"If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a drought, mere human galls stung by the devil once), then all your joy and serenity is reduced to grinning and bearing it. The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders like Atlas, and "put along" with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself."
Mean quotes
Mean
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"Improved productivity means less human sweat, not more."
"Does it mean this, does it mean that, that's all anybody wants to know. I'd say what any decent poet would say if anyone dared ask him to analyze his work: if you see it, darling, then it's there!"
"I've always been the guy who doesn't necessarily get it with women. A woman would have to say, 'I like you, I want to go out with you, you can ask me.' And still I would question it. Did she mean it?"
"Laughter means: taking a mischievous delight in someone else's uneasiness, but with a good conscience."
"He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather."
"True peace of mind comes from accepting the worst. Psychologically, I think it means a release of energy."
"It is more important to find out what you are giving to society than to ask what is the right means of livelihood."
"Showing a profit means touching something and leaving it better than you found it."
"Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell."
"If you don't live a life in service of a greater good, you've gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won't get either a life or a death that means anything."
"I think today we've gone so far technologically and also just emotionally and psychologically, I mean there's a lot of crime out there and there's a lot of stuff going on. People don't care that they're going to go to prison. They couldn't give a rat about the repercussions. They go out and they do what they do and they don't care about hurting anyone else."
"To slacken the tempo...would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind get beaten."
"Of course, in order to build something new, one has to economize, accumulate means, temporarily limit one's requirements, borrow from others. If you want to build a new house, you save money temporarily and limit your requirements, otherwise you might not build your house."
"Keeing busy" is the remedy for all the ills in America. It's also the means by which the creative impulse is destroyed."
"The absence of pain means death, so when something no longer bothers you, you've died to that thing."
"Courage means to keep making forward progress while you still feel afraid!"
"Cooking well doesn't mean cooking fancy."
"Your adventure has to be coming out of your own interior. If you are ready for it then doors will open where there were no doors before, and where there would not be doors for anyone else. And you must have courage. It's the call to adventure, which means there is no security, no rules."
"If we consider the superiority of the human species, the size of its brain, its powers of thinking, language and organization, we can say this: were there the slightest possibility that another rival or superior species might appear, on earth or elsewhere, man would use every means at his disposal to destroy it."