Quotes About Clever

Mr. [Aldous] Huxley has been the alarming young man for a long time, a sort of perpetual clever nephew who can be relied on to flutter the lunch party. Whatever will he say next? How does he think of those things? He has been deplored once or twice, but feeling is in his favor: he is steadily read. He is at once the truly clever person and the stupid person's idea of the clever person; he is expected to be relentless, to administer intellectual shocks.

We scientists are clever — too clever — are you not satisfied? Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just tell us how big you want it!

A clever quote opens new paths in the minds of the clever!

Very clever people are often very clever at creating rationalisations for insane beliefs.

It's the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who are clever never think of trying to be.

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.

Most people think that 'I don't recall' is a clever answer. But it isn't that clever. You might not recall that you had bacon and eggs for breakfast- but if you killed your mother, you'll remember it.

Truth and fact are old-fashioned and out-of-date, my friends, fit only for the dull and vulgar to live by. Appearance, not reality, is what the clever dog grasps at in these clever days. We spurn the dull-brown solid earth; we build our lives and homes in the fair-seeming rainbow-land of shadow and chimera.

Advisers who think that they are very clever while all around them are a bit thick, and that all the problems of the world would be solved if the thick listened to the clever, are liable to be disappointed.

All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything.

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.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.

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

The great background question about the Labour governments of the sixties is whether with a stronger leader they could have gripped the country's big problems and dealt with them. How did it happen that a cabinet of such brilliant, such clever and self-confident people achieved so little? In part, it was the effect of the whirling court politics demonstrated by 'In Place of Strife'.

Let us not compare the genius with the clever; ocean with the lake!

Any legend, any creature, any symbol we ever stumble on, already exists in a vast cosmic reservoir where archetypes wait. Shapes looming outside our Platonic cave. We naturally believe ourselves clever and wise, so advanced, and those who came before us so naïve and simple...when all we truly do is echo the order of the universe, as it guides us.

There was another reason [she] took her books whenever they went away. They were her home when she was somewhere strange. They were familiar voices, friends that never quarreled with her, clever, powerful friends -- daring and knowledgeable, tried and tested adventurers who had traveled far and wide. Her books cheered her up when she was sad and kept her from being bored.

At uni I met a lot of people I had nothing in common with. Some were very clever, some very rich, some very sporty. Some of them became my best friends, but not at first. Having things in common isn't always the best start to a friendship. I'd stick with it! Also, try to chat to people when they're on their own. So many people feel they need to perform in big groups.

The great Chinese classics have always said that it's better not to fight; that the clever man achieves his ends without violence; that a battle delayed is better than a battle fought.

They tried to be too clever---and that was their undoing.

A clever general... avoids an army when its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish and inclined to return. This is the art of studying moods. Disciplined and calm, he awaits the appearance of disorder and hubbub among the enemy. This is the art of retaining self-possession.

ABOYNE (vb.) To beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him.

Experimental novels are sometimes terribly clever and very seldom read. But the story that appeals to the child sitting on your knee is the one that satisfies the curiosity we all have about what happened then, and then, and then. This is the final restriction put on the technique of telling a story. A basic thing called story is built into the human condition. It's what we are; it's something to which we react.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm. And if a handsome woman does not say stupid or horrid things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral.

Come in, Bean. Come in Julian Delphiki, longed-for child of good and loving parents. Come in, kidnapped child, hostage of fate. Come and talk to the Fates, who are playing such clever little games with your life.

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!

With QE3, we are essentially being bought out with our own money...and unemployment is being used to facilitate this process in a very clever manner. Monetary inflation is currently being offset by labor deflation. The way you avoid collapse is by printing money and stealing assets. The way you avoid inflation is with labor deflation.

I have learned that particularly clever ideas do not always stand up under close scrutiny.

I like clever songs. I like songs that make people think and I try to have substance in all my records, even with 'Sweet Dreams' how it was a club record and it was up tempo, but it was melodic and it was, like, lyrical.

Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.

No, I'm not clever. I've always cared more for people than for ideas.

Be good, sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can.

I understand that Republicans-running-against-Obamacare-in-order-to-save-Medicare is a clever jujitsu. But how long will they play out that argument before they get back to the economy?

A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savor of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

A fool is a person who guesses and gets it wrong, a clever man is one who guesses, regardless of time period, and gets it right.

Be clever and do not build walls, because in the future they will bring only shame to you!

Entropy shakes its angry fist at you for being clever enough to organize the world. (p 2)

Most of the people who write to me are really clever, really engaged. They just want to say that they have read my book and liked it.

TV—a clever contraction, derived from the words Terrible Vaudeville. We call it a medium, because nothing's well done.

By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the the impossible.

And she’s very clever, Peeta. Well, she was. Until you outfoxed her

A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.

Fools lie, clever men stick to the truth.

In every fall, clever man discovers the secrets of further rising!

When you meditate you have to try to quiet and calm the mind. There should be no thought within the mind. Right now you feel that if you can cherish twenty ideas at a time, then you are the wisest man on earth. The more thoughts that enter into our minds, the more clever we feel we are. But in the spiritual life it is not like that. If consciously we can make the mind calm and quiet, we feel that a new creation dawns inside us.

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