Top 100 Mean But Quotes
#1. But killing a man ought to mean something, even if you have to do it.
Joe R. Lansdale
#2. Cooperation isn't the absence of conflict but a means of managing conflict.
Deborah Tannen
#3. But we know that just because we want something does not mean that we will get what we want,
Madeleine L'Engle
#4. Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee ...
Howard Zinn
#5. Does 'submissive' mean 'baby' in your language, Master Mason? Because I'll have you know
...
No, but Dominant does mean lover, caretaker, disciplinarian, and whatever else the situation warrants.
Bianca Sommerland
#6. I didn't want to do my mathematics homework back home. Or mend the fence or mind the chickens. But I did it anyway. Just because a person doesn't want to do a thing doesn't mean they ought to shirk.
Catherynne M Valente
#7. The thing is, what I'm tryin' to say is -
they do get on a lot better without me, I can't help them any. They ain't mean. They buy me everything I want, but it's now - you've-got-it-go-play-with-it. You've got a roomful of things. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it.
Harper Lee
#8. I'm 52 years old, which means I'm of an age where my reading habits are more or less set. I read plenty of stuff on line but I rely on pretty traditional sources. I'm a newspaper reader, whether in hand or on my iPad.
Michael Wilbon
#9. They just expected it to you know ... Paul, Steve and I could have hired our own publicist, if we wanted to, but I kind of liked the way it was more of a cult thing and those that liked it, liked it, you know what I mean?
Amy Sedaris
#10. I sighed. "Now what do I do?" He leaned against my wall. "What do you want to do?" "Since when has that mattered?" "It's always mattered. It doesn't mean you'll get what you want, but what you want always matters. That's what defines you.
Richard Paul Evans
#11. The fact that I made a special movie with an old-fashioned style - even if it's a mix between with modern and old-fashioned things - must mean I feel both ways about change. In a way I'm resisting, but in a way adapting myself to the times.
Michel Hazanavicius
#12. I mean, there's a hell of a lot of grounds for protest, but you don't do it through music.
Chico Hamilton
#13. There's no direction I can go in. If I met someone else, what meaning would there be left? If the pain goes, does that mean I never loved her? How can I get over it? I can't, I mustn't. But what else am I going to do?
Marie Phillips
#14. Words are things, but things which mean. We cannot do away with meaning without doing away with signs, that is, with language itself. Moreover, we would have to do away with the universe. All the things man touches are impregnated with meaning.
Octavio Paz
#15. Because I'm dangerous. I don't mean to be but I am. I'm dangerous to be around, dangerous to everybody. I cause harm. I might even harm you. And I couldn't bear that.
Tim Bowler
#16. I don't mean to take the bow off the end of your rain, but you gotta be smart about your first boyfriend.
C. Kennedy
#17. And yet we couldn't leave
it was if the rocks were holding us there. I mean, they were only rocks. But for some reason, those rocks made lonely feel good.
Cynthia Kadohata
#18. When you walk into a room, you assess it instantaneously, habitually, before you're even aware of it. I mean, you make sure there's not a hole you're going to fall into, but mostly you're not even aware of what you're thinking.
Robert Irwin
#19. We may mean nothing to time, but to each other we are kings and queens, and the world is a wild benevolent garden filled with chance meetings and unexplained departures. Magda
Simon Van Booy
#20. I say I don't sleep with married men, but what I mean is that I don't sleep with happily married men.
Britt Ekland
#21. To say then, the majority are wicked, means no malice, no bad heart in the observer, but, simply that the majority are unripe, andhave not yet come to themselves, do not yet know their opinion.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#22. We have disagreements as to what race does and ought to mean, but we have a remarkable consensus on what it is, without any ability to define it technically.
Barbara Katz Rothman
#23. Why does everyone worship them? I mean, they're beautiful but ... " I shrugged. "Lots of people in this world are beautiful."
"They're popular because they're cheerleaders," he said.
I rolled my eyes. "What is it with this town and cheerleaders?
Sarra Cannon
#24. But it doesn't mean anything without someone beside him. It's not a game if he's the only one playing.
David Levithan
#25. Not for a million - years. I mean, I like the INXS boys, but I found the process very degrading, really. Reality television has eaten away at our standards of excellence. I don't like this whole culture, which has evolved, of TV being the king.
