Mean quotes
28K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Learn how to cook a (effing) omelet. I mean, what nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast? You look good doing it, and it's a nice thing to do for somebody you just had sex with."
"Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting."
"Good has two meanings: it means that which is good absolutely and that which is good for somebody."
"One can aim at honor both as one ought, and more than one ought, and less than one ought. He whose craving for honor is excessive is said to be ambitious, and he who is deficient in this respect unambitious; while he who observes the mean has no peculiar name."
"Purpose is a desire for something in our own power, coupled with an investigation into its means."
"Now the goodness that we have to consider is clearly human goodness, since the good or happiness which we set out to seek was human good and human happiness. But human goodness means in our view excellence of soul, not excellence of body."
"Equality is of two kinds, numerical and proportional; by the first I mean sameness of equality in number or size; by the second, equality of ratios."
"Altruism does not mean mere kindness or generosity, but the sacrifice of the best among men to the worst, the sacrifice of virtues to flaws, of ability to incompetence, of progress to stagnation-and the subordinating of all life and of all values to the claims of anyone's suffering."
"Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth."
"In Egypt, a civil state means a modern nationalist state that is compatible with Islamist provisions."
"There are certain functions that the family performs. In the first place the family provides society with an orderly means of reproduction, while at the same time the norms of marriage control the potentially disruptive forces of sexuality. Second, the family provides physical and economic support for the child during the early years of dependence. The child receives its primary socialization in the family, learning the essential ideas and values required for adult life."
"Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen."
"Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination; it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it."
"Born of necessity, the little fellow literally freed us of immediate worry. He provided the means for expanding our organization to its present dimensions and for extending the medium of cartoon animation toward new entertainment levels. He spelled production liberation for us."
"Art was always a means to an end with me. You get an idea, and you just can't wait. Once you've started, then you're in there with the punches flying. There's plenty of trouble, but you can handle it. You can't back out. It gets you down once in a while, but it's exciting. Our whole business is exciting."
"That goes back to 1932, although it was really implemented in '33 under Jesse Jones, and it invested in mostly banks initially and preferred stock and that sort of thing. So there are two things needed in the system, the one that's needed overwhelmingly is liquidity. I mean, when people are trying to [unintelligible], there has to be somebody there to buy."
"Every day that goes by, I mean, if you don't react to Pearl Harbor for a week or two weeks or three weeks, you're behind in the war that you otherwise would have fought."
"Motivation means we have an idea and we are going to carry through on that idea. We work hard at it, and we are disciplined."
"The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean."
"When was the last time you read a book? The truth now. And picture books don't count-I mean something with print in it."
