Clever Quotations

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

When I was 16, I played Macbeth at school and my English teacher said, 'I think you may have acting talent. Try to get into the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and see where you get.' I wouldn't have thought of that at all. I wanted to be a surgeon, but I wasn't a clever man.

Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them.

I wish I were one of those terribly clever people who, when they write their autobiographies, always say, when I was fifteen months old I distinctly remember my Aunt Fanny saying to me, etc.

It takes a clever man to turn cynic and a wise man to be clever enough not to.

The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur.

Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death.

Honestly, I just assume that whatever is going to happen to me is going to happen. There it goes: someone is there, someone isn't there. This girl is here. This food is here. I think the clever people are the ones who do a little as possible.

Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties.

A clever, imaginative, humorous request can open closed doors and closed minds.

My dad grew up in a mud hut and studied by candlelight. He was 14 when he got a scholarship to Russia. He was super clever - the cleverest person. He landed in 5ft of snow, and was alone at 14, studying science and engineering. He didn't have a bed, and he slept on a table.

To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man.

If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now.

I came up with new leads for game stories by being observant and clever, by using the many gifts of the English language to intrigue and hook a reader.

You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.

My mother was a terrific force in my life. Wartime-generation woman, hadn't gone to university but should have done. Was very funny, very verbal, very clever, very witty.

A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing.

Obviously people want social calm, but if you do not let clever and ingenious people to participate, obviously there must be some dormant volcano that will erupt, sooner or later.

A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults.

My neighbour asked if he could use my lawnmower and I told him of course he could, so long as he didn't take it out of my garden.

And out of a desire essentially to imitate what I was reading, I began to write, like a clever monkey.

A lot of the tabloid stories are written so well, they're very clever and very funny. But you have to focus on what's really important and not read them - don't dive into it and don't get caught up in it.

Here we stand in the middle of this new world with our primitive brain, attuned to the simple cave life, with terrific forces at our disposal, which we are clever enough to release, but whose consequences we cannot comprehend.

I do wish I could write like some of the American women, who can be clever and heartfelt and hopeful; people like Lorrie Moore and Jennifer Egan. But Ireland messed me up too much, I think, so I can't.

I get really upset seeing my friends who are mums crying because they feel like they're not good enough. Clever, confident, kind young women all going, 'I'm ruining my child's life.

No Jew was ever fool enough to turn Christian unless he was a clever man.

Modeling is not something you excel because you are clever but is based on physical appearance, but then you have to be a businesswoman, like, to keep your longevity.

You lose your anonymity just like a helium balloon with a string. Therefore people are going to have their own opinion and they're going to write in whatever clever manner they desire

She felt like a chess player who, by the clever handling of his pieces, sees the game taking the course intended. Her eyes were bright and tender with a smile as they glanced up into his; and her lips looked hungry for the kiss which they invited.

The young women in my classes are feisty and clever and believe, often with the passion of youthful optimism, that feminism is a battle already won. I worry for them - and for my daughters, too.

An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.

I like to believe my suspense novels marry the strong characters from my romance writing past, with the twisty, clever plots of my mystery writing present.

So, deadpan I think just means not acknowledging for one second that you think that this is funny and clever.

Take male strategies for success in the world. If you've got all the advantages, if you're attractive and clever and all of that, you will generally go for very high quality females.

I like physics. I think it is the best science out of all three of them, because generally it's more useful. You learn about speed and velocity and time, and that's all clever stuff.

I've driven all through America and I know there are a lot of clever people between the coasts. But they have a slightly old-fashioned view of the world. Whereas New York is one of the most multicultural, multiracial, tolerant places on Earth.

I have a fantastic husband. Here's the honeymoon part: I still think he's the funniest, wittiest, most clever man I've ever known.

People often get the wrong impression of Mick. The clever businessman is just one side of Mick. The other side is the same as the rest of us, a true rocker!

In today's world, we all live with the burden of feeling that anything is possible if we're only clever enough, smart enough, work hard enough.

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

I just love Chinese food. My favourite dish is number 27

A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it.

People think you can't be clever if you have breasts.

Awards sell tickets, and they're a clever publicity stunt.

Lots of people working in cryptography have no deep concern with real application issues. They are trying to discover things clever enough to write papers about

The great help of being in the Army is to understand why are the armies clever in what they describe as emotional intelligence, making soldiers come to terms with the death of comrades by certain rituals.

