Mean quotes
28K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"It is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. You may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learned them both."
"I'm a sitting duck. No, seriously, I mean I wish I could say more, but I'm a sitting duck because I can't get ahead of them [cyber experts]. They're far ahead of me. That's what I learned: how vulnerable we are. It's a big, silent monster out there. That's what it feels like."
"If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us?"
"How far do our feelings take their colour from the dive underground? I mean, what is the reality of any feeling?"
"Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that'd happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time."
"If you really want to upset a witch, do her a favor which she has no means of repaying. The unfulfilled obligation will nag at her like a hangnail."
"In that film Love Story, there's a line, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Love means saying you're sorry every day for some little thing or other."
"Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know."
"Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The gift of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James."
"With big folks, either people think you look mean or it's more of a jolly Santa Claus, 'Oh, he's just a pudgy little teddy bear pillow.'"
"There is need of a sound body, and even more need of a sound mind. But above mind and above body stands character-the sum of those qualities which we mean when we speak of a man's force and courage, of his good faith and sense of honor."
"Plan the town, if you like; but in doing it do not forget that you have got to spread the people. Make wider roads, but do not narrow the tenements behind. Dignify the city by all means, but not at the expense of the health of the home and the family life and the comfort of the average workman and citizen."
"If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments [if] one suffices."
"Let's drop the whole 'atheist evangelism' thing and call out bullshit questions like 'what does atheism have to offer?' for just what they are: Bullshit. I mean, what does knowing that the Earth goes around the Sun have to offer? Who cares? It just is."
"The increase in straight-ticket party voting in recent years means that competitive congressional races can tip one way or the other depending on the showing of the candidates at the top of the ticket."
"We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way."
"I don't think [being monogamous] is a natural instinct for human beings, but it doesn't mean I don't believe in monogamy or true love. I believe in finding a soul mate. Monogamy can be hard work for some people. I don't think it applies to everybody, and I don't think a lot of people can do it."
"I take it that the good of mankind means the attainment, by every man, of all the happiness which he can enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow men"
"Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say that he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe."
"The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore."
