Quotes about mean
page 23

Howard Zinn photo
James Patterson photo
Joanne Harris photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
David Heinemeier Hansson photo
Clarence Darrow photo

“I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Scopes Trial, Dayton, Tennessee (13 July 1925)

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Nicholas Sparks photo

“Women are more attuned to feelings than men are, and if they’re not being truthful, more often than not it’s because they think truth might hurt your feelings. But it doesn’t mean they don’t love you.”

Mayor Gherkin, Chapter 8, p. 120
Source: 2000s, At First Sight (2005)
Context: ... but what I eventually came to understand was that if a woman truly loves you, you can't always expect her to tell the truth. You see, women are more attuned to feelings than men are, and if they're not being truthful, more often than not it's because they think the truth might hurt your feelings. But it doesn't mean they don't love you.

Cassandra Clare photo
Garth Nix photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Charlie Chaplin photo
James Patterson photo

“Homework is a term that means grown up imposed yet self-afflicting torture.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Garth Nix photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Nicole Krauss photo
Bret Easton Ellis photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Lois Lowry photo
Kay Redfield Jamison photo
Rick Riordan photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Richelle Mead photo
John Flanagan photo

“If you're a ghost," he said, "we mean you no disrespect. And if you're not a ghost, tell me who you are-or you soon will be one”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Siege of Macindaw

Candace Bushnell photo
Jim Butcher photo
George Carlin photo
Oswald Chambers photo
Anaïs Nin photo
Kelley Armstrong photo
Ann Brashares photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Rick Riordan photo
Louie Giglio photo
Tom Stoppard photo

“I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.”

Henry, Act II, scene V
Source: The Real Thing (1982)
Context: Buddy Holly was twenty-two. Think of what he might have gone on to achieve. I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.

“Transition is always a relief. Destination means death to me. If I could figure out a way to remain forever in transition, in the disconnected and unfamiliar, I could remain in a state of perpetual freedom.”

David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992) American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, and AIDS activist

Source: Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration

Charlie Chaplin photo

“What do you want meaning for? Life is desire, not meaning.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Source: My Life In Pictures

Paulo Coelho photo
Philip Pullman photo
Laurie Halse Anderson photo

“Apologies mean nothing if you don't mean it.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

Frederick Buechner photo
Edgar Degas photo

“A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

quote from Georges Jeanniot, in Souvenirs sur Degas (Memories of Degas, 1933)
quotes, undated

William Goldman photo

“Change isn't easy. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think, means changing what you believe about life. That's hard.”

Geneva Davis; chapter 1, p. 8
Source: One Door Away from Heaven (2001)
Context: Change isn't easy, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think. Changing the way you think means changing what you believe about life. That's hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.

Robert McKee photo

“Dialogue concentrates meaning; conversation dilutes it.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

Alan Moore photo

“It's cold and it's mean spirited and I don't like it here anymore.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books
Paulo Coelho photo
Anne Rice photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Rick Warren photo
Jim Butcher photo
Diana Gabaldon photo
Joss Whedon photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Philip Pullman photo

“Everything means something.”

Source: Lyra's Oxford

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Rick Riordan photo
Walter Lippmann photo

“There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.”

Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American journalist

Source: Liberty and the news

Cassandra Clare photo
Nick Hornby photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“Silence is argument carried out by other means.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in Secrets to a Richer Life: Illuminating Wisdom from the Human Family on the 12 Ultimate Questions (2005) by Earl Ernest Guile
Variant: Silence is argument carried out by other means.

David Levithan photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Sarah Dessen photo

“It's hard to be nice when the rest of the world is so mean.”

Variant: Being nice wasn't as easy as it seemed especially when the rest of the world could be so mean
Source: Just Listen

Malcolm Gladwell photo

“We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Nicholas Sparks photo

“And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming wild things.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Acceptance speech upon being awarded the Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are (1964), published in Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books, 1956-65, edited by Lee Kingman (1965)
Context: Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences. That is obvious. But what is just as obvious — and what is too often overlooked — is the fact that from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Sarah Dessen photo

“A first kiss after five months means more than a first kiss after five minutes.”

Steve Kluger (1952) American writer

Source: My Most Excellent Year

Jodi Picoult photo
Miranda July photo
Eoin Colfer photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"A Cult of Ignorance", Newsweek (21 January 1980) http://media.aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf
General sources
Context: There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Sue Monk Kidd photo
Joseph Conrad photo

“Just because you’re grown up and then some doesn’t mean settling into the doldrums of predictability. Surprise people. Surprise yourself. (281)”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Source: Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit

Rick Riordan photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Jim Butcher photo