Cleverest Quotes

Some of history's cleverest business minds understood the power of share platforms, from the aggressive titans who made fortunes building the nation's railroads, to Conrad Hilton, who created the first premier brand of international hotels. ~ Lisa Gansky

Growing up in the Boroughs, I thought I must be the cleverest boy in the world, an illusion that I was able to maintain until I got to the grammar school. ~ Alan Moore

Whoever possesses abundant joy must be a good man: but he is probably not the cleverest man, although he achieves exactly what it is that the cleverest man strives with all his cleverness to achieve. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Passion often makes a fool of the cleverest man and often makes the most foolish men clever ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

One novel has been all my reading, Our Mutual Friend, one of the cleverest that Dickens has written. ~ Lewis Carroll

Love's empire is this globe and all mankind; the most refined and the most degraded, the cleverest and the most stupid, are all liable to become his faithful subjects. He can alike command the devotion of an archbishop and a South-Sea Islander, of the most immaculate maiden lady (whatever her age) and of the savage Zulu girl. From the pole to the equator, and from the equator to the further pole, there is no monarch like Love. ~ H. Rider Haggard

We, the French, the cleverest people on Earth, we, the exquisite, the charming, incomparable people, -listen, I mean it- we have a weakness for thieves. In our novels, in our plays, in our comic operas, whenever a thief appears, he is interesting. The author knows where the way to success lies. He is scarcely concerned with moral rectitude; the main thing is to please the audience. ~ Paul Féval Père

Alzheimer's is the cleverest thief, because she not only steals from you, but she steals the very thing you need to remember what's been stolen. ~ Jarod Kintz

It has been said ever since that the Brankoviches of Erdély count in Tzintzar, lie in Walachian, are silent in Greek, sing hymns in Russian, are cleverest in Turkish and speak their mother tongue --Serbian-- only when they intend to kill. ~ Milorad Pavic

We find or invent the cleverest means of attributing our sins to anything or anyone outside of ourselves. ~ Paul Washer

The cleverest amongst you is he who is the loyal apostle of life, the true disciple of existence, the devout follower of love. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

everyone in the land has an equal chance. In war the bravest becomes a general, in peace the cleverest is chosen as a councillor. ~ G.A. Henty

The cleverest woman on earth is the biggest fool on earth with a man. ~ Dorothy Parker

There was nothing very cheerful about the cold, and yet there was an air of cheerfulness that the cleverest summer air and brightest summer sun couldn't have compared with. Everyone was in this together. ~ David Levithan

There is no ending, no neatness ... where water is concerned. It is wild, febrile, kind, ambiguous; it is dark and carries the mud, and it is clear and the cleanest thing. Too much of it kills us, and not enough kills us, and it is what makes us, mostly. Water is the cleverest substance, wily beyond the stretch of our mortal imaginations. And no matter where it is pent, no matter if it is air or liquid or solid, it will someday, inevitably, find its way out. ~ Lauren Groff

And your doubt may become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become critical. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perplexed and embarrassed perhaps, or perhaps rebellious. But don't give in, insist on arguments and act this way, watchful and consistent, every single time, and the day will arrive when from a destroyer it will become one of your best workers
perhaps the cleverest of all that are building at your life. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

You're the cleverest witch I've ever met Hermione. ~ J.K. Rowling

Without earnestness no man is ever great, or does really great things. He may be the cleverest of men; he may be brilliant, entertaining, popular; but he will want weight. No soul-moving picture was ever painted that had not in it depth of shadow. ~ Peter Bayne

Every king sleeps, but not every king wakes up as king! The snakes of the intrigue crawl around during the night! The cleverest king is the least sleeping king! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Passion often makes a madman of the cleverest man, and renders the greatest fools clever. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Audie was the cleverest man Moss had ever met. He was Yoda. He was Gandalf. He was Morpheus. Now he'd become a walking suicide note. ~ Michael Robotham

The backfire, my dear boy, of exiling the cleverest criminals of the nation to one place and requiring them to use their ingenuity is that they will
and you can't control what they do with it. ~ Sam Starbuck

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question
such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read?
not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had. ~ C.P. Snow

It's the cleverest thing I have ever seen,' she pronounced. 'At first glance, you look like any other countrywoman, but you can move like a man in it.'

