"Waste begets self-will; thrift begets meanness: but better be mean than self-willed."
Mean quotes
Mean
28K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Mean
Browse quotes that often appear alongside mean — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Mean quotes (page 129 of 1399)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"liberty, which means resisting all forms of cultural authoritarianism, be it from the right wing church, black ideologues, black nationalists, or mainstream white media. We have to accent liberty and freedom of expression and thought in all their forms."
"The French have no such expression as 'killing time.' In their more philosophical vocabulary the term is 'passing time,' which means savoring all moments of it each to his individual enjoyment. While we battle with time, they relax with tempo."
"When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up."
"Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end."
"A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries. A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable."
"I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day."
"To be content means that you realize you contain what you seek."
"Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they're not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them."
"What's amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It's so far away in time that they can't appreciate what it means for their whole life."
"I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out."
"Freedom of speech means nothing to a people who are too weak in their convictions to speak out against the evil that is eating at the heart of the nation like a cancer."
"Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future? But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion."
"Despite everybody who has been born and has died, the world has just gone on. I mean, look at Napoleon -but we went right on. Look at Harpo Marx -the world went around, it didn't stop for a second. It's sad but true. John Kennedy, right?"
"We are now going to the Lamanites, to whom we intend to be messengers of instruction... We will show them that in consequence of their transgressions a curse has been inflicted upon them - in the darkness of their skins. We will have intermarriages with them, they marrying our young women, and we taking their young squaws to wife. By these means it is the will of the Lord that the curse of their color shall be removed and they restored to their pristine beauty."
"I'm big and a lot of the stars are smaller so if you're big and mean looking, you play bad guys. After Blade Runner, I was the meanest guy in Hollywood."
"I have quitted all forms of devotion and set prayers but those to which my state obliges me. And I make it my business only to persevere in His holy presence, wherein I keep myself by a simple attention, and a general fond regard to GOD, which I may call an actual presence of GOD, or, to speak better, an habitual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with GOD, which often causes me joys and raptures inwardly, and sometimes also outwardly, so great that I am forced to use means to moderate them, and prevent their appearance to others."
"After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge."
"Your flag flyin' over the courthouse Means certain things are set in stone. Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't"
"Thought is a means of concealing Truth."