Top 100 Mean What We Say Quotes
#1. Our relationship to the past is marked by deep indifference, even if we do say something to the contrary, even if we mean what we say when we say it is a matter of the greatest significance. Because it is a matter of the greatest significance, yet nevertheless we feel bound to it by a sense of duty.
Dag Solstad
#3. It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.
Amy Tan
#4. We're looking at such enormous complexity and variety that it makes a mockery of "celebrating diversity." In the L.A. of the future, no one will need to say, "Let's celebrate diversity." Diversity is going to be a fundamental part of our lives. That's what it's going to mean to be modern.
Richard Rodriguez
#5. [A]fter all, what does it mean for pain to be 'memorable'? You're either in pain or you're not. And it isn't the pain that one forgets. It's the touching death part. As the baby might say to its mother, we might say to death: I forget you, but you remember me.
Maggie Nelson
#6. Angels can help us understand what intuition means in a personal way. Angels are actually in charge of a large part of our intuitive self. Viewing intuition from the perspective of angel consciousness, we can say that intuition is our way of tapping into a higher power for guidance and awareness.
Terry Taylor
#7. We/I am a son/daughter of God. In fact, we are all expressions/projections of the Infinite Conciousness, which is love, that is what I mean when I say "I am a son of god "GOD"!
David Icke
#8. I can't talk about my childhood at all, because cannot say "I" when I mean "we," and if I say "we" it leads to a conversation about how I have a dead sister, instead of what I want to talk about. I found that out in the summer. So I don't talk about it.
Jo Walton
#9. Without words meaning anything, we stop meaning anything. It's getting to the point where nobody means what they say or says what they really mean.
Suzy Kassem
#10. When old settlers say 'One has to understand the country,' what they mean is, 'You have to get used to our ideas about the native.' They are saying in effect, 'Learn our ideas, or otherwise get out; we don't want you.'
Doris Lessing
#11. These guys have been criticized the last few years for not getting to where we're going, but I've always said that the most important thing in sports is to keep trying. Let this be an example of what it means to say it's never over.
Jerry Sloan
#12. If asked for an opinion we'll say what we think. And by "what we think" I mean the answer that comes to our mind first, seems most logical and requires the least amount of effort to articulate, while getting us in the least amount of trouble. Really that's what our communication boils down to.
Aaron Blaylock
#13. We can learn to be whole by saying what we mean and doing what we say.
Martin Buber
#14. The white man say we're fighting for freedom from totalitarianism, terrorism and tyranny, but nobody know what he mean. I
Marlon James
#15. When I say that it's taken us [with Luca Guadagnino ] 11 years to make this film, what I mean is that it was 11 years ago that we started to talk about a kind of cinema that we wanted to make together.
Tilda Swinton
#16. The words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between.
Anne Carson
#17. Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean - power over people, power to the State.
Margaret Thatcher
#18. Let's say what we mean: animals are bled, skinned, and dismembered while conscious. It happens all the time, and the industry and the government know it.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#19. What does it mean for something to be natural? When we say that something is "natural", what we often actually mean is that it is widely accepted or practiced, whereas something that is "unnatural" is foreign or strange to us.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek
#20. I believe that President Obama is here for a reason, but that doesn't mean that he has to stay there next year. The American people have an opportunity to have a say and so I think we just have to do what we think is right - and see what the outcome is. God's got a plan.
Vicky Hartzler
#21. I think that rather than saying that Occupy Wall Street has died, we can say that they're in the process of understanding what the long march through alternative institutions might mean.
Henry Giroux
#22. We're very good at telling what happens and showing people while it happens ... But sometimes television fails to take the time to say 'Why did it happen? What does it mean?' - To step back a little bit.
John King
#23. What we mean by sentimentalism is that state in which a man speaks deep and true sentiments not because he feels them strongly, but because he perceives that they are beautiful, and that it is touching and fine to say them,-things which he fain would feel, and fancies that he does feel.
Frederick William Robertson
#24. What do we mean when we say our school 'values' reading?
Kelly Gallagher
#25. Maybe that's where we're supposed to meet then" I say.
"What do you mean? When?"
"I mean, maybe that's where our perfect world begins
Brian James
#26. Yes, I always say that we're a National League band. What I mean is, if you play an instrument, you have to sing. So I always call our drummer up. Even the drummer has to take a turn on the microphone.
Emmylou Harris
#27. When we get together and rehearse, which is always living with each other, we always talk about what would make it better, what would mean more, what would say more. So we're always improving and growing.
Alice Cooper
#28. What we mean when we say "terrible conditions" is conditions which we are aware of as being terrible.
