Before looking through our selection of clever quotes you should ask yourself: “What does being clever mean to me?”
When you think of someone as being clever, is that an intellectual judgment, or do you simply think they’re smart – as in getting away with it? Whatever ‘it” is.
The dictionary definitions of “clever” are quite varied:
- mentally bright; having sharp or quick intelligence; able.
- superficially skillful, witty, or original in character or construction; facile:
- showing inventiveness or originality; ingenious
- adroit with the hands or body; dexterous or nimble.
So, it is self evident that each person can have a different perception of what it means to be clever.
Our Life Daily team has compiled this list from some of the most frequently quoted authors, writers, comedians, and philosophers.
Judge for yourself how clever these quotes are in reality:
1. Oscar Wilde:
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.
2. George Bernard Shaw:
Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.
3. Voltaire:
Clever tyrants are never punished.
4. W. C. Fields:
The clever cat eats cheese and breathes down rat holes with baited breath.
5. Rudyard Kipling:
The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
6. Thomas Carlyle:
Clever men are good, but they are not the best.
7. Abraham Joshua Heschel:
When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
8. Albert Schweitzer:
Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.
9. Gilbert K. Chesterton:
To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
10. Francois de La Rochefoucauld:
It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one’s being clever.
11. Benjamin Disraeli:
If you’re not very clever you should be conciliatory.
12. Samuel Butler:
There is no bore like a clever bore.
13. Naguib Mahfouz:
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
14. A. N. Wilson:
The really clever people now want to be lawyers or journalists.
15. Barbara Ehrenreich:
Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.
Do you think these quotes about being clever are really clever?
Which quotes appealed to you the most?
Do you know of other clever quotes we should have included?
Share your thoughts with us by using the comments feed below.
