Smart Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

People say you need to be strong, smart, and lucky to survive hard times, war, a natural disaster, or physical torture. But I say emotional abuse—anxiety, fear, guilt, and degradation—is far worse and much harder to survive.

I've been taking a closer look at these graduates. They are actually taller, stronger, smarter than we were, smart enough maybe to take our mistakes as their messages, to make our weaknesses their lessons, and to make our example — good and not so good — part of their education.

At this very moment, you may be saying to yourself that you have any number of admirable qualities. You are a loyal friend, a caring person, someone who is smart, dependable, fun to be around. That's wonderful, and I'm happy for you, but let me ask you this: are you being any of those things to yourself?

People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs.

You don't have to be smart to act — look at the outgoing president of the United States.

and she's a nurse. do you know how hard nursing school is? it's like medical school. so she's obviously smart.

Augusten Burroughs

Not that smart. Not that hot. Not that nice. Not that funny. That's me: I'm not that.

In his anti-Darwinian book... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe), Francis Hitching tells the story... "The need to survive by reaching ever higher for food is, like so many Darwinian explanations of its kind, little more than a post hoc speculation." Hitching is quite correct, but he rebuts a fairy story that Darwin was far too smart to tell - even though the tale later entered our high school texts as a "classic case" nonetheless.

Stephen Jay Gould

I realised fairly early that the 'wisdom of the ages' - whether from 3000 years ago or yesterday - often was simply and perfectly adaptable to the context of the football arena, and immensely valuable. From my regular morning habit of reading, I would write down any wise, pragmatic and smart quotes and ideas that struck me, and that I felt could be of use in coaching.

There is no such thing as 'soft sell' and 'hard sell.' There is only 'smart sell' and 'stupid sell.'

Charles Browder

When did you get so smart?" He tapped his forehead. "Brain transplant. They put in a whale's. I'm passing all my classes with my eyes closed now, but I just can't get over this craving for krill." He shrugged. "And I feel sorry for the whale that got my brain. Probably swimming around Florida now trying to catch glimpses of girls in bikinis.

Maggie Stiefvater

You tell those newspaper people that they may be smart, but I'm smarter. They deal with words. Some folks say that words were made to reveal thoughts. That ain't so. Words were made to conceal thought.

Mary Ellen Pleasant

It's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart.

Stephen Schwartz

I loved her fright, which was against me into the air! and the diamond white of her forelock which seemed to smart with thoughts as my heart smarted with life! and she'd toss her head with the pain and paw the air and champ the bit, as if I were Endymion and she, moon-like, hated to love me.

I like words — strike that I love words — and while I am fond of the condensed and economical use of them in poetry, in song lyrics, in Twitter, in good journalism and smart advertising, I love the luxuriant profusion and mad scatter of them too.

[It's a] really smart, faithful adaptation of the book. The book is such a tight page-turner… The character I play is an extreme guy… He's a killer. He wants to be Jesse James. He grew up watching cowboy and Indian movies and wants to be that. Then he meets Mickey Rourke's character, who's named The Black Bird and he wants to partner up with him and be a criminal and kill people. He's a psychotic and very bad guy… The thing about him is, he's not the bad killer, the kind of guy that sits and stews and then has these rageful outbursts. He is this extreme extrovert who never shuts up and tells you ridiculously tall tales about himself and mythologizes everything… Hyperactive, hyper, hyper guy wearing cowboy boots.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Is there a youth whose anxious heart
Labours with love's unpitied smart?

Brains are an asset to the woman in love who's smart enough to hide 'em.

We're a planet of nearly six billion ninnies living in a civilization that was designed by a few thousand amazingly smart deviants.

If our brains were simple enough to be understood, we wouldn't be smart enough to understand them.

Don't try to change someone's worldview is the strategy smart marketers follow. Don't try to use facts to prove your case and to insist that people change their biases. You don't have enough time and you don't have enough money. Instead, identify a population with a certain worldview, frame your story in terms of that worldview and you win.

Smart leaders believe only half of what they
hear. Discerning leaders know which have
to believe.

John C. Maxwell

What is wrong with encouraging students to put "how well they're doing" ahead of "what they're doing." An impressive and growing body of research suggests that this emphasis (1) undermines students' interest in learning, (2) makes failure seem overwhelming, (3) leads students to avoid challenging themselves, (4) reduces the quality of learning, and (5) invites students to think about how smart they are instead of how hard they tried.

Life begets intelligence, intelligence begets smart matter and a singularity.

I think I'm just as good as anyone. That's the way I was brought up. I'll tell you a secret: I think I'm better! Ha! I remember being aware that colored people were supposed to feel inferior. I knew I was a smart little thing, a personality, an individual - a human being! I couldn't understand how people could look at me and not see that, because it sure was obvious to me.