Kobo Abe
#29. If what we said cannot go beyond the century we live in, it means that we have said nothing. Let us say something for all the centuries!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#30. If people really knew what they were getting into with their third chemotherapy treatment, or getting a pacemaker when they're 92, if they really knew what that was going to mean, they might say no, and we should give them that information.
Caitlin Doughty
#31. But love? Who can say what is just a mire of dark needs and desires, and what is true love? Does such a thing exist? Can't it be that if we say, 'I love you' to another person and know that we mean it, then that is love, regardless of the motive?
John Ajvide Lindqvist
#32. I mean, okay, let's say we're all going to get better. Let's just pretend we will. Fine. Where are we going to go after we get better? What are we going to do with all of our newfound healthy behaviors? Back out into the world that screwed us up and screwed us over. This does not sound promising.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#33. We British say "to put the world to rights." I've discovered that that's not the way Americans say it and people scratch their heads and say, "Funny ... what does he mean by that?" It means to fix the thing, to make it all better again.
N. T. Wright
#34. We pray pious blether, our will is not in it, and then we say God does not answer; we never asked Him for anything. Asking means that our wills are in what we ask.
Oswald Chambers
#35. What you do, what you say and what you think can influence other people by morphic resonance. There is no immoral filter in morphic resonance, which means that we have to be more careful about what we are thinking if we are concerned about the affect we have on others.
Rupert Sheldrake
#36. The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full-time. That's what I mean when I say turning pro. Resistance hates it when we turn pro.
Steven Pressfield
#37. People start to talk about post-racist, post-feminist. What does that mean? We're clearly not post either. Would you say post-democracy? Clearly we haven't reached true democracy yet.
Gloria Steinem
#38. We act like God's only good when the outcome is good. We say, 'We've got a good God because I've got a good job.' But what if I don't have a good job? Does that mean God's not good anymore?
Max Lucado
#39. And what the hell does that even mean? Why would you serve food for thoughgs, and what kind of food? If you serve spinach, do you get healthy thoughts? If it's ice cream and candy, it is fun thoughts? Why do we say stupid things?
J.D. Robb
#40. Brains. Brains. What do we really mean by the term? In your idiom you would say that Jane Wilkinson has the brains of a rabbit. That is a term of disparagement. But consider the rabbit for a moment. He exists and multiplies, does he not? That, in Nature, is a sign of mental superiority.
Agatha Christie
#41. Secular folks have no opinion about God's existence; they're busy with other matters. But a secular mystic would say, "The question is not 'Does God exist?' It's rather, 'What do we mean by 'God?
Victoria Zackheim
#42. Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn't mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn't mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves.
Ryan Holiday
#43. I'm a sitting duck. No, seriously, I mean I wish I could say more, but I'm a sitting duck because I can't get ahead of them [cyber experts]. They're far ahead of me. That's what I learned: how vulnerable we are. It's a big, silent monster out there. That's what it feels like.
Viola Davis
#44. Men aren't really complicated, Ana, honey. They are very simple, literal creatures. They usually mean what they say. And we spend hours trying to analyze what they've said - when really it's obvious. If I were you, I'd take him literally. That might help.
E.L. James
#45. People say we need religion when what they really mean is we need police.
H.L. Mencken
#46. When people say they prefer organic food, what they often seem to mean is they don't want their food tainted with pesticides and their meat shot full of hormones or antibiotics. Many object to the way a few companies - Monsanto is the most famous of them - control so many of the seeds we grow.
Michael Specter
#47. Given how long philosophers have been at conceptual analysis (I mean the 20th century stuff), and how many have been doing it, what can we say are the two most important concept results of all that effort?
Patricia Churchland
#48. And when I say "exploded" I mean "interacted catastrophically with the topography of space/time in ways we're not entirely able to explain," but "explode" gets the gist of it, particularly with regard to what would happen to a human caught in it.
John Scalzi
#49. Oh, terrific," Dan muttered. "Just what we need. Another code! Why can't people just say what they mean? Why can't they say THE MAP IS IN THE DESK?
Jude Watson
#50. There does seem to me something sad in life. It is hard to say what it is. I don't mean the sorrow that we all know, like illness and poverty and death. No, it is something different. It is there, deep down, deep down, part of one, like one's breathing.
Katherine Mansfield
#51. I'm a child of the Cold War. You do not say, "Oh, my God, there are Russian planes, so I'm going to cede the field." I mean, what kind of world would we have had if the United States had done that for 60 years?