It's quite similar to guitar solos, only with programming you have to use your brain. The most important thing is that it should have some emotional effect on me, rather than just, 'Oh, that's really clever.'

You don't have to dumb down - you just have to find a clever, good, secure man. I've found a couple - I've been lucky - but it's probably hard for everybody to find that true love of a good man.

I think Douglas was a real one-off. He was so clever and so intelligent and so well read in real science that he could make science fiction work as well as it did. And just such fun to have around, he was just such a lovely man.

There is no such thing as too much swearing. Swearing is just a piece of linguistic mechanics. The words in-between are the clever ones.

I think I have an inner confidence that my tastes are pretty simple, that what I find funny finds a wide audience. I'm not particularly intellectual or clever or minority-focused in my creative instincts. And I'm certainly not aware of suppressing more sophisticated ambitions.

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say.

While writing 'Cold Mountain,' I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of North Carolina. Overlaying it, though, was an imagined map of the landscape Jack travels in the southern Appalachian folktales. He's much the same Jack who climbs the beanstalk, vulnerable and clever and opportunistic.

Looking back on my 50-year eclectic journey in research, I am grateful that it has gone as well as it has, although still not clever enough to open the black box of enzyme structure.

When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you.

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth.

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.

I was obsessed with country music when I was a kid, and it's definitely had a huge influence on the way I write songs. I was always attracted to songs that had a brilliant pun or a clever turn of phrase, but came from a dark, bitter place. As a writer, I've always gravitated towards that feeling.

A lot of modern comedies are difficult to watch too, because they're so ironic and so detached and so quote-unquote clever. They kind of keep you at arm's length. They can be really funny, but they're not really nourishing.

Social media is a giant distraction to the ultimate aim, which is honing your craft as a songwriter. There are people who are exceptional at it, however, and if you can do both things, then that's fantastic, but if you are a writer, the time is better spent on a clever lyric than a clever tweet.

Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.

The competent programmer is fully aware of the limited size of his own skull. He therefore approaches his task with full humility, and avoids clever tricks like the plague.

I think very few people do find a relationship where, every moment of every day, everything they do comes together. That's why, in a nutshell, everyone loved Barbara in 'The Good Life.' She was the perfect partner. It was a formula. She wasn't glamorous. She wasn't clever. But she was a good partner. That's too easy, too perfect.

The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies.

There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.

The interesting thing about Hain is that he's not a very interesting character. He's not fabulously clever. He's not a great policeman. He's not hugely charismatic. I'd describe him as a kind-of Chekhovian character. He's an ordinary bloke, to whom extraordinary things have happened. Which is quite hard to play, I have to say.

When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.

I love characters who are clever and smart, and you have to run to catch up with. I think there's something very appealing and rather heroic in that.

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.

I have been doing technology foresight for a number of years now on the level of scenario design, primarily. I want to become more rigorous with research methodology and statistical methods. I want to shift from creating clever SF scenarios to being a professional forecaster able to make rigorous predictions.

The past is a great place and I don't want to erase it or to regret it, but I don't want to be its prisoner either.

Men are only clever at shifting blame from their own shoulders to those of others.

They were so clever finding ways to get me the ball. They had to do more than just give up open shots. They had to avoid fouls and pass me the ball in traffic.

Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.

A bit of lusting after someone does wonders for the skin.

Because of the nature of Moore's law, anything that an extremely clever graphics programmer can do at one point can be replicated by a merely competent programmer some number of years later.

If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the Up button.

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

Pol Pot - he rounded up anybody he thought was intellectual and had them executed. And how he told someone was intellectual or not was whether they wore glasses. If they're that clever, take them off when they see him coming!

I think clever people think that poor people are stupid.

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational - and I'm speaking the written science fiction, not 'Star Trek.' Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they're clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

The clever men at Oxford, know all that there is to be knowed. But they none of them know one half as much, as intelligent Mr. Toad.

I was one of five very clever kids, the other kids were cleverer than I was and still are and are very achieving. The girls were always first at everything and I was always 101st!

I don't really wanna talk about politics, I'm not clever enough.

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

In the battle of existence, Talent is the punch; Tact is the clever footwork.

The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.