Mean But Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. Remember to say what you mean, but don't say it meanly.

Elizabeth George

#6. I've always thought that there is a great female James Bond movie to be done. I'm not literally calling her Jane Bond, I mean, but a female secret agent.

Aaron Sorkin

#7. he had made a mirror with the power of causing all that was good and beautiful when it was reflected therein, to look poor and mean; but that which was good-for-nothing and looked ugly was shown magnified and increased in ugliness. In

Hans Christian Andersen

#8. I am not cruel," he said. "Not in the sense you mean. But cruelty is a useful tool if one can only recognise the precise moment when it must be used.

Alastair Reynolds

#9. Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.

Gail Godwin

#10. There are no pimps, no whores, no transvestites - gone. Now that's more the culture I'm comfortable in ... I don't like it in the house, you know what I mean, but I like it somewhere around.

Iggy Pop

#11. Maybe it is-too soon, I mean-but who gives a shit, right?

Jay McLean

#12. When I hit a period of not being able to write music, I get up and walk away. It's pretty mean but it's true.

Lily Allen

#13. Words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.

Jodi Picoult

#14. I wondered for a second why I cared so much, but I knew I did. I wanted to be more like the Upper-Cs. Not snobby or mean, but just a bit more. It was hard to explain, I just liked the thought of being dolled up and having a few nice things.

Y.A. Marks

#15. I always thought George Bush was more oblivious than mean, but oblivious can quickly go to mean.

Adam McKay

#16. All politicians operate within an Orwellian nimbus where words don't mean what they normally mean, but Rovism posits that there is no objective, verifiable reality at all. Reality is what you say it is, ...

Karl Rove

#17. The first time someone called me a role model, I remember thinking, 'What does that mean?' But I feel aware of it when I'm reading scripts.

Miranda Cosgrove

#18. Once all the Germans were warlike and mean But that couldn't happen again We taught them a lesson in nineteen eighteen And they've hardly bothered us since then

Tom Lehrer

#19. When a private talk over a bottle of wine is broadcast on the radio, what can it mean but that the world is turning into a concentration camp?

Milan Kundera

#20. So many people are. Afraid of firemen, I mean. But you're just a man, after all ...

Ray Bradbury

#21. When a man says "I know what I mean, but I can't express it," he generally does not know what he means - for there can be no knowledge without words; there can only be feelings.

Sydney J. Harris

#22. Making children cry for a photographer can be considered mean. But I would say that making children laugh and show off their jeans for an apparel ad is just as exploitative and less natural. Toddlers' natural state, like, 30 percent of the time, is crying, and it doesn't indicate pain or suffering.

Jill Greenberg

#23. Say what you mean, but don't say it mean.

Lilly Singh

#24. Lex was about to ask what in the dickens that was supposed to mean, but then Uncle Mort nodded at Wicket in a secretive manner, which roughly translated as 'Screw you and your curiosities, Lex. We're telling you NOTHING.

Gina Damico

#25. I don't know what I mean, but I know I believe it.

Jane Urquhart

#26. People may or may not say what they mean ... but they always say something designed to get what they want.

David Mamet

#27. In real life, I'm so goofy and super weird. I'm never mean, but people don't see the weird side of me. Like, I'll be dancing around. My best friends will always say that they wish others saw that side of me, when I'm doing a weird dance or weird faces or voices.

Gigi Hadid

#28. I never say what I mean, but I always manage to say something similar.

Eugene Ormandy

#29. I don't really hashtag things. Unless I'm talking to somebody and I'm being funny and I say something mean but then I'm like, Hashtag ... something that's funny. I like to only hashtag funny things, not real stuff.

Bella Thorne

#30. If you don't like me, life goes on, you know what I mean? But I hope you do like me. Because I think that in addition to being pushy, I'm nice.

Christine Quinn

#31. People don't mind being mean; but they never want to be ridiculous.

Moliere

#32. Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. Love is mean, but it's good. It keeps us alive.

Tarryn Fisher

#33. You could wonder for hours what flowers mean, but for me, they're life itself, in all its happy brilliance. We couldn't do with out flowers. Flowers help you forget life's tragedies.

Marc Chagall

#34. For modelling, you have to be such a strong person in a way - or seen to be a strong person, do you know what I mean? But in acting you have to get in touch with all the vulnerability that you carry.

