Quotes about mean
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Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Sadhguru photo
Terry Pratchett photo

“Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.”

Small Gods
Variant: Just because you're an angel doesn't mean you have to be a fool.

Virginia Woolf photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Haruki Murakami photo

“History cannot be erased or altered. Because that would mean killing yourself.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: 色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年

Terry Pratchett photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Frantz Fanon photo
Peter Brook photo

“Reality' is a word with many meanings.”

Peter Brook (1925) English theatre and film director and innovator

Source: The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate

Terry Pratchett photo
Simone Weil photo
Lisa See photo
Ben Carson photo
Lewis Carroll photo

“I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Terry Pratchett photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Barry Lyga photo

“Pain means you're alive. Pain is good. Pain is life.”

Barry Lyga (1971) American writer

Source: Blood of My Blood

Muhammad Ali photo

“I’ve wrestled with alligators,
I’ve tussled with a whale.
I done handcuffed lightning
And throw thunder in jail.
You know I’m bad.
just last week, I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

A poem about his match with George Foreman, known as the Rumble in the Jungle (1974)
Context: Last night I had a dream, When I got to Africa,
I had one hell of a rumble.
I had to beat Tarzan’s behind first,
For claiming to be King of the Jungle.
For this fight, I’ve wrestled with alligators,
I’ve tussled with a whale.
I done handcuffed lightning
And throw thunder in jail.
You know I’m bad.
just last week, I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.
I’m so fast, man,
I can run through a hurricane and don't get wet.
When George Foreman meets me,
He’ll pay his debt.
I can drown the drink of water, and kill a dead tree.
Wait till you see Muhammad Ali.

Douglas Adams photo
Andrei Tarkovsky photo
Terry Pratchett photo

“Progress just means bad things happen faster.”

Source: Witches Abroad

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Paulo Coelho photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Immanuel Kant photo

“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Source: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals/On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns

Viktor E. Frankl photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Sophie Kinsella photo
Maurice Merleau-Ponty photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Simone Weil photo
Jenny Han photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Marc Chagall photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Lewis Carroll photo
John Lennon photo
Henry Miller photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.”

Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache.
§ 109
Source: Philosophical Investigations (1953)

Terry Pratchett photo
Pablo Neruda photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“We must keep moving. If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

"Keep Moving from this Mountain" http://www5.spelman.edu/about_us/news/pdf/70622_messenger.pdf – Founders Day Address at the Sisters Chapel, Spelman College (11 April 1960)
1960s

Fernando Pessoa photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
James Frey photo
Lin Yutang photo

“When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

As quoted in Hard-to-Solve Cryptograms (2001) by Derrick Niederman, p. 96

Mark Twain photo
Leon Trotsky photo

“A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Source: Their Morals and Ours (1938)
Context: A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified, From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the abolition of the power of man over man.

Terence McKenna photo

“If you believe something, you're automatically precluded from believing in the opposite, which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of this belief.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Psychedelic Society (1984)
Context: What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance. And [I think] that beliefs should be put aside, and that a psychedelic society would abandon belief systems [in favor of] direct experience and this is, I think much, of the problem of the modern dilemma, is that direct experience has been discounted and in its place all kind of belief systems have been erected... If you believe something, you're automatically precluded from believing in the opposite, which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of this belief.

Terry Pratchett photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Belief means not wanting to know what is true.”

Sec. 52
The Antichrist (1888)
Variant: Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is.

Klaus Kinski photo

“I've solved the mystery: You have to submit silently. Open up, let go. Let anything penetrate you, even the most painful things. Endure. Bear up. That's the magic key! The text comes by itself, and its meaning shakes the soul… You mustn't let scar tissue form on your wounds; you have to keep ripping them open in order to turn your insides into a marvelous instrument that is capable of anything. All this has its price.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Source: Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 72-73
Context: At a performance everything works out on its own. I've solved the mystery: You have to submit silently. Open up, let go. Let anything penetrate you, even the most painful things. Endure. Bear up. That's the magic key! The text comes by itself, and its meaning shakes the soul. Everything else is taken care of by the life one has to live without sparing oneself. You mustn't let scar tissue form on your wounds; you have to keep ripping them open in order to turn your insides into a marvelous instrument that is capable of anything. All this has its price. I become so sensitive that I can't live under normal conditions. That's why the hours between performances are worst.

Christopher Paolini photo
A.A. Milne photo
Tennessee Williams photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Jane Austen photo
Tom Stoppard photo

“Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?”

Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Rick Riordan photo
George Carlin photo

“Meow means "woof" in cat.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, Brain Droppings (1997)

Diablo Cody photo

“Juno MacGuff: Nah… I mean, I'm already pregnant, so what other kind of shenanigans could I get into?”

Diablo Cody (1978) Screenwriter and author

Source: Juno: The Shooting Script

André Breton photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Variant: Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Zig Ziglar photo

“Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting — in the trying, not the triumph.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

As quoted in The Subconscious Diet : It's Not What You Put in Your Mouth; It Is What You Put in Your Mind (2005) by Hugh B. Sanders, p. 104 <!-- also quoted in The First Step : A Peek at the Real World (2006) by Gudmundur O. Sigurdarson, p. 41 -->
Context: Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting — in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard — reaching for the highest that is in us — becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.

Alicia Keys photo
Oswald Chambers photo
Nelson Algren photo
C.G. Jung photo

“Neurosis is the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
Oscar Wilde photo

“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”

Miss Prism, Act II
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Pablo Neruda photo
Franz Kafka photo
Saul Bellow photo