Stupid Clever Quotes & Sayings

I think clever people think that poor people are stupid. — Norm MacDonald

You can make fun of yourself and people will laugh at you. If you're smart, you'll end up as a comedian. If you're not, you'll end up as a clown. — Ljupka Cvetanova

No, I'm not smart," he whispered against her ear, "but I was wise enough to fall in love with you and clever enough to convince you to marry me. I hope I'm not so stupid that I would ever let you go. — Sara Lindsey

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it. — G.K. Chesterton

Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I'm hoping that, by living inside their skins while he hears their stories, he'll understand over time that women are not all this way or that way. I'm hoping he'll look at women as he does at men
that you must judge each of us on her own merits, and not condemn us or exalt us only because we belong to a particular sex. — Susan Fletcher

Jokes are another example of stupidity... we are so wise and so clever and we do stupid stuff, how wise is that?

Jokes on stage of being serious... when you aren't serious what you get is more likely somebody being in state of seriousness. — Deyth Banger

It's such a fine line between stupid and clever. — Michael McKean

I favour humans over ideology, but right now the ideologues are winning, and they're creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas, where everyone is either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. We can lead good, ethical lives, but some bad phraseology in a Tweet can overwhelm it all - even though we know that's not how we should define our fellow humans. What's true about our fellow humans is that we are clever and stupid. We are grey areas.
And so ... when you see an unfair or an ambiguous shaming unfold, speak up on behalf of the shamed person. A babble of opposing voices - that's democracy.
The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people. Let's not turn it into a world where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless. — Jon Ronson

A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it. — Israel Zangwill

Fairytales teach children that the world is fraught with danger, including life-threatening danger; but by being clever (always), honest (as a rule, but with common-sense exceptions), courteous (especially to the elderly, no matter their apparent social station), and kind (to anyone in obvious need), even a child can succeed where those who seem more qualified have failed.
And this precisely what children most need to hear.
To let them go on believing that the world is safe, that they will be provided for and achieve worthwhile things even if they remain stupid, shirk integrity, despise courtesy, and act only from self-interest, that they ought to rely on those stronger, smarter, and more able to solve their problems, would be the gravest disservice: to them, and to society as a whole.
-On the Supposed Unsuitability of Fairytales for Children — J. Aleksandr Wootton

It's not that I'm so clever, it is that others are so stupid. — George Bernard Shaw

I really made few uncrediable subscribes, which I want to put as "I'm glad, that I have done it". It's difficult to find such stuff, it's difficult without a knowledge to do something, but out there with this DUMB and Stupid people there is and people which are clever and smart. — Deyth Banger

I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones. — John Peel

Sometimes a stupid man is only a couple of good guesses away from looking clever. — Philip Kerr

Between a stupid fascist and an intelligent fascist, prefer the intelligent one, because there is always a chance to persuade the clever one about the mistakes of his actions! There is no such a chance for stupid and ignorant fascist! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Behind your every bad fate, almost always there lie your own stupid mistakes! Behind your every good fate, almost always there lie your own clever deeds! Skies have nothing whatsoever to do with your fate! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst. — Thomas Mann

While the wealthy are no more likely to be born stupid than the poor, a wealthy upbringing compounds stupidity while a hardscrabble childhood dilutes it, if only for Darwinian reasons. This is why the elite need a prophylactic barrier of shitty state schools, to prevent the clever kids from the working-class post codes ousting them from the Enclave of Privilege. — David Mitchell

The fact that someone is not particularly intelligent is no guide in these things. People may be stupid and extremely complicated just as they can be clever and incapable of deep feeling. — Julian Fellowes

The interior of a teenager's mind is an endless war between Stupid and Clever. — William Landay

You scare me, Sebastian. You're so good looking, and so clever, and so damn charming. Hell, you're even sporting a monster dick - not that I go for that sort of thing, but a lot of women do. Sebastian, if someone had to design a death trap for stupid women, you'd be it. — Remittance Girl

Well, Watson, what do you make of it?'
Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.
'How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.'
'I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me', said he. — Arthur Conan Doyle

[Steven Spielberg's films] are comforting, they always give you answers and I don't think they're very clever answers ... The success of most Hollywood films these days is down to fact that they're comforting. They tie things up in nice little bows and give you answers, even if the answers are stupid, you go home and you don't have to think about it ... The great filmmakers make you go home and think about it. — Terry Gilliam

People are hard to be understand, full of lies, full of corupt, if you want a friendship with them is like to have a friendship with nothing. But nothing isn't a possibility of the ability, people you can go 40....50 years studying them and what you will find is that you are old and they are new and more and more stupid. I find somebody who can I trust, it's my computer who else???
It's too clever, I need to hang out with clever people not with idiots! — Deyth Banger

