Mean quotes

Mean

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

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Mean quotes (page 343 of 1399)

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Henry Louis Gates Scholar, Historian
Mean

"I think that is what we do by preserving and telling our stories. If you don't tell your stories, other people will tell their story about you. It's important that we nurture and protect these memories. Things change. Existence means change. So, the kind of precious memories about being black for my generation won't exist for my kids' and grandkids' generations unless we preserve them through fiction, through film, through comic books, and every other form of media we can possibly utilize to perpetuate the story of the great African-American people."

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Henry Miller Novelist, Essayist
Mean

"The life of a creator is not the only life nor perhaps the most interesting which a man leads. There is a time for play and a time for work, a time for creation and a time for lying fallow. And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean-when boredom seems the very stuff of life."

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Henry Miller Novelist, Essayist
Mean

"Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself."

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Freeman Dyson Theoretical Physicist
Mean

"The essential fact which emerges ... is that the three smallest and most active reservoirs ( of carbon in the global carbon cycle), the atmosphere, the plants and the soil, are all of roughly the same size. This means that large human disturbance of any one of these reservoirs will have large effects on all three. We cannot hope either to understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and manage the trees and the soil too."

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Freeman Dyson Theoretical Physicist
Mean

"In the long run, the only solution I see to the problem of diversity is the expansion of mankind into the universe by means of green technology... Green technology means we do not live in cans but adapt our plants and our animals and ourselves to live wild in the universe as we find it... When life invades a new habitat, she never moves with a single species. She comes with a variety of species, and as soon as she is established, her species spread and diversify further. Our spread through the galaxy will follow her ancient pattern."

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Freeman Dyson Theoretical Physicist
Mean

"I don't know, but I think it's quite possible that the more science you teach kids in school the more it turns them off, so I don't know. I mean you never can tell which way it will go."

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Freeman Dyson Theoretical Physicist
Mean

"I mean science was blamed for all the horrors of World War I, just as it's blamed today for nuclear weapons and quite rightly."

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Freeman Dyson Theoretical Physicist
Mean

"Science was blamed for all the horrors of World War I, just as it's blamed today for nuclear weapons and quite rightly. I mean World War I was a horrible war and it was mostly the fault of science, so that was in a way a very bad time for science, but on the other hand we were winning all these Nobel Prizes."

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Freeman Dyson Theoretical Physicist
Mean

"The point of fact is, just in simple ways, you can see how much better things have gotten. I mean, when I was a child, I lived in England, and England was just amazingly polluted. We didn't use that word. We just said it was it all covered with soot."

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Lester Bowie Musician, Trumpeter
Mean

"You would think that anyone on a major label would be doing something, but when you speak of major label that means something to maybe a big pop star that might be getting some sort of benefit from the major. But we still don't get anything."

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Lewis Carroll Author, Mathematician
Mean

"If I was not assured by the best authority on earth that the world is to be destroyed by fire, I should conclude that the day of destruction is at hand, but brought on by means of an agent very opposite to that of heat."

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Lewis Black Comedian, Actor, Author
Mean

"[The Weather Channel] is the most watched cable channel in America. I'll repeat that. It is the most watched cable channel in America. They were worried about the terrorists immobilizing us, and a portion of our countrymen watch weather. 'Kay, you don't get any more immobile than that... unless you're in a goddamn coma. That means you're saying, "I'd go to the window, but it's too far." If you want to know what the weather is you go to a window and stick your hand out and if you want to know what the temperature is you drive by a bank."

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Lewis Black Comedian, Actor, Author
Mean

"I don't buy the 'at 60 it's great to have kids' thing. I don't buy the line that has been thrown down - 'You can have a kid at any time.' That doesn't mean you should."

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Lewis Carroll Author, Mathematician
Mean

"Alice thought to herself, 'Then there's no use in speaking.' The voices didn't join in this time, as she hadn't spoken, but to her great surprise, they all thought in chorus (I hope you understand what thinking in chorus means--for I must confess that I don't), 'Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!"

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Lewis Carroll Author, Mathematician
Mean

"I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book."

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Lewis Gordon Philosopher
Mean

"I learned two basic lessons on Everest. First, just because something has worked in the past does not mean it will work today. Second, different challenges require different mindsets."

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Lewis Mumford Philosopher, Author
Mean

"Unfortunately, once an economy is geared to expansion, the means rapidly turn into an end and "the going becomes the goal.""

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