Quotes About Cleverness

These clever, amoral, inventive, destructive men, single-minded, selfish, emotionally cool, coolly attractive. I think I preferred them to the love of Jesus. They were so necessary, and not only to me. Without them we would still be living in mud huts, waiting to invent the wheel.

The man is a drunk with a drunk's bloated self-image – Abyss knows, drunks think themselves clever, and measure the prowess of their wit by the genius of their rationalizations. Of course, the first fool they deceive is themselves.

The Down Markets opened out onto it from three sides; a more decrepit collection of useless items for sale Tehol had yet to see. And the people bought in a frenzy, day after blessed day. Our civilization thrives on stupidity . And it only took a sliver of cleverness to tap that idiot vein and drink deep of the riches. Comforting, if slightly depressing. The way of most grim truths.

Our civilization thrives on stupidity. And it only took a sliver of cleverness to tap that idiot vein and drink deep of the riches. Comforting, if slightly depressing. The way of most grim truths.

I have a problem. I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever.

Some sarcasm is best told simply.

It requires genius to make a good pun - some men of bright parts can't reach it.

Because he knew how to invent machines that sometimes worked, even though everyone else laughed at them, Jody had begun to feel that he was a great deal cleverer than the Fourths and even than the other Thirds, old and married though they were. But now he suddenly saw, in a plunge into depression, that he knew nothing . After all, machines were easy to understand. But people were a mystery!

You'll have to ask Bill that, Sookie. And this is the only reason we're going? You're not cleverly using this as an excuse to make out with me? I'm not that clever, Eric. I think you deceive yourself, Sookie, Eric said with a brilliant smile.

We love the plays, the great characters, the fabulous speeches, the witty repartee even in times of duress. I hope never to be mortally stabbed, but if I am, I'd sure like to have the self-possession, when asked if it's bad, to answer, No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve, as Mercutio does in Romeo and Juliet. I mean, to be dying and clever at the same time, how can you not love that?

I can assure you that there is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life. You learn that which is of inestimable importance — that there are a great many people in the world who are just as clever as you are.

To refer to Stuyvesant High School as a "privileged little ivory tower" may be clever, but cleverness is not wisdom.

The most perfect humour and irony is generally quite unconscious.

She is certain[ly] very clever, in a doubtful sense of the word.

My wit is thynne.

To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

In older science fiction stories, they had to rely on storytelling as opposed to spectacle. The old run of the 'Twilight Zone,' the star was the writing and the storytelling, and the characters and the twists and the cleverness in the setup and payoff and execution.

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.

Wit is the only wall Between us and the dark.

It's the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who are clever never think of trying to be.

Wittiness turns me on more than anything else.

We scientists are clever — too clever — are you not satisfied? Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just tell us how big you want it!

Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which states seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of arts, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war.

Anybody ever tell you that you've got a smart mouth?" "It goes with my brain.