"Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?"
Clever quotes
Clever
1.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Clever
Browse quotes that often appear alongside clever — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Clever quotes (page 16 of 67)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Fools lie, clever men stick to the truth."
"He's clever,' thought Ivan,' I must admit there are some smart people even among the intelligentsia"
"Be good, sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can."
"In some circles where very heavy people think they have very heavy brains, words like "charming" and "clever" and "pretty" are all put-downs; all the lighter things in life, which are the most important things, are put down."
"Bessie Braddock: "Winston, you're drunk. Churchill: "Bessie, you're ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober."
"By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. . . . I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence - which is a noble thing. Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat."
"You are very clever,' said the old man shyly. 'I would like to eat your brains, one day,' For some reason the books of etiquette that Daphne's grandmother had forced on her didn't quite deal with this. Of course, silly people would say to babies, 'You're so sweet I could gobble you all up!', but that sort of nonsense seemed less funny when it was said by a man in war paint who owned more than one skull. Daphne, cursed with good manners, settled for, 'It's very kind of you to say so."
"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."
"If they are just, they are better than clever."
"My scholarly expectation is then that I may succeed in becoming clever in philosophy in spite of my stupidity."
"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."
"It has always seemed slightly uncomfortable, the idea of politicised musicians. Very few of them are clever enough to do it; if they're good at the political side, the music side suffers, and vice versa."
"We can be more clever than one, but not more clever than all."
"There is scarcely any man sufficiently clever to appreciate all the evil he does."
"I become more convinced that beings from other planets are using the Earth as a lunatic asylum"
"Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's."
"The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid."
"How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It's the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It's been two hundred years at it. It's superb."
"Every story has a moral you just need to be clever enough to find it - the Dutchess"