Mean quotes

Mean

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

28K quotes

Explore further

Browse quotes that often appear alongside mean — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

Quote collection

Mean quotes (page 363 of 1399)

Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.

Milan Kundera Writer
Mean

"But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless."

Read quote 3 likes
Milan Kundera Writer
Mean

"Revolution in Love’. Can you tell me what you mean by that? Do you want free love as against bourgeois marriage, or monogamy as against bourgeois promiscuity?"

Read quote 3 likes
Milan Kundera Writer
Mean

"What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating."

Read quote 3 likes
Milan Kundera Writer
Mean

"Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood."

Read quote 3 likes
Milan Kundera Writer
Mean

"The pressure to make public retractions of past statements - there's something medieval about it. What does it mean, anyway, to 'retract' what you've said? How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid? In modern times an idea can be refuted, yes, but not retracted."

Read quote 3 likes
Miles Davis Musician
Mean

"It's like swimmin' without warmin' up, yuo know what I mean? So [cackles] we use the drum machine, and we take it out."

Read quote 3 likes
Miles Davis Musician
Mean

"If you make a suggestion and [musicians] don't know what you mean, you have to be able to do it yourself. I often sit down on drums and show 'em just exactly what I want. And I do it and then say, "How do you do that?" It's because I know how it looks, I know what I want to hear, and I don't drop or rush any tempo. It ain't in my body, it ain't in my nephew's body."

Read quote 3 likes
Mean

"Before I was ten I became critical of the anthropomorphic God as interpreted in the churches. I did not warm to One thus revealed as the semblance of a bullying and mean old man who must have all his own way, be praised all the time and for attributes which were deplorable in us."

Read quote 3 likes
Mean

"Tourism is very important for Egypt as fewer tourists means fewer jobs! Of course there are positives and negatives from tourism... Tourism is a type of use, if not properly planned and managed it can destroy the very resources that brings the tourists. No reefs equals no diving, it's a simple equation. Tourism development has to be appropriate."

Read quote 3 likes
Morgan Freeman Actor, Narrator
Mean

"I am passionate about what is going on with the oceans, mainly because we are for some idiotic reason, really screwing it up. I mean, we're really killing the ocean. It's like putting out the sun. Without it, there is no us."

Read quote 3 likes
Morgan Freeman Actor, Narrator
Mean

"Rob [Reiner] is a teddy bear. He's hell delicious. He's a really good director. He's a great soul. In the movie business, I would call him a movie mom. The only person I hold in equal esteem is Clint Eastwood. Now I have worked with a lot of terrific directors, and I don't mean to be putting any of them below their own station, but these two, I relish working with them."

Read quote 3 likes
Morgan Freeman Actor, Narrator
Mean

"I never think about awards or anything like that when I do a job. I was first named a best actor when I was 12 years old and it doesn't really mean anything when you get down to it, because there is no best. I don't get all that involved. My chest puffs up as much as I can puff it up but I am not trying to be better than the person I am acting with. I am trying to be at least as good. That's how it works."

Read quote 3 likes
Morgan Freeman Actor, Narrator
Mean

"Hey, if I don't have a job, I don't know why I bother to get up. Any time the phone rings, I'm ready to go. What else am I going to do? See, I've never retired. I don't even know what it means."

Read quote 3 likes
Mean

"There was something about Beyoncé that felt like a vessel, I guess, that I could kind of impose all of these feelings and thoughts onto. I was drawn to a little bit of a dichotomy between the glamour and celebrity and the very deep and complex legacy of black women, and what that means in terms of performance."

Read quote 3 likes
Mean

"There's something about us using the word fascism and thinking about, "What is it? What does it mean, and what are the tenets of it?" I've been thinking a lot about folks denying what has happened in history, or just not acknowledging it. I think there's something that's fascist, and something that I think we could probably learn from, in terms of the energy in the world right now."

Read quote 3 likes
Mean

"There's something about us using the word fascism and thinking about, "What is it? What does it mean, and what are the tenets of it?"."

Read quote 3 likes
Mortimer Adler Philosopher, Educator
Mean

"Emancipation of human labor from economic servitude and exploitation, i.e., from organizations of production in which the conditions of work are determined by a master class who own the means of production, and in which the fruits of work are alienated from workers to the benefit of masters."

Read quote 3 likes