How to kill the content of a list instead of the list itself?

>
> 'mylist;
>> [a,b,c]
>>
>
> NO!  'mylist here evaluates to the symbol mylist.
>
> 'mylist;
>> [a,b,c]
>>
>
> WRONG!
>
>

Ooops... I'm sorry for that, this is what happens when writing with hurry
and without using Maxima... I have written that commands directly in the
email body... Of course, that 'mylist is nonsense.

I was asking the question because, as Richard Fateman guessed, I have to
repeatedly kill some variables to avoid problems, each time I  load a .mac
file to perform some computations.

Since I would like to keep the syntax as simple as possible, I will define a
list of variables to be killed in the form

varlist : '[var1, var2,....]

this list is quite long, so it is better to write

apply(kill,varlist)

at the beginning of each computation.

Thank you all for your replies.
Stefano