Agyness Deyn

#35. My mom died when I was 16. I had a rough childhood, you know what I mean, but it made me strong.

Travis Barker

#36. Your strengths might make you hard to approach, and might make your words sound uglier than what you actually mean, but they also make people look up to you.

Marie Lu

#37. There is no action so slight or so mean but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled thereby.

John Ruskin

#38. There's that stigma about New Yorkers, how they're so mean, but in my experience it was quite the opposite. People were very genuine and very nice, even on the subway.

Taylor Kitsch

#39. God is not mean, but he is dangerous.

Dallas Willard

#40. He is a missionary and believes in God, intensely I mean, but it takes all kinds to make a world.

Alan Paton

#41. Not that folks disliked me or that I ever went around being mean, but folks never did get close to me and it was most likely my fault. There was always something standoffish about me. I liked folks, but I liked the wild animals, the lonely trails, and the mountains better.

Louis L'Amour

#42. I've never met anyone like you, Bianca. Anyone born to be a vampire, I mean. But as I understand it, you can't put it off forever. Sooner or later, you'll have to kill.

Claudia Gray

#43. I don't know what you mean, but I know that you mean it.
(attrib: 'Edward', Appendix 2)

Robert Robert

#44. I'm not a big fan of comedy roasts because most of the time I find them to be really mean, but once in a while, you'll hear something perfectly worded and well-crafted.

Greg Behrendt

#45. Everybody tells me what a timesaver the Internet is, and how they can't believe they ever got along without it. And I know what they mean, but every time I use it I wind up wondering what people did with their spare time before computers came along to suck it all up.

Lawrence Block

#46. I see what you mean, but I do not think what you think.

Mason Cooley

#47. No one can control his emotion of love for a woman ... the sentiment he feels, I mean, but the strong man controls the demonstration.

Elinor Glyn

#48. Say and do what you mean, but never say and do it meanly.

Harvey MacKay

#49. A lot of people have said that I'm super-snarky and mean. But honesty is the only way to get people to change. It's very important to be constructively critical - give people alternatives and you're giving them a new way to see themselves.

Stacy London

#50. They really liked each other, too. Not like boyfriend and girlfriend, I don't mean. But they both had naturally curly hair, and they both thought professional wrestling was real
which are two pretty strong bonds, when you think about it.

Barbara Park

#51. He feared what getting involved with her might mean, but he wanted this deal involving chocolate and would risk lying with something not entirely female to get it.

M. Pax

#52. Architecture would lead us to all the arts, as it did with earlier mean: but if we despise it and take no note of how we are housed, the other arts will have a hard time of it indeed.

William Morris

#53. I could tell her, I have feelings for you I haven't had before. I've been struggling with them since the first second I saw you, weeks ago. I don't know what these feelings mean, but I want to find out.

Christina Lauren

#54. I mean, but obviously, in people's eyes, it still - it can still link Islam to terrorism. I mean, why does it make a difference that they're white?

Aasif Mandvi

#55. I know there isn't no beast - not with claws and all that, I mean - but I know there isn't no fear, either."
Piggy paused.
"Unless - "
Ralph moved restlessly.
"Unless what?"
"Unless we get frightened of people.

William Golding

#56. I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

Henry Adams

#57. We may appear to be mean but we're really only frightened.

Byron Katie

#58. Governments have a favorite phrase: "lean and mean." But they've been made very, very fat for corporate interests.

Vandana Shiva

#59. Writing to me is like being addicted to heroin ... it's hard and its mean, but you just can't stop.

F.D. Crandall

#60. She looked mean, but I think that was her natural resting face.

Dinah Katt

#61. There are, then, three states of mind ... two vices
that of excess, and that of defect; and one virtue
the mean; and all these are in a certain sense opposed to one another; for the extremes are not only opposed to the mean, but also to one another; and the mean is opposed to the extremes.

Aristotle.

#62. Sometimes people say things that they don't mean, but sometimes they don't mean it but it's true ...

C.M.

#63. And as Dad said to me, 'You can't always stop people from being mean. But you can stop them from making you mean.

Mike Mason

#64. People make mistakes - they say things they shouldn't have or didn't necessarily mean. But I strongly believe in consequences. If there are none, someone might feel like they've gotten away with something, or that what they said couldn't have been that bad.

