Mean quotes
28K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
"The same past data can confirm a theory and its exact opposite! If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either a) you are more likely to be immortal or b) that you are closer to death."
"Anytime you live in a society supposedly based upon law and it doesn't enforce its own laws because the color of a man's skin happens to be wrong, then I say those people are justified to resort to any means necessary to bring about justice when the government can't give them justice."
"Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end."
"Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends."
"Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal."
"The sterilization of men is one method of birth control. The surest, most radical method. To you it seems dreadful. To me it seems that, properly applied, it's by no means dreadful."
"Civilization is not by means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt."
"We want a society in which we are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. That is what we mean by a moral society - not a society in which the State is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the State."
"Old Molly Means was a hag and a witch; Chile of the devil, the dark, and sitch."
"We have to evolve means for obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever. I now feel sure that the realization of that idea is not far off. ...the possibilities of the development I refer to, namely, that of the operation of engines on any point of the earth by the energy of the medium."
"The time is fast approaching when to call a man a patriot will be the deepest insult you can offer him. Patriotism now means advocating plunder in the interest of the privileged classes of the particular State system into which we have happened to be born."
"Lack of money means discomfort, means squalid worries, means shortage of tobacco, means ever-present consciousness of failure-above all, it means loneliness."
"A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished."
"Writing means revealing oneself to excess."
"Karl Marx said, “The task is not just to understand the world but to change it.” A variant to keep in mind is that if you want to change the world you’d better try to understand it. That doesn’t mean listening to a talk or reading a book, though that’s helpful sometimes. You learn from participating. You learn from others. You learn from the people you’re trying to organize. We all have to gain the understanding and the experience to formulate and implement ideas."
"However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are."
"Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George the Fourth and continue the slaves of prejudice? What is it to be born free and equal, and not to live? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?"
"History doesn't mean dates and wars and textbooks to me; it means the unconquerable pioneer spirit of man."
"Live life like you mean it! Stop procrastinating! Do all that you can...with all that you have...in the place that you are...right now! Life is too unpredictable to put things off and not take it seriously."
