Mean quotes
28K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"For it was not so much that by means of words I came to a complete understanding of things, as that from things I somehow had an experience which enabled me to follow the meaning of words."
"I learned very early in my career that when I don't arrive on set, production will shut down, which means people won't get paid; there's that much responsibility."
"If you ask three people what it means to be Christian, you will get three different answers. Some feel being baptized is sufficient. Others feel you must accept the Bible as immutable historical fact. Still others require a belief that all those who do not accept Christ as their personal savior are doomed to hell."
"The duties which a police officer owes to the state are of a most exacting nature. No one is compelled to choose the profession ofa police officer, but having chosen it, everyone is obliged to live up to the standard of its requirements. To join in that high enterprise means the surrender of much individual freedom."
"Self-government means self support."
"To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature."
"Success means participating fully in the conscious evolution of humanity, contributing to the shift in time to avoid the chaos and disasters foreseen."
"A writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means."
"The available supply of gold and silver being wholly inadequate to permit the issuance of coins of intrinsic value or paper currency convertible into coin of intrinsic value or paper currency convertible into coin in the volume required to serve the needs of the People, some other basis for the issue of currency must be developed, and some means other than that of convertibility into coin must be developed to prevent undue fluctuation in the value of paper currency or any other substitute for money intrinsic value that may come into use."
"O, Times! O, Manners! It is my opinion That you are changing sadly your dominion I mean the reign of manners hath long ceased, For men have none at all, or bad at least; And as for times, altho' 'tis said by many The "good old times" were far the worst of any, Of which sound Doctrine I believe each tittle Yet still I think these worst a little. I've been a thinking -isn't that the phrase?- I like your Yankee words and Yankee ways - I've been a thinking, whether it were best To Take things seriously, Or all in jest"
"The finest flowers are those transplanted, for transplanting means difficulty, a readjusting to new conditions, and through the effort put forth to find adjustment does the plant progress."
"What is Scripture? The Hebrew word is torah. Torah means teaching, learning."
"Every woman deserves a man that can make her heart forget that it was ever broken. Even if these have been broken to pieces to me,this represents a person who gave me a complete,flawless heart. I don't need someone who makes my heart whole. Instead, I need someone who will never let me feel broken. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something."
"love is...you get confused and you do stuff you don't mean to do-and you just-you hate yourself and sometimes you don't even want to love the person you do because it would be so much easier if you didn't.But you just-you just do."
"No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved. Revolution is the negation of the existing, a violent protest against man's inhumanity to man with all the thousand and one slaveries it involves. It is the destroyer of dominant values upon which a complex system of injustice, oppression, and wrong has been built up by ignorance and brutality. It is the herald of NEW VALUES, ushering in a transformation of the basic relations of man to man, and of man to society."
"There are, however, some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry — the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth."
"You will do the greatest service to the state if you shall raise, not the roofs of the houses, but the souls of the citizens: for it is better that great souls should dwell in small houses rather than for mean slaves to lurk in great houses."
"There is no word in our language which has been so much misused and prostituted as the word love. It has been preached by those who were ready to condone every cruelty if it served their purpose; it has been used as a disguise under which to force people into sacrificing their own happiness, into submitting their whole self to those who profited from this surrender. [...] It has been made so empty that for many people love may mean no more than that two people have lived together for twenty years just without fighting more often than once a week."
"To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual, in so far as it is divorced from love for man, can refer only to the superficial and to the accidental; of necessity it remains shallow."
"We've wanted to produce more in the 19th century and the 20th century in order to give man the possibility for more dignified human life; but actually what has happened is that production and consumption have become means - have ceased to be means and have become ends, and we are production crazy and consumption crazy."
