Clever quotes
1.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside clever — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself. Sometimes I am so clever I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
"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."
"It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play. That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem for us. We feel justified in being annoyed with everything. We feel justified in denigrating ourselves or in feeling that we are more clever than other people. Self-importance hurts us, limiting us to the narrow world of our likes and dislikes. We end up bored to death with ourselves and our world. We end up never satisfied."
"If you want to make enemies, try to change something."
"...and there I suddenly found my articulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that's when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor?"
"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."
"To err is human, but it feels divine."
"Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit."
"Clever policy consists in making nations believe they are free."
"Good people are found not changed. Recently I read a headline that said, 'We don't teach people to be nice. We simply hire nice people.' Wow! What a clever short cut."
"I used to live in a room full of mirrors; all I could see was me. I take my spirit and I crash my mirrors, now the whole world is here for me to see."
"If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead."
"It is better to play than do nothing."
"A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch."
"Credulity is always a ridiculous, often a dangerous failing: it has made of many a clever man, a fool; and of many a good man, a knave."
"To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered."
"This is a long tough road we have to travel. The men that can do things are going to be sought out just as surely as the sun rises in the morning. Fake reputations, habits of glib and clever speech, and glittering surface performance are going to be discovered."
"Clever tyrants are never punished."
"Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience."
"Write drunk; edit sober."