Anne-Marie Slaughter
#52. What I mean is, right from that first time, there was
something in Tommy's manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed to
say: Yes, we're doing this now and I'm glad we're doing it now. But what a
pity we left it so late.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#53. When they say inflation is bad, deflation is good, what they mean is, more money for us 1% is good; we're all for asset price inflation, we're all for housing prices going up, and we're all for our stock and bonds prices going up. We're just against you workers getting more income.
Michael Hudson
#54. We are thus led to ask what the writer looks for and how he trains himself to look for it. The answer is: he makes himself habitually aware of words, positively self conscience of them about them, careful to follow what they might say and not to jump to what they might mean.
Jacques Barzun
#55. Honey, when you say we can't communicate... what exactly do you mean?
Randy Glasbergen
#56. We all know how funny Morrissey is. Actually, you know what? I say that sarcastically. His songs are some of the funniest songs I've ever heard in my life. I mean, really. I mean, not that the 'Girlfriend in a Coma' is, like, really funny.
Zach Galifianakis
#57. Britain deserves better than people who say they've got a quick fix but won't tell you what it actually means for Britain, we need a much bigger conversation than this.
Ruth Davidson
#58. You know just because you don't like the way it sounds when I say it or you don't like my haircut or you don't like that I'm gay, it does not mean that what we say is not true. If you squint a little bit, it is true I do sometimes look like a dude, and I am definitely gay.
Rachel Maddow
#59. When you say things like, 'We have to wipe out the Taliban,' what does that mean? The Taliban is not a fixed number of people. The Taliban is an ideology that has sprung out of a history that, you know, America created anyway.
Arundhati Roy
#60. What are we saying when we say now, something is holy? That means you should take a different attitude to what you are doing than if you were, for example, doing it for kicks.
Alan Watts
#61. We like love - we love love - but perhaps its only meaning lies in its ubiquitous meaninglessness. We apprehend it, we feel it, and we think we know it, yet we cannot say what we mean by it.
Richard Flanagan
#62. Men aren't really complicated. They are very simple, literal creatures. They usually mean what they say. And we spend hours trying to analyze what they've said, when really it's obvious.
E.L. James
#63. I don't know what more to say. I mean, we're all going to die in a world that is worse than when we entered it.
Daniel Berrigan
#64. German? I don't know what that means ... we don't say that in America
Justin Bieber
#65. That's what you were trying to say, isn't it? I mean, I think ... mostly we're too busy living to stop and notice we're alive. But that sometimes we do. And that that makes the rest of it matter.
Neil Gaiman
#66. My face, my self, what would they mean to anybody? Just another stiff. So this self of mine passes some other's self on the street - what do we have to say to each other? Hey there! Hi ya!
That's about it. Nobody raises a hand. No one turns around to take another look.
Haruki Murakami
#67. It is a truism to say that a good experiment is precisely that which spares us the exertion of thinking: the better it is, the less we have to worry about its interpretation, about what it really means.
Peter Medawar
#68. It's dreadfully unfair to say things like that when this is likely the last time we will speak and we both know you don't mean what you say. It's pure selfishness that you want to keep me here.
Rachel Caine
#69. The moment you say, "We are proud. I'm proud to be this, and I'm proud to be that," what you're saying is we're almost as good as the others. "Almost" always means not quite.
Harry Hay
#70. Do we really mean it when we say 'in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do us part or do we add a silent clause, 'unless you shame me or disappoint me?' What is the cost of unconditional love and how capable are we of giving that?
Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker
#71. If we see a sad rain, it doesn't mean the rain is sad, but it means we see it. That's an easily dismissible kind of projection. But what I'm struggling to say, is that we take that rain in through our own hearts and emotions and senses and skin, and all those filters have an impact.
Karen Joy Fowler
#72. But the question is - are we deporting a couple hundred people for show or are we actually making a serious effort to remove everybody who's got a final order of removal? When I say enforcement theater, what I mean is a kind of pretend enforcement.
Mark Krikorian
#73. It is quick to over punish and uninterested in rewarding good behavior. What would we say about an individual who had these characteristics? Mean? Cruel? Heartless? Mindless? Hypocritical? Stupid?
Bernard B. Kerik
#74. They say that we are better educated than our parents' generation. What they mean is that we go to school longer. It is not the same thing.
Richard Yates
#75. I'm more than happy to say that I am a part of the return of Rock n' Roll.And that what we have to say means so much to these amazing people.
Jinxx
#76. We might mean different things. How can you tell? Only by reading each of us carefully and seeing what each of us has to say - not by pretending that we are both saying the same thing. We're often saying very different things.