Brian May
#26. But you can't feel bad every second, I wanted to tell her. Laughing doesn't make bad things worse any more than crying makes them better. It doesn't mean you don't care, or that you've forgotten. It just means you're human.
Ransom Riggs
#27. I like the construction of sentences and the juxtaposition of words-not just how they sound or what they mean, but even what they look like.
Don DeLillo
#28. When people say, 'I don't see you enough,' well just because you don't see me don't mean I don't exist, or just 'cause you haven't heard me don't mean I haven't been making noise. But if I keep making noise, you'll pick up.
Mos Def
#29. Women don't have a say in my house. But, just between us, don't do what you did during supper last time in front of her again." "You mean when I threw my fork at that rat?" "No. I mean when you hit it, even in the dark.
Andrzej Sapkowski
#30. When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.
Robert Wilson Lynd
#31. What I look for in a voice is for it to be unique. I don't really care if a singer sings well. Really, it's about emotion, or being able to sing the lyrics and actually mean it. A lot of singers sing good notes but forget about what words they use.
Zedd
#32. Sigh. These were my people now that I was a writer, people who didn't understand anything. I mean, they understood perfectly the thing I cared most about - books - but basically were moron-level elsewhere.
Claire Dederer
#33. But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You must not give him beans.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#34. I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promiise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing ... But later, she will forget her promise. She will forget she had a grandmother.
Amy Tan
#35. I'm not sure what kind of love you mean, baby, but if you mean do I want you to be with me forever, that I can't bear the thought of being without you as my lover, my best friend, my whole world....one day my wife, and my baby mama, then yes, I Love you, Love you!
S.E. Hall
#36. Although I am fully convinced of the truth of Evolution, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists. But I look with confidence to the future naturalists, who will be able to view both sides with impartiality.
Charles Darwin
#37. I don't really have that much contact with Americans. I mean, I see the oddest things on the Internet, I suppose. And I've got a couple of American friends, but they are Anglophiles anyway because they've decided to come live here.
Robert Webb
#38. It's very meditative to watch Food Network shows. I mean, you might be taking notes, but you're probably not. It's meditative to watch someone cook, just like it is to watch your mother cook, or anyone cook.
Thu Tran
#39. In real life, I tend to yell at people a lot. Not because I'm bossy or mean, but because I'm frustrated.
Jen Lancaster
#40. You can have a striker who scores 50 goals in one season but if you win nothing it means nothing
Branislav Ivanovic
#41. I think it would be best if you came down from there before I explained that."
"I think I'll stay right where I am, thank you," I said. "And you, you stay where you are, or I'll ... I don't know what I'll do, but it will really hurt. You, I mean.
Molly Harper
#42. Doubt gets a bad rap. Doubting doesn't mean you've stopped believing, but that you've started thinking. Sheep doubt nothing. Chances are you'll get further in life by questioning things than by living like something that ends up as dinner and a sweater.
Amy Alkon
#43. Girls get Screwed. Not that kind of screwed, what I mean is, they're always on the short end of things. The way things work, how guys feel great, but make girls feel cheap for doing exactly what they beg for
Ellen Hopkins
#44. I think, honestly, that the word 'indie' is a false gimmick. 'Independent' used to mean a movie that was financed outside corporate Hollywood, but a lot of what gets called independent these days is totally produced within that system. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
#45. I like to think of my books and the movies of my books living in two separate universes. Each is very nice, but only one is correct - the book. But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the other versions, and I always do.
Meg Cabot
#46. Everyone can say 'I Love You' but not everyone really means it, so believe it when you feel it, not when you hear it.
Greyson Chance
#47. I have a 10 year old boy and a 6 year old boy and the stuff that they watch, it's always ... I mean, it could be because we're a funny family, but they love the humor and combining humor with space action, I mean, you know, there's a winner right there.
Rhys Darby
#48. I would describe myself as a guy that's very normal but has the tendency to rib people, but never in a mean-spirited way.
Don Rickles
#49. Jimmy Finn was not burned in the calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat, of a combination of delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion. When I say natural death, I mean it was a natural death for Jimmy Finn.