'I can move like a scientist,' I corrected. 'And that is more to the point. ~ Deanna Raybourn

Are we the only members of the Galaxy that can actually understand what a galaxy is? Could Homo sapiens really be the pinnacle of Creation - the cleverest critters in the cosmos? If we learn the answer is 'no,' that would affect our philosophies forever. ~ Seth Shostak

The fittest survive. What is meant by the fittest? Not the strongest; not the cleverest - weakness and stupidity everywhere survive. There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive. 'Fitness,' then, is only another name for 'survival.' Darwinism: That survivors survive. ~ Charles Fort

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The farmer doesn't care for the pitchers' battle that resolves itself into a checkers game. The farmer loves the dramatic, and slugging is more dramatic than even the cleverest pitching. ~ Home Run Baker

Never tell an unnecessary lie; the truth has great authority. The cleverest murders have been caught, not because they told the one essential lie, but because they continued to lie about unimportant detail when the truth could have done them no harm. ~ P.D. James

Remember that when a women gets the job you wanted or dates that bloke you fancied or wears a dress you loved but couldn't afford, she hasn't taken anything from you. There is time and space for you to do it too. One of the cleverest things the patriarchy did was make us believe that there is only one tiny sliver of success cake available; that we all have to fight over it; that a woman who tramples on her competitors to chow it down first is somehow 'ruthless' or to borrow a phrase from Apprentice-ese, 'a natural business mind.' This is a scare-mongering lie. There are so many cakes to eat. And if you can't find the slice you want, try baking one. Cake for everyone! Let them eat cake! I've got lost in the metaphor. ~ Scarlett Curtis

All agreed that Quickset was the cleverest cat in the world. And, since Quickset had the same opinion, it was surely true. ~ Lloyd Alexander

Marriage is a fierce battle before which the two partners ask heaven for its blessing, because loving each other is the most audacious of enterprises; the battle is not slow to start, and victory, that is to say freedom, goes to the cleverest. ~ Honore De Balzac

He wanted to be loved for being just what he was. In this community of Yskalnari there was harmony, but no love.
He no longer wanted to be the greatest, strongest or cleverest. He had left all that far behind. He longed to be loved just as he was, good or bad, handsome or ugly, clever or stupid, with all his faults - or possibly because of them.
But what was he actually?
He no longer knew. So much have been given to him in Fantastica, and now, among all these gifts and powers, he could no longer find himself. ~ Michael Ende

My dad grew up in a mud hut and studied by candlelight. He was 14 when he got a scholarship to Russia. He was super clever - the cleverest person. He landed in 5ft of snow, and was alone at 14, studying science and engineering. He didn't have a bed, and he slept on a table. ~ M.I.A.

It's with such nothings that clever people are thrown off most easily. The cleverer the man, the less he suspects that he can be thrown off with the simplest thing. It's precisely the simplest thing that will throw off the cleverest man. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Finally, the inner accessibility and reflectiveness of theoretical knowledge which cannot basically be withheld from anybody, as can certain emotions and volitions, has a consequence that directly offsets its practical results. In the first place, it is precisely because of their general accessibility that factors quite independent of personal capacities decide on the factual utilization of knowledge. This leads to the enormous preponderance of the most unintelligent 'educated' person over the cleverest proletarian. The apparent equality with which educational materials are available to everyone interested in them is, in reality, a sheer mockery. The same is true of the other freedoms accorded by the liberal doctrines which, though they certainly do not hamper the individual from gaining goods of any kind, do however disregard the fact that only those already privileged in some way or another have the possibility of acquiring them. For just as the substance of education - in spite of, or because of it general availability - can ultimately be acquired only through individual activity, so it gives rise to the most intangible and thus the most unassailable aristocracy, to a distinction between high and low which can be abolished neither (as can socioeconomic differences) by a decree or a revolution. Thus it was appropriate for Jesus to say to the rich youth: 'Give away your goods to the poor', but not for him to say: 'Give your education to the underprivileged'. There is no adva ~ Georg Simmel

In fact, I think the cleverest people must be pessimistic, depressed, because they are realistic, and they see how the world really is. ~ Emma Woolf

The most interesting acquaintanceship I have struck up here is that of Colonel Lapinski. He is without doubt the cleverest Pole
besides being an homme d'action [man of action]
that I have ever met. His sympathies are all on the German side, though in manners and speech he is also a Frenchman. He cares nothing for the struggle of nationalities and only knows the racial struggle. He hates all Orientals, among whom he numbers Russians Turks, Greeks, Armenians, etc., with equal impartiality ... His aim now is to raise a German legion in London ... ~ Karl Marx

Everyone here was the cleverest little monkey in his or her particular tree. Except now we're all in one tree together. It can be a shock. Not enough coconuts to go round. You'll be dealing with your equals for the first time in your life, and your betters. You won't like it. ~ Lev Grossman

Ghislaine didn't look up from the book she was poring over. There was a stack of them on the desk before her, and another beside the narrow bed. Where the eldest and cleverest of her Thirteen had gotten them from, who she'd likely gutted to steal them, Manon didn't care. "Hello, and come right in, why don't you" was the response. Manon leaned against the door and crossed her arms. Only with books, only when reading, was Ghislaine so snappish. On the battlefield, in the air, the dark-skinned witch was quiet, easy to command. A solid soldier, made more valuable by her razor-sharp intelligence, which had earned her the spot among the Thirteen. ~ Sarah J. Maas

