Top 89 Clever Stupid Quotes
#1. Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.
Bertrand Russell
#2. I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.
Orson Scott Card
#3. Football is a game based on emotion and intelligence. Anyone can be clever, the trick is not to think the other guy is stupid.
Jose Mourinho
#4. A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.
Steven Brust
#5. The fact that someone is not particularly intelligent is no guide in these things. People may be stupid and extremely complicated just as they can be clever and incapable of deep feeling.
Julian Fellowes
#6. man is the only animal that is clever enough to build the empire state building and stupid enough to jump off.
Rock Hudson
#7. He was stupid, yes, in the particular way that very clever people can be stupid.
Terry Pratchett
#8. The interior of a teenager's mind is an endless war between Stupid and Clever.
William Landay
#9. Our [American] money system is structurally brittle. It doesn't matter if you put a very clever guy or a stupid guy at the wheel. The clever guy will take a half hour to have an accident, and the stupid guy will take ten minutes.
Bernard Lietaer
#10. How I would hate the reputation of being clever at writing but stupid and useless at everything else! I would rather be stupid at both than to choose to employ my good qualities as badly as that.
Michel De Montaigne
#11. Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.
Leo Tolstoy
#12. There are moments in which stupid people say clever things, obtuse people say sharp things, and good-natured people say ill-natured things.
Anthony Trollope
#13. The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.
Karl Kraus
#14. Women are not stupid, but they were not clever enough to realise that feminism did not bring freedom, but the opposite. That's why I'm glad feminism is dead.
Michel Houellebecq
#15. I have certainly noticed that groups of clever and intelligent people are capable of really stupid ideas.
Terry Pratchett
#16. I really made few uncrediable subscribes, which I want to put as "I'm glad, that I have done it". It's difficult to find such stuff, it's difficult without a knowledge to do something, but out there with this DUMB and Stupid people there is and people which are clever and smart.
Deyth Banger
#17. Man is flowing. In him there are all possibilities: he was stupid, now he is clever; he was evil, now he is good, and the other way around. In this is the greatness of man.
Leo Tolstoy
#18. Not that it matters. It didn't kill me. You don't die that easily, but let me tell you, you come close to it. Afterwards, what you went through makes you so clever you wish you could become stupid again, utterly stupid.
Magda Szabo
#19. Though the stupid have great capacity to direct the world because they are plentiful, the clever has a much greater capacity to prevent the stupid from halting the progression of humanity because - though they are rare - they are tactical and intelligent!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#20. In an election, a stupid man can get the votes of the ignorant much easier than a clever man simply because he will naturally get the attraction of the ignorant; the clever is always repulsive for ignorant!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#22. Sometimes a stupid man is only a couple of good guesses away from looking clever.
Philip Kerr
#23. I asked somebody else who is out my country about his country and what he answered what's a big suprise what the people said in my country was "STUPIDY" - Category answer!
Deyth Banger
#24. I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones.
John Peel
#25. In a stupid society, a clever man can come into the power; but in a clever society no stupid can come into the power!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#26. Gilks sighed. 'You're a clever man, Cjelli, I grant you that,' he said, 'but you make the same
mistake a lot of clever people do of thinking everyone else is stupid.
Douglas Adams
#27. I think clever people think that poor people are stupid.
Norm MacDonald
#28. The stupid person's idea of the clever person. [on Aldous Huxley, in Spectator magazine, 1936]
Elizabeth Bowen
#29. Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
W. H. Auden
#30. There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.
Thomas Mann
#31. The moment when you realise that you are stupid, you catch your best chance to be clever!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#32. I done something bad, it was to believe that to read a book you must be a stupid guy. No people which read they are clever - the guy who said this is stupid guy!
Deyth Banger
#34. One has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.
Thomas Mann
#35. Wise people make trails and paths, clever walk on them - stupid people can't decide.
Deyth Banger
#36. Strange, isn't it,' mused Glokta as he watched him struggle for air. 'Big men, small men, thin men, fat men, clever men, stupid men, they all respond the same to a fist in the guts. One minute you think you're the most powerful man in the world. The next you can't even breathe by yourself.
Joe Abercrombie
#38. You can make fun of yourself and people will laugh at you. If you're smart, you'll end up as a comedian. If you're not, you'll end up as a clown.
Ljupka Cvetanova
#39. Jezal had often observed that the ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company. Having lost the high ground already, they scramble eagerly for the position of likable idiot, stay out of arguments they will only lose, and hence be everyone's friend,
Joe Abercrombie
#40. To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
G.K. Chesterton
#41. 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
#42. A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it.
Israel Zangwill
#43. Jokes are another example of stupidity... we are so wise and so clever and we do stupid stuff, how wise is that?
Jokes on stage of being serious... when you aren't serious what you get is more likely somebody being in state of seriousness.
Deyth Banger
#45. It is in just such stupid things clever people are most easily caught. The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in. Porfiry is not such a fool as you think....
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#46. Creativity is when a stupid clever soul gets up from bed and does amazing things that makes the world think he is wise.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#48. For a man reckoned clever, he got wedged in a lot of stupid corners.
Joe Abercrombie
#49. We're both clever and stupid in equal measure.
Brian Cox
#50. The ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company.
Joe Abercrombie
#51. No, I'm not smart," he whispered against her ear, "but I was wise enough to fall in love with you and clever enough to convince you to marry me. I hope I'm not so stupid that I would ever let you go.
Sara Lindsey
#52. As is so often the case with pieces that appear in the Onion, I honestly could not decide whether this was a clever hoax or not - the arguments were almost exactly as stupid as the real thing.
Christopher Hitchens
#53. So long as victory can be attained, stupid haste is preferable to clever dilatoriness.
Sun Tzu
#54. Unix was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.
Douglas Gwyn
#55. Behind your every bad fate, almost always there lie your own stupid mistakes! Behind your every good fate, almost always there lie your own clever deeds! Skies have nothing whatsoever to do with your fate!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#56. Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate
Terry Pratchett
#57. A clever man can see the world from a cave much better than a stupid man can from the top of a mountain!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#58. You scare me, Sebastian. You're so good looking, and so clever, and so damn charming. Hell, you're even sporting a monster dick - not that I go for that sort of thing, but a lot of women do. Sebastian, if someone had to design a death trap for stupid women, you'd be it.
Remittance Girl
#59. Democracy is when two stupid has more rights than clever one.
Myself
#60. I had been proud of my awareness, aware of my pride, and proud of that awareness again. It went on like this: How clever I am that I know I am so stupid, how stupid I am to think that I am clever, and how clever I am that I am aware of my stupidity, etc.
Janwillem Van De Wetering
#61. Philosophers have a long tradition of marrying stupid women, from Socrates on. They think it clever.
Simon Gray
#63. I'm different," said the Kid. "My gran always said I was half clever, half stupid, and half crazy.
Charlie Higson
#64. The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#65. Hardly happy at all, and I'm ready to take the fall. We pay for the stupid things we've done where I come from. Can you sit through this? Or is it gonna be too deep?
Tegan Quin
#66. I little miss that part, why you want to kill me??
Because I'm not afraid of choosing and you are??
I'm clever and this is like a gift and you are stupid and you can't say it. Because your self confidence goes lower and lower.
Deyth Banger
#67. But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn't stupid. They just take a bit more time, that's all.
Robert Harris
#68. I don't call women of that kind clever. I call them stupid!
Same thing often.
Oscar Wilde
#69. I am so stupid that I cannot understand philosophy; the antithesis of this is that philosophy is so clever that it cannot comprehend my stupidity. These antitheses are mediated in a higher unity; in our common stupidity.
Soren Kierkegaard
#70. From the port of ideas, not only the most clever ones put out to sea and conquer the world but also the most stupid ones do this!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#71. I don't think I see the world in terms of stupid or clever, but in terms of being able to get irony. There's some awful statistic about only 20 per cent of Americans being able to understand irony.
Douglas Coupland
#72. Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be too clever by half. The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.
John Major
#73. Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#74. In the beginning of the twentieth century you could not see the ground for clever men. They were so common that a stupid man was quite exceptional, and when they found him, they followed him in crowds down the street and treasured him up and gave him some high post in the State.
G.K. Chesterton
#75. I don't like being called 'macho.' Macho basically means stupid and a real Italian man is not macho, he's smart. That's smart in both senses: elegant and clever.
Andrea Bocelli
#76. Any kind of organized revolt against the party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing to do was to break the rules and stay alive all the same.
George Orwell
#77. Modern man uses ideas and persuasion to achieve his goals; primitive man uses guns and brute force to achieve his goals! Moral and clever people choose the first method; immoral and stupid people choose the second method!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#78. Peace is not a dream; peace is an option! You either choose peace and prove that you are clever and angelic, or choose war proving that you are stupid and devilish!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#79. I'm out to change people's attitudes about them. Wolves are a whole lot more than just predators who feast on a rancher's herd. They're smart and clever and loyal and courageours, and sometimes they do really stupid, silly things, just like people.
R.C. Ryan
#80. The problem is, is when your focus is created by a crisis, then the frontal lobe shuts down essentially, the frontal cortex which is your intuitive intelligence. So you get very clever and very stupid in a crisis. Also, you pump adrenalin into your body from what you - physiologically you'll crash.
David Allen
#81. I never heard tell of any clever man that came of entirely stupid people.
Thomas Carlyle
#82. MRS ALLONBY I adore them. The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
HESTER I think the stupid people talk a great deal.
MRS ALLONBY Ah, I never listen!
Oscar Wilde
#83. Yeah I am stupid, as a wiseman I don't think I am a clever, but as far I see stupid people count themselves as smart and clever.
Deyth Banger
#84. There's been so many different types of musicals, and it's a funny genre because there's a fine line between clever and stupid. It really takes a genius to know how to do it.
Melissa Etheridge
#85. Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was very stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a genius
Leo Tolstoy
#86. Bush is a very stupid man. The American people are not stupid, they are very clever. I can't understand how such clever people came to elect such a stupid president.
Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf
#87. Where courage and judgement are equally required a clever coward is better than a stupid hero.
Michael Collins
#88. Between a stupid fascist and an intelligent fascist, prefer the intelligent one, because there is always a chance to persuade the clever one about the mistakes of his actions! There is no such a chance for stupid and ignorant fascist!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#89. He loved her in spite of her unlovableness. Armande had many trying, thought not necessarily rare, traits, all of which he accepted as absurd clues in a clever puzzle.
Vladimir Nabokov