Mark Twain
#50. I mean, the type of art that I enjoy is art that - I enjoy a very broad spectrum, but I especially like art that leaves me a little confused and uncertain as to what just happened.
Reggie Watts
#51. I am indeed completely nuts, but that doesn't mean I don't care about how I look. Sometimes, I admit, I will privilege appearance over comfort.
Russell Smith
#52. I am a Communist, certainly, but that doesn't mean I have to make films about the wheat harvest.
Claude Chabrol
#53. What's underneath is everything. But that doesn't mean you can't enhance it. Beauty has its own kind of magic. And the appearance of something can have power too
Danielle Paige
#54. Make friends. Be a leader. Kiss butts if you have to, but if the other guys despise you-you know what I mean?
Orson Scott Card
#55. I mean, I really liked those guys and the experience of doing Raiders was really good for me, but I did not really want to be involved - I only did Jedi, as I really owed George a favor.
Lawrence Kasdan
#56. You simply never know about people,' thought Elizabeth. 'You think because they're timid they'll always be timid, or because they're mean they'll always be mean. But they can change awfully quickly if they are treated right.
Enid Blyton
#57. Sex is interesting, but it's not totally important. I mean it's not even as important (physically) as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement.
Charles Bukowski
#58. We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#59. The word "essay" means to try out, test, probe. In the essay style, successive clauses and sentences are not produced by an overarching logic, but by association; the impression that prose gives is that it can go anywhere in a manner wholly unpredictable.
Stanley Fish
#60. Very little of what America does is actually bad, and I don't think it ever does anything anywhere that is intentionally bad. I mean, sometimes we make mistakes and bad judgments and kind of back the wrong regimes and things, but by and large what America does is really good.
Bill Bryson
#61. I mean," Minnie continued, "I don't have a problem with anyone who has a disability and wants to find a cure. But I'm good." "Don't you get it?" Flexis argued, "I'm giving you the chance to be normal!" "Your definition of normal severely contradicts mine," Minnie quietly said. Victor's
Burgandi Rakoska
#62. I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#63. Speed is not neutral. Fast living used to mean a life of debauchery; now it just means fast, but the consequences are even more serious. Speeding through life endangers our relationships and our souls.
Mike Yaconelli
#64. When you do something moral and upright and wander off by yourself, well, everyone doesn't always follow you, do they, right? You pat yourself on your sanctimonious back but it doesn't mean the crowd rewards you for doing what you think is right.
Amity Shlaes
#65. I like the concept of the penny plan - not for the military because the military we have to build up. But we can save probably in many case more than a penny if you look at it. I mean, the penny plan is a pretty good plan, and it's a pretty simple plan.
Donald Trump
#66. There is no intrinsic tendency in gene pools for particular genes to increase or decrease in frequency. But when there is a systematic increase or decrease in the frequency with which we see a particular gene in a gene pool, that is precisely and exactly what we mean by evolution.
Richard Dawkins
#67. It's not hard to get a girl if I wanted one. But it doesn't mean you want it, and even if you did, you're certainly not going to rub it in anybody's face.
Jon Bon Jovi
#68. You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.
Madeleine L'Engle
#69. Successful people inspire me, and I don't mean just in their career but people who have amazing families, or who have made a difference, or followed their dreams.
Benjamin Stone
#70. I remember saying to myself, those things are very, very important to hear, but there must be another way to say them so that they will truly be heard. I mean, that's what art is. Art is about being provocative; art is also about beauty and if you leave the latter out, the former doesn't matter.
Nikky Finney
#71. Just because you're a gutless harlot doesn't mean I won't find your ... attributes attractive. I might be immortal, but I'm still a red-blooded male."
"Harlot? Who talks like that? Father Time, meet the Flinstones.
Kresley Cole
#72. It's not that he doesn't appreciate beauty, he just appreciates it in his own way. I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil he stares at it and writes a long poem about it, but Twoflower wanders off to find a book on botany.
Terry Pratchett
#73. We're in the business not so much of being contrarians deliberately, but rather we like to take perceived risk instead of actual risk. And what I mean by that is that you get paid for taking a risk that people think is risky, you particularly don't get paid for taking actual risk.
