Life & Wisdom Quote by John Anderson

The power here is in the shrug. Anderson isn’t delivering a visionary defense or a moral objection; he’s performing fiscal common sense in its most culturally familiar form: the taxpayer side-eye. “No I haven’t” opens with a blunt admission of distance from the thing he’s being asked to justify. That’s not just honesty, it’s a shield. By confessing he hasn’t engaged, he dodges responsibility for the decision while still claiming the right to grade it.

Then comes the kicker: “all I can say.” It narrows his agency to a single safe lane, the lane of cost-benefit. The $600,000 figure does the rhetorical heavy lifting. It’s precise enough to sound real, big enough to provoke a gut reaction, and round enough to feel like a headline. Anderson knows that once a number like that enters the room, nuance dies quickly.

“I hope we get $600,000 worth of value out of it” is the most revealing phrase. “Hope” signals he can’t promise outcomes; “we” invokes a public collective, implying accountability without naming who’s actually accountable. “Value” stays intentionally undefined: cultural prestige? public utility? political cover? That vagueness lets every listener project their own standard while he maintains plausible reasonableness.

The subtext is a familiar public-communication move: when you can’t (or won’t) defend the merits, defend the math. It’s a line built for controversy management, not conviction, and that’s why it works.