Bart D. Ehrman
#77. You should let dialogue get as nearly out of control as you can. Characters should say what they say to each other instead of what they mean to say. The worst purpose of dialogue is to elicit information: "You know why we're out on this space station, Carruthers - to save the universe!"
Robert Stone
#78. What do we mean by 'crazy?' What do we mean by 'mad?' At what point is a person just different and at what point can we call it a disease and say that they are not responsible for their actions? Or are we all slaves to the chemical processes that go on in our brains?
Jo Nesbo
#79. I'm a big fan of 'Star Wars.' Some of the most iconic characters of 'Star Wars,' we didn't see their faces but to this day you can say Jabba the Hutt or Darth Vader and people know what you mean around the world.
Laz Alonso
#80. Sometimes it is only a True Friend who knows what we mean when we try to speak.
Somebody who has spent a lot of time with us, and listens carefully to what we are trying to say, and tries to understand.
Cressida Cowell
#81. I would seriously question whether anybody is really foolish enough to really say what they mean. Sometimes I think that civilization as we know it would kind of break down if we all were completely honest.
Elizabeth Hurley
#82. I mean when I was working shall we say with Disney, you know they sent me the script for the film Hercules and I had to imagine what all the characters looked like. And to develop those characters, so nothing exists visually when I get the script.
Gerald Scarfe
#83. What most Americans mean when they say "the end of the recession" is, "When will it be back to normal? When can we get jobs? When will the employment rate be back to 4 percent or 5 percent?"
Joseph Stiglitz
#84. I don't mean you have to be overbearing, but you have to stay on top of things - read the trades, know what's going on in the town. I call it 'dare to be stupid.' The worst thing they can say is, 'We got nothing for you.' So I've hustled a lot.
Alex Rocco
#85. When activists say we need to move past the partisan divide, what they mean is: Shut up and get with my program. Have you ever heard anyone say, "We need to get past all of this partisan squabbling and name-calling. That's why I'm going to abandon all my objections and agree with you"?
Jonah Goldberg
#86. It's a terrible person who listens to what we say rather than what we mean
F.D. Lee
#87. We two remake our world by naming it / Together, knowing what words mean for us / And for the other for whom current coin / Is cold speech
but we say, the tree, the pool, / And see the fire in the air, the sun, our sun, / Anybody's sun, the world's sun, but here, now / Particularly our sun ...
A.S. Byatt
#88. We must Think what we Say, and Mean what we Profess.
Mary Astell
#89. We know what they say, they want all of Palestine (including Israel) and say that negotiations did not work. They talk about wanting reform. That doesn't mean they will do it.
Hanan Ashrawi
#90. When we say we know something in our bones, we mean we don't know yet how we know what we know. This is what we mean by bones.
Brock Clarke
#91. When we say Shut up, Gat, that isn't what we mean at all.
E. Lockhart
#92. Hey, I know planet earth is dying. So what do you want me to say?
Grumble? Give me a break! These all mean that we should live our
life to love and to be loved while we still have some time to do that.
Toba Beta
#93. People like us are not good with words.
What we mean gets muddled and wrong
somewhere between our minds
and our mouths.
We make art to say how we feel.
Here: These are the chords
to Make You Feel My Love.
Clementine Von Radics
#94. So I think we have an obligation with our size to make sure that we are open to what people have to say to us because the people who criticize us, they're not all mean-spirited.
Lee Scott
#95. Judgment is harsh and mean and meant to hurt, as if the pain of what we do or say will slap others into our way of believing.
Iyanla Vanzant
#96. Farmers present by themselves the basic force of the national movement. Without farmers there can be no strong national movement. This is what we mean when we say that the nationalist question, is actually, the farmers' question.
Joseph Stalin
#97. You have to be clear what your message is and what you're doing. I mean, Miley Cyrus is an amazing talent, and sometimes you kind of just want to say, 'We know you're not Hannah Montana anymore. We know that, my dear. My darling. Now, go be great.'
Tori Amos
#98. When we say there is a GOD, we mean that there is an intelligent designing cause of what we see in the world around us, and a being who was himself uncaused.
Joseph Priestley
#99. When we say two bodies 'touch', what we mean (without knowing it) is that both electromagnetic fields are interacting to avoid physical interpenetration and ... that happens well before subatomic particles touch!
Felix Alba-Juez
#100. I wish we could stop the little lies. I don't mean that one has to be brutally frank. I don't believe that we should be brutal about anything, however, it is wonderfully liberating to be honest. One does not have to tell all that one knows, but we should be careful what we say is the truth.
Maya Angelou
