Mean quotes

Mean

28K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

28K quotes

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Mean quotes (page 339 of 1399)

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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"Prophet just means intellectual. They were people giving geopolitical analysis, moral lessons, that sort of thing. We call them intellectuals today. There were the people we honor as prophets, there were the people we condemn as false prophets. But if you look at the biblical record, at the time, it was the other way around. The flatterers of the Court of King Ahab were the ones who were honored. The ones we call prophets were driven into the desert and imprisoned."

Mean Kings Biblical
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"I am not too happy with terms like “the left”, to be honest. And I don’t use it much….if by “the left” you mean people who are committed to peace and justice and freedom and so on, there can’t be elements of the left opposed to workers’ movement, at least under that definition."

People Mean Justice
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"If you're in favour of any policy - reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever - if you're at least minimally moral, it's because you think it's somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature."

People Thinking Mean
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"Democracy doesn't mean much if people have to confront concentrated systems of economic power as isolated individuals. Democracy means something if people can organize to gain information, to have thoughts for that matter, to make plans, to enter into the political system in some active way, to put forth programs and so on. If organizations of that kind exist, then democracy can exist too. Otherwise it's a matter of pushing a lever every couple of years; it's like having the choice between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola."

Mean Couple Hero
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"What the public wants is called 'politically unrealistic.' Translated into English, that means power and privilege are opposed to it."

Mean Justice Diversity
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"Unaccountable private power concentrations that dominate economic and social life have the means to seek to "regiment the public mind," and become "tools and tyrants" of government, in James Madison's memorable phrase, as he warned of the threats he discerned to the democratic experiment if private powers were granted free rein."

Mean Government Memorable
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"Allowing an independent and sovereign Iraq could be a nightmare for the United States. It would mean that it would be Shi'ite-dominated, at least if it's minimally democratic. It would continue to improve relations with Iran, just what the United States doesn't want to see. And beyond that, right across the border in Saudi Arabia where most of Saudi oil is, there happens to be a large Shi'ite population, probably a majority."

Mean Independent Iran
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"A colonial war is a very dirty kind of war. You're not fighting armed forces. You're fighting mostly unarmed people. And to fight that kind of war requires professional killers, which means mercenaries."

Mean War Dirty
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"In a moment of crisis, of which there are all too many, Russian military planners may conclude that lacking a deterrent, the only hope of survival is a first strike - which means the end for all of us."

Mean Military Survival
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"The UN can go as far as the U.S. will allow, and no further. And it's bound by conditions that the powerful states, which means mostly the U.S., impose."

Mean Powerful States
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"Suppose I try to say the US carries out terror, in fact it's one of the leading terrorist states in the world. You can't say that between commercials. People rightly want to know what do you mean. They've never heard that before. Then you have to explain. You have to give background. That's exactly what's cut out."

People Mean Cutting
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"In fact, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 bans militarization. Potential adversaries of the US, and even its allies, are so far behind that these countries are very interested in maintaining the treaty. Europe and the rest of the world want a strong reaffirmation of the Treaty and the US is unilaterally trying to derail it. Termination of the treaty would mean that the US could develop satellite weapons, put offensive weapons in space. It would probably mean using nuclear power in space. All of this leads to some very dangerous scenarios, including destruction of the species."

Mean Country Strong
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"Stability means you do what we say, and what we say is that Colombia and the resources of the Andean region shall be freely available to the rich and powerful of the world, particularly US-based multinational corporations."

Mean World Powerful
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"It's true that many say that [they] object to the idea of "human nature," but it's not clear what that is supposed to mean. Are we different from ants?"

Mean Ideas Different
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"The reaction we should be having to [rich liberals] is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren't we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh. There are historical analogs, which are not exact, of course, but are close enough to be worrisome. This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany."

Mean Self Historical
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"No one seriously doubts that if Piraha children are brought up in Boston they'll be speaking Boston English, that is, that the capacities are present, unlike other animals, as far as is known. There's no challenge to the theory - not mine, but everyone's - that the human language faculty provides the means for generation of an infinite array of structured expressions."

Mean Children Animal
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"Take something you really don't think about: Plastics in the ocean. I mean plastics in the ocean have an enormous ecological effect."

Thinking Mean Ocean
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"Okay, NATO expanded to East Berlin and East Germany. Under [Bill] Clinton NATO expanded further, to the former Russian satellites. In 2008 NATO formally made an offer to Ukraine to join NATO. That's unbelievable. I mean, Ukraine is the geopolitical heartland of Russian concern, quite aside from historical connections, population and so on."

Mean East Germany East Berlin
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Mean

"There is a narrow class of uses of language where you intend to communicate. Communication refers to an effort to get people to understand what one means. And that, certainly, is one use of language and a social use of it. But I don't think it is the only social use of language. Nor are social uses the only uses of language."

Thinking Mean Communication
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