Mean quotes

Mean

28K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

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Mean quotes (page 101 of 1399)

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Jack Kerouac Novelist, Poet
Mean

"It’s a sort of furtiveness … Like we were a generation of furtive. You know, with an inner knowledge there’s no use flaunting on that level, the level of the ‘public’, a kind of beatness – I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know where we are – and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world … It’s something like that. So I guess you might say we’re a beat generation."

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Oscar Wilde Writer
Mean

"I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean."

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Jack Ma Entrepreneur, Philanthropist
Mean

"Your employee should have superior technical skills than you. If he doesn't, it means you have hired the wrong person."

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Fran Lebowitz Author, Essayist
Mean

"I do not think everyone is created equal. In fact, I know they're not. [The Constitution] means that everyone should have the same laws as everyone else. It doesn't mean that everyone's as smart or as cute or as lucky as everyone else."

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Isaac Newton Mathematician, Physicist, Astronomer
Mean

"It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and effectually to distinguish, the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent; because the parts of that immovable space, in which those motions are performed, do by no means come under the observation of our senses. Yet the thing is not altogether desperate; for we have some arguments to guide us, partly from the apparent motions, which are the differences of the true motions; partly from the forces, which are the causes and effects of the true motions."

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Isaac Watts Hymn Writer, Poet
Mean

"Prayer is a sacred and appointed means to obtain all the blessings that we want, whether they relate to this life or the life to come."

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Gautama Buddha Spiritual Teacher
Mean

"Do not close your eyes before suffering. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, Including personal contact and visits, images, sound. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world."

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Niccolo Machiavelli Political Philosopher, Historian
Mean

"It makes him contemptible to be considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute, from all of which a prince should guard himself as from a rock; and he should endeavour to show in his actions greatness, courage, gravity, and fortitude; and in his private dealings with his subjects let him show that his judgments are irrevocable, and maintain himself in such reputation that no one can hope either to deceive him or to get round him."

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Lauryn Hill Singer, Songwriter
Mean

"I get really afraid of those little comforts, those things that make us feel like we did something great, because I've done nothing. I've done nothing. I mean that sincerely."

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Italo Calvino Writer
Mean

"Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don't mean escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification."

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Harry Hay Activist
Mean

"Ostracism means you don't exist at all. And that's a very difficult situation to live with. As gay people, we had been chasing ostracism by that point for probably 300 years. You just knew that you should have dropped into your black hole."

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Katie Ledecky Swimmer
Mean

"And if I'm ahead, I can sometimes tell. It might mean I'm having a good swim, but pretty much, I'm just focused on how fast I'm going, how fast I'm feeling, and pretty much block everything out, the sounds, the sights, just kind of listen to the rhythm of the water, and just maintaining the same stroke, the same rhythm, the same tempo, and thinking about how I want to get my hand to the wall."

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"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acpuire it."

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Margaret Thatcher Politician
Mean

"Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seems to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag."

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Lee Haney Bodybuilder
Mean

"When little old ladies recognize a guy who was Mr. Olympia, that's saying something. That means I've been able to cross lines as far as marketability is concerned."

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Mean

"Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home."

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George Bernard Shaw Playwright, Critic
Mean

"It is monstrous that custom should force us to display our faces ostentatiously, however worn and wrinkled and mean they may be, whilst carefully concealing all our other parts, however shapely and well preserved."

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