'Once Upon A Time In America' is one of the cleverest films of all time, because you can get out of it whatever you want to get out of it. ~ Ray Winstone

Who understands war: the solders? the homeless ones? Mussolini? Or the leaders of the English and the Americans? No, nobody understands war, they only think they do. Maybe the earth that drinks up the blood understands it and says: How foolish is man. Of all the animals that lives upon me, he is the cleverest and the most foolish. ~ Erik Christian Haugaard

Things rarely happen for a single reason. Even the cleverest and most skilled manipulators recognize that their real art lies in making use of that which they cannot predict. ~ Tom Clancy

People in England talk about stupid Hollywood idiots, but the industry attracts some of the cleverest people in the world. ~ Chris O'Dowd

A thousand years or more ago,
When I was newly sewn,
There lived four wizards of renown,
Whose name are still well-known:
Bold Gryffindor from wild moor,
Fair Ravlenclaw from glen,
Sweet Hufflepuff from valley broad,
Shrewd Slytherin from fen.
They share a wish, a hope, a dream,
They hatched a daring plan,
To educate young sorcerers,
Thus Hogwarts school began.
Now each of these four founders
Formed their own house, for each
Did value different virtues,
In the ones they had to teach.
By Gryffindor, the bravest were
Prized far beyond the rest;
For Ravenclaw, the cleverest
Would always be the best;
For Hufflepuff, hardworkers were
Most worthy of admission;
And power-hungry Slytherin
Loved those of great ambition.
While still alive they did divide
Their favourates from the throng,
Yet how to pick the worthy ones
When they were dead and gone?
'Twas Gryffindor who found the way,
He whipped me off his head
The founders put some brains in me
So I could choose instead!
Now slip me snug around your ears,
I've never yet been wrong,
I'll have alook inside your mind
And tell where you belong! ~ J.K. Rowling

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It's an ancient idea that the leader of a democracy should not be the cleverest but the most average. That's an arguable point, but the world has decided otherwise - except in America, where it still divides the country right down the middle. ~ Martin Amis

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story, and the scene changes. The people change, too. I'm still around, but from here on in, for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose, I've disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me. ~ J.D. Salinger

The great principle of Western society is that competition rules here as it rules in everything else. The best man - that is to say, the strongest and cleverest - is likely to get the best woman, in the sense of the most beautiful person. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

For our purpose, however, what the soldiers did or did not read is irrelevant. For, if soldiers did not learn to fight their battles from reading books, neither is it likely that military historians learned to write their books from watching battles. Battles are extremely confusing; and confronted with the need to make sense of something he does not understand, even the cleverest, indeed preeminently the cleverest man, realizing his need for a language and metaphor he does not possess, will turn to look at what someone else has already made of a similar set of events as a guide for his own pen. ~ John Keegan

When we are young we do not look into mirrors. It is when we are old, concerned with our name, our legend, what our lives will mean to the future. We become vain with the names we own, our claims to have been the first eyes, the strongest army, the cleverest merchant. It is when he is old that Narcissus wants a graven image of himself. ~ Michael Ondaatje

By Gryffindor, the bravest were Prized far beyond the rest; For Ravenclaw, the cleverest Would always be the best; For Hufflepuff, hard workers were Most worthy of admission; And power-hungry Slytherin Loved those of great ambition. ~ J.K. Rowling

You have the skill. What is more, you were born a woman, And women, though most helpless in doing good deeds, Are of every evil the cleverest of contrivers. ~ Euripides

The cleverest is the one who thinks that he too can well be wrong in any matter whatsoever! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

All over?' he repeated. 'If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love! ~ Leo Tolstoy

I am not. I am certain of the things that matter. Kindness and honor are always good. Do not build God in your own image, with your doubts and fears, your need to judge and condemn, your need for safety, and to be right whatever the cost to others, and ultimately to yourself. Let your soul be still, and know that God is never capricious, never cruel and never wrong. It is our understanding that stumbles. Even the cleverest of us are yet children, and the wisest of us know that. ~ Anne Perry

IN THE TORRID London summer of 1886, William Gladstone was up against Benjamin Disraeli for the post of prime minister of the United Kingdom. This was the Victorian era, so whoever won was going to rule half the world. In the very last week before the election, both men happened to take the same young woman out to dinner. Naturally, the press asked her what impressions the rivals had made. She said, "After dining with Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest person in England. But after dining with Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest person in England." Guess who won the election? It was the man who made others feel intelligent, impressive, and fascinating: Benjamin Disraeli. ~ Olivia Fox Cabane

Puns are little plays on words that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water. ~ Dave Barry