Smart quotes
2.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"A lot of people like to fool you and say that you're not smart if you never went to college, but common sense rules over everything. That's what I learned from selling crack."
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."
"It's not that liberals aren't smart, it's just that so much of what they know isn't so"
"It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."
"It's not how smart you are that matters, what really counts is how you are smart."
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"Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear."
"The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people."
"If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that."
"It takes a smart brunette to play a dumb blonde."
"Failure comes from ego, greed, envy, fear, imitation. I have success not because I am smart, but because I am rational."
"You can't just be talented: You have to be terribly smart and energetic and ruthless. You also have to become necessary to people, by working hard and well and bringing more than your bones and your skin to the project. Don't just show up. Transform the work, yourself, and everybody around you. Be needed. Be interesting. Be something no one else can be--and consistently."
"A wise girl knows her limits, a smart girl knows that she has none."
"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."
"Most people work fifty weeks a year so they can do this the other 2. Well the smart ones live in a ski resort, where the boss lets them have powder snow days off. And almost forty feet of snow falls every winter thats a lot of days off. A lot of doing what you moved here to do. Most major ski resorts are now so big that regardles of what kind ofjob you have in a city there's probably a job almost exactly like yours in a ski rsort like this. So quit your job and rent that U-haul trailer now so next winter this can be you. Not you just sitting there watching this and wishing that this was you."
"A smart girl is one who knows how to play tennis, golf, piano -- and dumb."
"If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?"
"Transparency is all about letting in and embracing new ideas, new technology and new approaches. No individual, entity or agency, no matter how smart, how old, or how experienced, can afford to stop learning."
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
"The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity."
"Weather forecast for tonight: dark."
"While we may continue to use the words smart and stupid, and while IQ tests may persist for certain purposes, the monopoly of those who believe in a single general intelligence has come to an end. Brain scientists and geneticists are documenting the incredible differentiation of human capacities, computer programmers are creating systems that are intelligent in different ways, and educators are freshly acknowledging that their students have distinctive strengths and weaknesses."
"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."
"If you want your children to be smart, tell them stories. If you want them to be really smart, tell them more stories. If you want your children to be brilliant, tell them even more stories."
"I was a class clown. At 12, I was definitely clowning. I was making all the jokes. But I was smart, so the teachers didn't know what to do with me."
"No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time."