Katherine Heigl

#65. I don't want to offend people and I don't want to be mean, but social commentary and comedy for me are part and parcel. I think the greatest social activists are comedians.

Alanis Morissette

#66. The world may be mean, but people don't have to be, not if they refuse.

Colson Whitehead

#67. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s warming blip (as I'm sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say 0.15 deg C, then this would be significant for the global mean-but we'd still have to explain the land blip ...

Tom Wigley

#68. I always tried not to be too mean, but my problem is that the people I tend to find hilarious don't usually have senses of humor. So interacting with them is a little bit of an awkward engagement, because I can't really make them laugh, on top of which I've been doing an impression of them.

Ana Gasteyer

#69. The Bring the Noise buzz was so strong, so we put it out on a release called 'Attack of the Killer B's' which was a record made up of B-sides and things like that - so it wasn't out on our new album, you know what I mean? But we always felt strongly about it.

Charlie Benante

#70. Hello, Sally? Let me talk to Chuck, will you?"
"I think he's lost in the woods."
"I know what you mean, but let me talk to him, will you?

Charles M. Schulz

#71. I mean we cant even rock them shoes if it dont got a comma on the price tag ya know. I mean.. I mean but then again who looks at the price tag ya know?

Nicki Minaj

#72. We are full of words whose true meaning we haven't been taught, and one of those words is suffering. Another is the word death. We don't know what they mean, but we use them, and this is a mystery.

Alessandro Baricco

#73. You tell yourself it would be best for her to die. You tell yourself that if now, at this hour of the night, she died, it would be easier. For you, you probably mean, but you don't finish the sentence.

Marguerite Duras

#74. Maybe it was mean, but I really don't think so. You asked for the truth and I told you.

Sinead O'Connor

#75. At first glance, you read something on the page and it can seem one way, and you can have your decisions before you wind up on set about what that set is supposed to mean, but until you're actually there doing them, there's really no way to understand it.

Leonardo DiCaprio

#76. I think it's unnecessary to be mean for the sake of being mean, but I do believe you have to be truthful, but with love.

Geri Halliwell

#77. I don't mean to be mean but that's all I can be, that's just me.

Eminem

#78. He had the kind of face only a mother could love. If that mother was blind in one eye, and had that sort of milky film over the other one, ya..ya know, ya know what I mean? But still he was my identical twin.

Colin Mochrie

#79. For if God Himself became man, this man, what else can this mean but that He declared himself guilty of the contradiction against Himself

Karl Barth

#80. The trouble with men is that they are mean-they may mean, but they don't move.

Harry Hooton

#81. But fans, including critics, of particular movements of artists, tend to want what they love to stay the same, the regression is not to the mean but to an Edenic past that never actually existed. This

George Grella Jr.

#82. This is what we've got at the moment, who we are. It's not nearly what we once had- the good, I mean- but it's also not what we once had, meaning the bad.

Therese Anne Fowler

#83. Look, I know these Rick Perry jokes are a little mean, but tomorrow, he won't even remember them.

Jimmy Fallon

#84. We're not excusing the ones who are mean, but I want girls to understand the psychology. It's not in everyone. But the bully needs to put this pain somewhere.

Elizabeth Berkley

#85. People like to say, 'What do you mean exactly?' I would answer, 'I mean, but not exactly.'

Jean-Luc Godard

#86. If I went out in killer heels and full makeup, blow dry, the whole thing - anyone dressed up like that could be intimidating to men and women, really. It's so, look at me. Do you know what I mean? But I love women.

Rachel Weisz

#87. Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.

Diane Wakoski

#88. If I was a woman, I would be dressed in the same thing for a month and just change my hat and gloves. Maybe my shoes too; yes, I see what you mean but, really, it's jewels that change an outfit.

Manolo Blahnik

#89. Just remember," he said. "Maybe these guys are nice, and the ants are mean. But that doesn't mean their fairy tales are true.

Robert Repino

#90. But killing a man ought to mean something, even if you have to do it.

Joe R. Lansdale

#91. Cooperation isn't the absence of conflict but a means of managing conflict.

Deborah Tannen

#92. But we know that just because we want something does not mean that we will get what we want,

Madeleine L'Engle

#93. 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

#94. 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

#95. 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

#96. 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

#97. 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

#98. 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

#99. 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

#100. 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