Wilbur Ross
#74. I know not what you believe of God, but I believe He gave yearnings and longings to be filled, and that He did not mean all our time should be devoted to feeding and clothing the body.
Lucy Stone
#75. Life took longer to reassemble than it did to blow apart, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be lovely, providing that one remembered to go for country walks, and to tune the wireless to music.
Chris Cleave
#76. I want to keep playing strong female roles. I don't mean superheroes, but women who are really alive.
Bel Powley
#77. I may not be loud but that doesn't mean I'm not strong within myself. My mum and dad instilled in me to stand up for what I believe in - and I do.
Leona Lewis
#78. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#79. He wants to say. That is to say, he means. As in the French, "vouloir dire," which means, literally, to want to say, but which means, in fact, to mean. He means to say what he wants. He wants to say what he means. He says what he wants to mean. He means what he says.
Paul Auster
#80. I can only speak for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally. For me literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is.
Barbara Christian
#81. But what does the word insist mean after a whole life of love and understanding? I have never asked anything for myself that I did not also wish for him.
Simone De Beauvoir
#82. Even when I'm stressed out I'm not mean to people. I'm not constantly rude to people. But sometimes people are so rude.
Charlyne Yi
#83. Oh! No, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?" "Why not?" "Because they are not clever enough for you - gentlemen read better books.
Jane Austen
#84. Diplomacy means the art of nearly deceiving all your friends, but not quite deceiving all your enemies.
Kofi Abrefa Busia
#85. Make your life your art. It doesn't have to be that you're an artist. I know I talk about art a lot, but I mean a very broad thing with that. You could be a veterinarian, that's your art. Find your art; find your thing you love.
Gerard Way
#87. Not in the swing of things but what I really mean is not in the swing of things yet
Lorde
#88. Men and women thought and did noble and mean things that would have been impossible to them before or after. A man cannot drink old Bourbon long and remain in his normal condition. We did not drink Bourbon, but blood.
Rebecca Harding Davis
#89. The people that lend you money basically give you an answer based on the risk that they are willing to take. But just because a bank is willing to take a particular risk doesn't mean that that is the right amount for me to spend.
Dan Ariely
#90. It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean, how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question.
J.D. Salinger
#91. Vorobyaninov, I've got a pressing artistic task for you,' he whispered. 'Go over to the exit from the first-class hallway and stand there. If somebody approaches, start singing, loudly.'
The old man was taken aback. 'But what should I sing?'
'Not "God Save the Tsar," that's for sure!
Ilya Ilf
#92. It doesn't really feel like it's got anything to do with me. I mean, I know I wrote it, and all that and invented the characters and made it up, but it's Mike's film, so doing the press and stuff, it feels a little bit inauthentic. I was just one component of it.
Patrick Marber
#93. The whole thing means such a great deal for me, and hopefully one day it will be there. But my friends and my family mean a little more. I would rather be helping them, even if it hurts that.
Michael Irvin
#94. I've had people come up to me with the strangest interpretations of what my lyrics might mean, and I'm like, "You go! I never thought of that, but that works,"...I think that true art is a universal reflection, and true artists are just messengers of that reflection or, at best, skilled presentors.
Serj Tankian
#95. Being educated means to prefer the best not only to the worst but to the second best.
William Lyon Phelps
#96. People stand in front of an officiant and say 'I do' but that shouldn't mean 'I'm done' when comes to putting time and effort to grow their relationship.
Beth Ehemann
#97. I just feel like growing up in Los Angeles, you learn, 'Well you're never gonna be the prettiest girl in the room, so just don't even try.' I mean, I care about being pretty, but it's not my most valued thing.
Zooey Deschanel
#98. By all means be experimental, but let the reader be part of the experiment
W.G. Sebald
#99. The action carries a sense of incompleteness and frustration, but not of guilt. Victorious living does not mean perfect living in the sense of living without flaw, but it does mean adequate living, and that can be consistent with many mistakes.
E. Stanley Jones
#100. My father did not bother that I play not a classical music. He always congratulated me for my development in music, I mean in any music but, he hang on to continue training at the Academy of Music ... however, I never mentioned to my teachers that I trained myself at weekends in clubs.
Richard Clayderman
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