probably could have obtained more defense for its dollar.

It is a terribly hard job to spend a billion dollars and get your money's worth.

When a government agency is more efficient, they’re not necessarily going to get that money back. So they don’t always have an incentive.

I do not think we can get any legislation this session for extension of land grants unless we pay more for it than it is worth.

Our ratio of administrators to classroom teachers and students is unacceptably high

We don’t care what the cost-benefit is. We’re going to build it somehow because Congress says it’s going to be built.

Throwing money after security turns out to be a classic example of the law of diminishing marginal utility.

Because the resources available to the U. S. military will be increasingly limited, the objectives must be too.

Reducing future risks requires paying some immediate costs.

Austerity [in the Defense Department] meant that risks had to be managed, not eliminated.