Cleverness Quotes

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi

“Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.”
― Stephen Hawking

“Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“Which would you rather be if you had the choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“Cleverness is not wisdom.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae

“No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first.”
― Cesare Pavese

“Let us not remain anchored in the quicksand of a waning past, and lose the war on obliviousness, but let us listen to the bracing sounds of new horizons, grasp the enchantment of the fleeting instants and seize the cleverness of the moment. (Could time be patient?)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Vulgarity is no substitute for wit”
― Julian Fellowes

“Intelligence is more important than strength, that is why earth is ruled by men and not by animals.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“My idea of good company, Mr. Eliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“They tried to be too clever---and that was their undoing.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.

(Get Out or Get in Line, 1928)”
― Elbert Hubbard, Works of Elbert Hubbard. Includes A Message to Garcia, Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, The Mintage and Love, Life & Work

“Passion often makes a madman of the cleverest man, and renders the greatest fools clever.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

“Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation. ”
― Mark Twain

“No matter how tiny you look, you can lead huge men if you have what the huge men don't have.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“How clever are you, my dear! You never mean a single word you say!”
― Oscar Wilde

“A clever man commits no minor blunders.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“I’m different,” said the Kid. “My gran always said I was half clever, half stupid, and half crazy.”
― Charlie Higson, The Enemy

“I've heard that sarcasm is no substitute for cleverness”
― Meredith Duran, Wicked Becomes You

“I don't know." That was typical Sajaki; like all the genuinely clever people Sylveste had met he knew better than to feign understanding where none existed.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space

“Big Brother fills us all with the same crap. My guess is he was clever the same way everybody thinks they're clever. I tell her to type in 'password”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“Can you be sure that others have not come before you and destroyed the pristine state of the native myth? Can you be sure that the natives are not humoring you or pulling your leg? Bronislaw Malinowski thought he had discovered a people in the Trobriant Islands who had not worked out the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth. When asked how children were conceived, they supplied him with an elaborate mythic structure prominently featuring celestial intervention. Amazed, Malinowski objected that was not how it was done at all, and supplied them instead with the version so popular in the West today – including a nine-month gestation period. “Impossible,” replied the Melanesians. “Do you not see that woman over there with her six-month-old child? Her husband has been on an extended voyage to another island for two years.” Is it more likely that the Melanesians were ignorant of the begetting of children or that they were gently chiding Malinowski? If some peculiar-looking stranger came into my town and asked ME where babies came from, I’d certainly be tempted to tell him about storks and cabbages. Prescientific people are people. Individually they are as clever as we are.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“The skeptic says that the believer has lost his own mind under God. On the contrary, it is the people who follow God who are most like his children, who willingly and consciously walk in his will; but those who oppose him oppose him vainly and at their own expense, and, figuratively, seem to be more like his tools. They don't diminish his glory, but instead he still manages to use them in ways of unconsciously carrying out his will.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“It is a great act of cleverness to conceal one's being clever.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

“You don't need luck. You are powerful, clever, and fearless.”
― Shannon Hale, The Unfairest of Them All