“Words never mean what we want them to mean.”
Source: Everything Is Illuminated (2002)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Jonathan Safran Foer 262
Novelist 1977Related quotes
“We want them to be Republican because of what we mean to do for the United States of America”
1920s, Nationalism and Americanism (1920)
Context: The misfortune is not alone that it rends the concord of nations. The greater pity is that it rends the concord of our citizenship at home. It's folly to think of blending Greek and Bulgar, Italian and Slovak, or making any of them rejoicingly American, when the land of adoption sits in judgement on the land from which he came. We need to be rescued from divisionary and fruitless pursuit of peace through super government. I do not want Americans of foreign birth making their party alignments on what we mean to do for some nation in the old world. We want them to be Republican because of what we mean to do for the United States of America. Our call is for unison, not rivaling sympathies. Our need is concord, not the antipathies of long inheritance.
“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”
Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 6
Magnus Bane and Ragnor Fell in 1791, p. 9.
The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013)
Variant: It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.
Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means.”
Source: Charles Dickens (1906), Ch 1 : "The Dickens Period"
Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964) http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1964-malcolm-x-s-speech-founding-rally-organization-afro-american-unity
Variant: We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.
As quoted in By Any Means Necessary (1970)
By any means necessary: speeches, interviews, and a letter (1970)
Context: We have formed an organization known as the Organization of Afro-American Unity which has the same aim and objective to fight whoever gets in our way, to bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere, and first here in the United States, and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary.
That's our motto. We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary.