Top 83 Quotes About Being Clever
#1. Being clever is not just about how much you know, but about knowing that you really don't know very much at all.
John Connolly
#2. Humans are not the fastest or the strongest animals on the planet, but when it comes to survival, we have had the unique advantage of being clever.
David Perlmutter
#3. George Carlin is brilliant with words, and Johnny Winters is very creative. It's taking something common and drawing out the humor, being clever with words.
Bill Cosby
#4. People will invite you and seek you constantly if you learn how to give them the extreme pleasure of being clever. People adore the one who encourages them to display their conversational wares and admires the display.
Margery Wilson
#5. I once used henna to dye my hair brown for an audition, thinking I was being clever as it's all natural.
Sienna Miller
#7. This town, this country, this world, is full to the brim with clever people, and just look at it. Never been in such awful shape. Clever people don't give a damn about anybody but themselves. Too busy being clever. The world doesn't need anymore clever people. It needs people with wisdom.
Jon Steele
#8. Entropy shakes its angry fist at you for being clever enough to organize the world. (p 2)
Brandon Sanderson
#9. Don't just create content to get credit for being clever - create content that will be helpful, insightful, or interesting for your target audience.
David Ogilvy
#10. I do love poop. I can't help it. The heart wants what it wants. I enjoy being clever and pithy and political, but nothing's going to get me like dumb stuff.
Sarah Silverman
#11. I take back everything I ever said about that boy being clever." He turned around to face the bar while leveling an accusatory finger at the closed door. "That," he said firmly to the room in general, "is what comes of working with iron every day.
Patrick Rothfuss
#12. Winning a Nobel Prize isn't about being clever at all. It's about making ... at least in physiology or medicine, it's about making discoveries, and you don't have to be clever to make a discovery, I don't think; it just comes up and punches you on the nose.
Tim Hunt
#13. 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
#14. Something bad was about to happen. My wife was being clever again.
Gillian Flynn
#15. You want to make an impression. Being clever helps.
Leonard Maltin
#17. Messi is much more than being clever. He is a genius who reserves all his expressiveness for football.
John Carlin
#18. There is a world of difference between being clever and being right.
Ian Driscoll
#19. The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote some one who is.
Mary Pettibone Poole
#20. It i impossible to foresee the consequences of being clever, so you try to avoid it whenever you can.
Christopher Strachey
#21. I saw how greatly he suffered the requirement of being clever. It separated him from his soul, and it didn't get him anything other than a living.
Mark Helprin
#22. The problem with being clever, Serene thought with a sigh, is that everyone assumes you're always planning something.
Brandon Sanderson
#25. Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.
Mark Haddon
#27. You enjoy being clever, don't you?" "It happens so rarely that I relish the moments when I am.
Joshua Roots
#28. When I try to get clever I fail, so I stick with the basic issues of human life on earth - sex, death, relationships, discovering who you are, being hurt and confused.
Barbara Ess
#29. The proper motto is not Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever, but Be good sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can. God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than any other slackers.
C.S. Lewis
#30. Thinking of something to say is difficult when you want to be perceived as clever!
Lorraine Reguly
#31. People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Samuel Butler
#32. Fine! He is being passive aggressive with me, and it's gonna backfire; I'm gonna be active friendly.
Natalya Vorobyova
#33. There's nothing good about being certain about things. And I don't think there's any real talent in using language in a manipulative way, with phrases like "tax relief" or "Social Security reform." It's politically clever, but it's also completely disingenuous, and it's not something to aspire to.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#34. Thomas was sick of being accused of knowing things.
James Dashner
#35. Man is extraordinarily clever in preventing himself from being happy; it would seem that the less able he is to endure misfortune the more apt he is to attach himself to it.
Andre Gide
#36. The White House is not being very clever in how it takes on our plan, .. In fact the White House is being sloppy. They are taking everything Bob Dole has ever said we ought to do regarding taxes and adding all of those things up and saying it will cost $800 billion.
Bob Dole
#37. She didn't think she'd ever shown enough gratitude for the quick wits of the people she worked with, and if the evening ever ended, which it showed no signs of doing, she would rectify that. She would buy them all flowers or whisky and write a card thanking them for being so clever.
Nick Hornby
#38. Instead of seeking wisdom, liberals desire to be seen as clever by being counterintuitive, crazy, and outre.
Ann Coulter
#39. Now it's virtually impossible to write a game that successfully provides challenge and frustration, and that's a shame. We are going to lose something that makes scientists, that makes doers, that makes hard-minded, witty, clever people, and I worry that those people aren't being made these days.
Patrick Rothfuss
#40. Albert-next-door doesn't care for reading, and he has not read nearly so many books as we have, so he is very foolish and ignorant, but it cannot be helped ... Besides, it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself.
E. Nesbit
#41. From here it also looks a great deal bigger, because space is not really big, it is simply somewhere to be big in. Planets are big, but planets are meant to be big and there is nothing clever about being the right size.
Terry Pratchett
#42. I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered.
Stendhal
#43. Every one of Joel's important songs
including the happy ones
are ultimately about loneliness. And it's not 'clever lonely' (like Morrissey) or 'interesting lonely' (like Radiohead); it's 'lonely lonely,' like the way it feels when you're being hugged by someone and it somehow makes you sadder.
Chuck Klosterman
#44. 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.
Dick Schaap
#45. I know you are incredibly bright, because when you are not being a smartarse your comments in class are very insightful, and when you ARE being a smartarse you are witty and clever and you make me laugh even when I want to slap you.
Amy Harmon
#46. A skunk is better company than a person who prides himself on being 'frank'.
Robert A. Heinlein
#47. Marketing yourself to a new person often involves being charismatic, clever and quick-but most jobs and most relationships are about being consistent, persistent and brave.
Seth Godin
#48. If you're not honest with your work - if you're being merely decorative - then the world will know. People intuit honest work. They know when they are being tricked by clever metaphors . . . by dishonesty in the artist.
Michele Zackheim
#49. Thousands of uninstructed Christians are being deceived today.
False teachers use high-sounding words
that seem like the epitome of scholarship and culture. They are intellectually clever and crafty ... adept at beguiling thoughtless, untaught men and women.
Billy Graham
#50. 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
#51. How can you be the good guys if you're dropping clever bombs right down people's chimneys? And blowing people up just because they're being bossed around by a loony?
Terry Pratchett
#52. Fate does not invite ugly boring people to save the world; and if you do try to save the world (without being beautiful, strong, clever, or wise), you will soon die pointlessly and how much adventure is there in that?
James Alan Gardner
#53. I believe, there is scarcely a young lady in the united kingdoms, who would not rather put up with the misfortune of being sought by a clever, agreeable man, than have him driven away by the vulgarity of her nearest relations.
Jane Austen
#54. I loved having a crew. I loved being the person who woke at six in the morning and knew where to put the camera. I loved watching the actresses cry, and to know that if you were clever and didn't do too many rehearsals, that it just came that way.
Jane Birkin
#55. Besides, it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself. It is not always their faults.
E. Nesbit
#56. And feeling clever, I've always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful.
Ian McEwan
#57. I thought I was pretty damn clever. She said that was all right, she'd make three wishes. The first was that I wouldn't piss this money away being an idiot and forgetting I had
Nora Roberts
#58. Be good, sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can.
C.S. Lewis
#59. Mike Leigh taught me about making choices - as an actor, you choose between being honest and clever, and with Mike, it's always about being honest. I learned how to behave on a film set from Jim Broadbent. He was a great example of someone with a fantastic career who kept his feet on the ground.
Eddie Marsan
#60. The artist will have had his revenge for being made to wait,
A revenge not only necessary but right and clever
Simply to leave him out of the scene forever.
Donald Justice
#61. To be a flamboyant failure, that's better than being any kind of benign success
Malcolm McLaren
#62. At 50, a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass
Mark Twain
#63. Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first.
Thucydides
#64. Josh Billings said, It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too. Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems.
John W. Gardner
#65. 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.
Antony Beevor
#66. Immensely clever and libidinously hilarious.The most astonishing thing about Love in a Dead Language is its ingenious construction. Insofar as any printed volume can lay claim to being a multimedia work, this book earns that distinction.
Paul Di Filippo
#67. Only elves and trolls had survived the coming of Man to the discworld: the elves because they were altogether too clever by half, and the trolley folk because they were at least as good as humans at being nasty, spiteful and greedy.
Terry Pratchett
#68. He was very clever, he gave the impression of being tolerant and kind, while actually being very dark, very cunning.
Louise Penny
#69. Medium clever," Simon acknowledged. "Like a cross between George Clooney in Ocean's Eleven and those MythBusters guys, but, you know, better-looking."
"I'm always so glad I have no idea what you're vacantly chattering about," said Jace. "It fills me with a sense of peace and well-being.
Cassandra Clare
#70. 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
#71. The height of cleverness is in one's ability to be very clever without seeming clever at all.
Criss Jami
#72. I said that I wasn't clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn't clever. That was just being observant.
Mark Haddon
#74. If you're clever enough and creative enough to get a good film made, then you should be clever enough and creative enough to find ways to get it out there, one being something like Jameson First Shot.
Dana Brunetti
#75. I was a weedy kid, not like one of those working-class men who can accommodate not being academically clever by physical strength and prowess.
Ken Livingstone
#76. People who, not being in love themselves, feel that a clever man should only be unhappy about a person who is worth his while; which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the comma bacillus.
Marcel Proust
#77. I like good books and clever conversation and being left alone much of the time.
Courtney Milan
#78. 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
#79. The most powerful political moments for me come when I feel like my actions are aligned with a certain truth. I can feel it. When I'm talking to a group and I'm saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I'm just being glib or clever.
Barack Obama
#81. Clever talk and domineering manner have little to with being a Man at His Best.
Confucius
#82. A narrative thread gives people permission to think about other things whilst being carried by its flow. It does not mean that one has to compromise one's vision, or question formal concerns. It's just being more subtle and clever by having one accessible thread.
Sally Potter
#83. I've never met a murderer who wasn't vain ... It's their vanity that leads to their undoing, nine times out of ten.They may be frightened of being caught, but they can't help strutting and boasting and usually they're sure they've been far too clever to be caught.
Agatha Christie