One has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual. — Thomas Mann

Wise people make trails and paths, clever walk on them - stupid people can't decide. — Deyth Banger

man is the only animal that is clever enough to build the empire state building and stupid enough to jump off. — Rock Hudson

Philosophers have a long tradition of marrying stupid women, from Socrates on. They think it clever. — Simon Gray

I don't think I see the world in terms of stupid or clever, but in terms of being able to get irony. There's some awful statistic about only 20 per cent of Americans being able to understand irony. — Douglas Coupland

Hardly happy at all, and I'm ready to take the fall. We pay for the stupid things we've done where I come from. Can you sit through this? Or is it gonna be too deep? — Tegan Quin

He was stupid, yes, in the particular way that very clever people can be stupid. — Terry Pratchett

Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was very stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a genius — Leo Tolstoy

Our [American] money system is structurally brittle. It doesn't matter if you put a very clever guy or a stupid guy at the wheel. The clever guy will take a half hour to have an accident, and the stupid guy will take ten minutes. — Bernard Lietaer

Jezal had often observed that the ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company. Having lost the high ground already, they scramble eagerly for the position of likable idiot, stay out of arguments they will only lose, and hence be everyone's friend, — Joe Abercrombie

I have certainly noticed that groups of clever and intelligent people are capable of really stupid ideas. — Terry Pratchett

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

Not that it matters. It didn't kill me. You don't die that easily, but let me tell you, you come close to it. Afterwards, what you went through makes you so clever you wish you could become stupid again, utterly stupid. — Magda Szabo

Yeah I am stupid, as a wiseman I don't think I am a clever, but as far I see stupid people count themselves as smart and clever. — Deyth Banger

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so - but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence, the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. — Douglas Adams

There are moments in which stupid people say clever things, obtuse people say sharp things, and good-natured people say ill-natured things. — Anthony Trollope

From the port of ideas, not only the most clever ones put out to sea and conquer the world but also the most stupid ones do this! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

There is also the basic inequality of being born either with a natural talent or without one. Clever or stupid. No matter how much you try to argue against it, Dora, we are not born equal. All we can ever strive for is the equality of opportunity for those who have the ability to make the most of it. — Sally Wentworth

The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent man must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over. But, good Lord! - you can never pretend that it is right that the stupid folk should govern the clever ones I (Uproar and cries.) Oh, yes - you can shout me down, I know! But you cannot answer me. The majority has might on its side - unfortunately; but right it has not. I am in the right - I and a few other scattered individuals. The minority is always in the right. (Renewed uproar.) — Henrik Ibsen

Stupid man produces noise; clever man produces silence! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

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. — Bertrand Russell

But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn't stupid. They just take a bit more time, that's all. — Robert Harris

In an election, a stupid man can get the votes of the ignorant much easier than a clever man simply because he will naturally get the attraction of the ignorant; the clever is always repulsive for ignorant! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

He loved her in spite of her unlovableness. Armande had many trying, thought not necessarily rare, traits, all of which he accepted as absurd clues in a clever puzzle. — Vladimir Nabokov

And I understood then that I was a fool when I told you I would take my turn in singing the honours of Love, and admitted I was terribly clever in love affairs, whereas it seems I really had no idea how a eulogy ought to be made. For I was stupid enough to think that we ought to speak the truth about each person eulogised, and to make this the foundation, and from these truths to choose the most beautiful things and arrange them in the most elegant way; and I was quite proud to think how well I should speak, because I believed that I knew the truth. — Plato

Man is flowing. In him there are all possibilities: he was stupid, now he is clever; he was evil, now he is good, and the other way around. In this is the greatness of man. — Leo Tolstoy

Unix was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. — Douglas Gwyn

William was deeply humiliated. I tried to comfort him; I told him that for three days he had been looking for a text in Greek and it was natural in the course of his examination for him to discard all books not in Greek. And he answered that it is certainly human to make mistakes, but there are some human beings who make more than others, and they are called fools, and he was one of them, and he wondered whether it was worth the effort to study in Paris and Oxford if one was then incapable of thinking that manuscripts are also bound in groups, a fact even novices know, except stupid ones like me, and a pair of clowns like the two of us would be a great success at fairs, and that was what we should do instead of trying to solve mysteries, especially when we were up against people far more clever than we. — Umberto Eco

