Famous Quotes & Sayings

Irving Layton

When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you.

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.

William Williams

Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am, by what devious means do you contrive to remain idle? Teach me, O master.

Stories are great, but at the end of the day, you remember that moment and that moment and that moment. 'The Avengers' had all of this great, giant action, but for all of the clever dialogue, it's the moments.

Witold Walczak

This clever tactical repackaging of creationism does not merit consideration. Intelligent design admits that it is not science unless science is redefined to include the supernatural.

Winston Churchill

When you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.

Rudyard Kipling

The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a clever woman to manage a fool

Grant Morrison

I couldn't think of one clever way to stop this guy, so I just trusted to mindless violence.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Seducing one's neighbor to a good opinion and then afterwards believing devoutly in this neighbor's opinion--who can match women in this clever ploy?

Frances Wright

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.

George Pell

Sometimes the very learned and clever can be brilliantly foolish, especially when seized by an apparently good cause.

George Meyer

Clever is the eunuch version of funny.

G. H. Hardy

As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or "scholarship candidates," but "Fellows of another college."

Jasper Fforde

The inspiration comes from everywhere, from what I grew up with. There's so much silliness and nonsense in the world that we regard as normal working procedure. The satirical point of the view may be to counterpoint that. The way we look at classics has been hijacked by the intelligentsia - Shakespeare is highbrow and seen as something clever people do, which isn't right at all. I basically pull inspiration from everywhere.

Hillary Clinton

Every one of us every day has choices to make about the kind of person we are and what we wish to become. You can decide to be someone who brings people together, or you can fall prey to those who wish to divide us. You can be someone who educates yourself, or you can believe that being negative is clever and being cynical is fashionable. You have a choice.

Guy Finley

If we only knew how many times our seemingly clever comment cut straight into the heart of the person with whom we have just spoken, it is we who would bleed.

Gore Vidal

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.

Gore Vidal

Half the American population no longer reads newspapers: plainly, they are the clever half.

James Denney

In preaching you cannot produce at the same time the impression that you are clever and that Christ is wonderful.

Cassandra Clare

But am I clever and right or clever and wrong?

Cassandra Clare

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.

George Eliot

If I could only fancy myself clever, it would be better, but to be a failure of Nature and to know it is not a comfortable lot. It is the last lesson one learns, to be contented with one's inferiority -- but it must be learned.

Steven Brust

A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.

Steven Pinker

We often feel that a clever aphorism captures a truth that would require pages to defend in any other way.

Sun Tzu

What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.

Sue Grafton

I read the paper every day. There are certain subjects that will catch my attention. I have an entire file of articles. Of course I make up the story, especially since most criminals are not very smart and fictional crime must be clever. I have to make sure the story I am telling is interesting and realistic. In this book I went on line and found out the manners of codes. I thought it interesting to use them as a jumping off point.

John Carmack

Because of the nature of Moore's law, anything that an extremely clever graphics programmer can do at one point can be replicated by a merely competent programmer some number of years later.

Geoff Mulgan

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.

Garrison Keillor

I think that you are only obliged to be a humorist from the age of 18 until you turn 30. Past the age of 30 I don't think there is any obligation to be clever at all.

Heinrich Heine

The gazelles so gentle and clever Skip lightly in frolicsome mood.

Hilary Mantel

I was the subject of an experiment in love. I lived my life under her gaze, undergoing certain trials for her so that she would not have to undergo them for herself. But, how are our certainties forged, except by the sweat and tears of other people? If your parents don't teach you how to live; you learn it from books; and clever people watch you learn from your mistakes.