It's going to work."
"Classic," Roarke said.
"What's going to work? What's classic? I want my jacket."
"Forget it. You're going to walk right up to Milo the Mole's front door, and he's going to answer."
"I am? He is?"
"Damsel in distress, right?" Eve said to Roarke.
"A very alluring damsel. Clever, Lieutenant."
"Oh, okay. I get it. I look like I'm in trouble - all alone, unarmed. Harmless. Girl. He opens up to find out what's what. You should do it," Peabody told Eve.
"You're the one with the tits. Men are stupid for tits."
"Harsh," Roarke observed. "But largely true."
"Plus, you're the type, obviously, who appeals to skinny geeks."
"Oh yeah," McNab confirmed. "Completely. — J.D. Robb

Gilks sighed. 'You're a clever man, Cjelli, I grant you that,' he said, 'but you make the same
mistake a lot of clever people do of thinking everyone else is stupid. — Douglas Adams

Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly color. I'm so glad I'm a Beta. — Aldous Huxley

Minerva considered herself a reasonably intelligent person, but good heavens ... handsome men made her stupid. She grew so flustered around them, never knew where to look or what to say. The reply meant to be witty and clever would come out sounding bitter or lame. Sometimes a teasing remark from Lord Payne's quarter quelled her into dumb silence altogether. Only days later, while she was banging away at a cliff face with a rock hammer, would the perfect retort spring to mind. — Tessa Dare

It is not that I am so clever; it is that everyone else is so stupid. — George Bernard Shaw

A clever woman often compromises her husband; a stupid woman only compromises herself. — Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

A clever man can see the world from a cave much better than a stupid man can from the top of a mountain! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid. — Orson Scott Card

The ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company. — Joe Abercrombie

I don't like being called 'macho.' Macho basically means stupid and a real Italian man is not macho, he's smart. That's smart in both senses: elegant and clever. — Andrea Bocelli

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 Brust

I hate a stupid man who can't talk to me, and I hate a clever man who talks me down. I don't like a man who is too lazy to make any effort to shine; but I particularly dislike the man who is always striving for effect. I abominate a humble man, but yet I love to perceive that a man acknowledges the superiority of my sex, and youth and all that kind of thing ... A man who would tell me that I am pretty, unless he is over seventy, ought to be kicked out of the room. But a man who can't show me that he thinks me so without saying a word about it, is a lout. — Anthony Trollope

The difference between me and Abolqader was that I spoke to my wife with refinement and he spoke to her coarsely and violently, I took a shower once a day and he took one once a month, I didn't even eat spring onions and he ate onions and garlic and radishes by the kilo, I read her poetry by Sa'di and he belched at her...and so in my wife's eyes I was stupid and he was clever, I was an idiot and he was intelligent. I was coarse and he was refined...But apparently he was a very good traveller.." Asadollah Mirza (from My Uncle Napoleon). — Iraj Pezeshkzad

Where courage and judgement are equally required a clever coward is better than a stupid hero. — Michael Collins

Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate — Terry Pratchett

Never drink diet soda. It shows you have no nerve. Only drink real colas, caffeine-packed energy drinks, or vitamin water. Hate champagne because that's what everyone expects you to love. Energy drinks are the best party drinks. You never get tired, you never get a hangover, and you can make fun of all the loaded people who think they're clever but are really acting stupid. — Paris Hilton

Stupid people like to delude themselves that while they may not be clever, they were at least able to compensate with feelings and insights denied to the intellectual ... It was precisely this kind of false belief that made stupid people so stupid. The truth was the clever people had infinitely more resources from which to make the leaps of connection that the world called intuition. What was 'intelligence' after all, but the ability to read into things? — Stephen Fry

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them. — Bertrand Russell

Bush is a very stupid man. The American people are not stupid, they are very clever. I can't understand how such clever people came to elect such a stupid president. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

I had been proud of my awareness, aware of my pride, and proud of that awareness again. It went on like this: How clever I am that I know I am so stupid, how stupid I am to think that I am clever, and how clever I am that I am aware of my stupidity, etc. — Janwillem Van De Wetering

In a stupid society, a clever man can come into the power; but in a clever society no stupid can come into the power! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

That's the problem with college kids. I blame Hollywood for skewing their perspective. Life is just a big romantic comedy to them, and if you meet cute, happily-ever-after is a foregone conclusion. So there we were, the pretty blond girl milking her very slight congenital limp in order to seem damaged and more interesting, and the nervous boy with the ridiculous hair trying so hard to be clever, the two of us hypnotized by the syncopated rhythms of our furiously beating hearts and throbbing loins. That stupid, desperate, horny kid I was, standing obliviously on the fault line of embryonic love, when really, what he should have been doing was running for his life. — Jonathan Tropper

The whole point of the Eugenic pseudo-scientific theories is that they are to be applied wholesale, by some more sweeping and generalizing money power than the individual husband or wife or household. Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's. — G.K. Chesterton

We're both clever and stupid in equal measure. — Brian Cox

Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be too clever by half. The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters. — John Major

Though the stupid have great capacity to direct the world because they are plentiful, the clever has a much greater capacity to prevent the stupid from halting the progression of humanity because - though they are rare - they are tactical and intelligent! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Mr. [Aldous] Huxley has been the alarming young man for a long time, a sort of perpetual clever nephew who can be relied on to flutter the lunch party. Whatever will he say next? How does he think of those things? He has been deplored once or twice, but feeling is in his favor: he is steadily read. He is at once the truly clever person and the stupid person's idea of the clever person; he is expected to be relentless, to administer intellectual shocks. — Elizabeth Bowen

MRS ALLONBY I adore them. The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
HESTER I think the stupid people talk a great deal.
MRS ALLONBY Ah, I never listen! — Oscar Wilde

The problem is, is when your focus is created by a crisis, then the frontal lobe shuts down essentially, the frontal cortex which is your intuitive intelligence. So you get very clever and very stupid in a crisis. Also, you pump adrenalin into your body from what you - physiologically you'll crash. — David Allen

For a man reckoned clever, he got wedged in a lot of stupid corners. — Joe Abercrombie

Football is a game based on emotion and intelligence. Anyone can be clever, the trick is not to think the other guy is stupid. — Jose Mourinho

My wit is only as stupid as the audience. — Aleksandra Ninkovic

Democracy is when two stupid has more rights than clever one. — Myself

I'm different," said the Kid. "My gran always said I was half clever, half stupid, and half crazy. — Charlie Higson

Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so. — W. H. Auden

It is in just such stupid things clever people are most easily caught. The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in. Porfiry is not such a fool as you think.... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I went to school, and I remember that you had to do these tests to find out what set you're in - how clever you are. I put down "Kit Harington," and they looked at me like I was completely stupid, and they said, "No, you're Christopher Harington, I'm afraid." It was only then I learnt my actual name. That was kind of a bizarre existential crisis for an 11-year-old to have, but in the end I always stuck with Kit, because I felt that's who I was. I'm not really a "Chris." — Kit Harington

In this life you have to be your own hero.
By that I mean you have to win whatever it is that matters to you by your own strength and in your own way.
Like it or not, you are alone in a forest, just like all those fairy tales that begin with a hero who's usually stupid but somehow brave, or who might be clever, but weak as a straw, and away he goes (don't worry about the gender), cheered on by nobody, via the castles and the bears, and the old witch and the enchanted stream, and by and by (we hope) he'll find the treasure. — Jeanette Winterson

Strange, isn't it,' mused Glokta as he watched him struggle for air. 'Big men, small men, thin men, fat men, clever men, stupid men, they all respond the same to a fist in the guts. One minute you think you're the most powerful man in the world. The next you can't even breathe by yourself. — Joe Abercrombie

I never heard tell of any clever man that came of entirely stupid people. — Thomas Carlyle

So long as victory can be attained, stupid haste is preferable to clever dilatoriness. — Sun Tzu

The gods are being kind to me in my old age. Most beautiful women are either good, stupid or vicious. And you are the marvellous exception. Lovely as a goddess, clever as an Athenian and a bad hat like myself, yet one who still has decent feelings. I'm going to kiss the lips off you once we land in France. — Dennis Wheatley

There are times when you've personally known things to misfire
the sentence that fell badly, the dull gift, slapdash comment, hobbled punch line, tight-fisted tip
trying to be too stupid, trying to be too clever, too silly, too carefree, too caring, too free. You can think back to those long and hollow pauses when you realised that you'd misjudged a mood, weren't paying attention, had taken the wrong risk. — A. L. Kennedy

Have you noticed how the cleverest people at school are not those who make it in life?
People who are conventionally clever get jobs on their qualifications (the past), not on their desire to succeed (the future).
Very simply, they get overtaken by those who continually strive to be better than they are. — Paul Arden

I asked somebody else who is out my country about his country and what he answered what's a big suprise what the people said in my country was "STUPIDY" - Category answer! — Deyth Banger

As is so often the case with pieces that appear in the Onion, I honestly could not decide whether this was a clever hoax or not - the arguments were almost exactly as stupid as the real thing. — Christopher Hitchens

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he. — Karl Kraus

In the beginning of the twentieth century you could not see the ground for clever men. They were so common that a stupid man was quite exceptional, and when they found him, they followed him in crowds down the street and treasured him up and gave him some high post in the State. — G.K. Chesterton