Top 78 Clever Quotes That Kids Will Love

Martha Martins
Dec 12, 2023 By Martha Martins
Originally Published on Feb 27, 2021
It takes a lot of creativity to think of clever quotes
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Age: 0-99
Read time: 10.2 Min

Some people can come up with the most clever things to say and make it look easy.

We've curated a list of some awesome clever quotes in this article. Some of these quotes are thought-provoking while others are just downright hilarious.

If you want to read more such quotes, then head over to our articles about sarcastic quotes and calm quotes.
 

Best Clever Quotes

Here are some powerful and clever quotes to make you think.

1. "Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties."

- Emil Nolde.

2. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

- George Bernard Shaw.

3. "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."

- Richard P. Feynman.

4. "To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little."

- Criss Jami.

5. "The masters of life know the way, for they listen to the voice within them, the voice of wisdom and simplicity, the voice that reasons beyond cleverness and knows beyond knowledge."

- Benjamin Hoff.

6. "More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness."

- Charlie Chaplin.

7. "Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new."

- Mark Haddon.

8. "What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so."

- Mark Twain.

9. "It is never wise to try to appear to be more clever than you are. It is sometimes wise to appear slightly less so."

- William Whitelaw.

10. "Tell me I'm clever, Tell me I'm kind, Tell me I'm talented, Tell me I'm cute, Tell me I'm sensitive, Graceful and wise, Tell me I'm perfect,  But tell me the truth."

- Shel Silverstein.

11. "You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."

- Naguib Mahfouz.

12. "One man's theology is another man's belly laugh."

- Robert A. Heinlein.

13. "Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness."

- Henri Frederic Amiel.

14. "It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever."

- Francois de La Rochefoucauld.

15. "A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it."

- Israel Zangwill.

16. "Always forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."

- Robert Kennedy.

17. "Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men."

- George Bernard Shaw.

18. "Clever men are good, but they are not the best."

- Thomas Carlyle.

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

- George Bernard Shaw.

20. "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.

21. "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."

- Confucius.

22. "Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness."

- Thomas Huxley.

23. "The greatest fools are oftentimes more clever than the men who laugh at them."

- George R.R. Martin.

24. "He who knows others is clever; He who knows himself has discernment."

- Thomas Carlyle.

25. "I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."

- Oscar Wilde.

Clever Birthday Quotes

Here are some clever and witty birthday quotes.

26. "Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other never forgets them."

- Ogden Nash.

27. "A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age."

- Robert Frost.

28. "As you get older three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can’t remember the other two."

- Sir Norman Wisdom.

29. "You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake."

- Bob Hope.

30. "They tell you that you’ll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don’t tell you is that you won’t miss it very much."

- Malcolm Cowley.

31. "The best way to remember your wife’s birthday is to forget it once."

- H. Prochnow.

32. "Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest."

- Rev. Larry Lorenzoni.

33. "Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter."

- Jack Benny.

Clever Senior Quotes

Here are some cool senior quotes for the yearbook.

34. "When I die, I want the people I did group projects with to lower me into the ground so they can let me down. One last time."

- Jenna Allen.

35. "I am rather appalled at the limit of characters for this. I am certain that I cannot fit all my thoughts of these last 4 years into such few cha."

- Karl Mangune.

36. "High school was easy. It was like riding a bike. Except the bike was on fire and the ground was on fire and everything was on fire because it was hell."

- Randey Chung.

37. "Remember… The more you weigh the harder you are to kidnap. Stay safe… Eat cake."

- Iyanna Morgan.

38. "I want to thank Google, Wikipedia, and to whoever invented copy and paste. Thank you."

- Stephanie Flores.

39. "If somebody ever asks you to do something, do it really bad, so you never have to do it again."

- Joanna Clark.

40. "Shoot for the moon; if you miss you will die in our space, which is cool."

- Katya Zamolodchikova.

41. "I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants."

- Ankit Jain.

Clever Movie Quotes

Here are some clever quotes from movies.

42. "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. But if you give him a mask, he will tell you the truth."

- Julian Assange, 'The Fifth Estate'.

43. "Remember those posters that said, 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life'? Well, that's true of every day but one, the day you die."

- Lester Burnham, 'American Beauty'.

44. "Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

- Ferris, 'Ferris Bueller’s Day Off'.

45. "At some point you’ve got to decide for yourself who you gonna be. Can’t let nobody make that decision for you."

- Juan, 'Moonlight'.

46. "Oh yes, the past can hurt. But you can either run from it, or learn from it."

- Rafiki, 'The Lion King'.

47. "It is not our abilities that show what we truly are… it is our choices."

- Dumbledore, 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets'.

48. "To find something, anything, a great truth or a lost pair of glasses, you must first believe there will be some advantage in finding it."

- Jack Burden, 'All the King’s Men'.

49. "You don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself."

- Sean Maguire, 'Good Will Hunting'.

Funniest Clever quotes

Some clever quotes have the capacity to make you chuckle.

Here are some witty quotes which are very clever and will also make you laugh.

50. "I saw a study that said speaking in front of a crowd is considered the number one fear of the average person. Number two was death. This means to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy."

- Jerry Seinfeld.

51. "You know you’ve reached middle age when you’re cautioned to slow down by your doctor, instead of by the police."

- Joan Rivers.

52. "Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring: 'How to Build a Boat.'"

- Steven Wright.

53. "Never follow anyone else’s path. Unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path. Then by all means follow that path."

- Ellen DeGeneres.

54. "When your mother asks, ‘Do you want a piece of advice?’ it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway."

- Erma Bombeck.

55. "Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow Internet to see who they really are."

- Will Ferrell.

56. "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society."

- Mark Twain.

57. "Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes."

- Jack Handey.

58. "I’m sick of following my dreams, man. I’m just going to ask where they’re going and hook up with ’em later."

- Mitch Hedberg.

59. "The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about."

- Wayne Dyer.

60. "It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don’t have to."

- Walter Linn.

61. "A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt.

62. "The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make a mistake."

- Elbert Hubbard.

63. "Every habit makes our hand more witty, and our wit more handy."

- Friedrich Nietzsche.

64. "Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play."

- William Congreve.

65. "Better a witty fool than a foolish wit."

- William Shakespeare.

66. "It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?"

- Ronald Reagan.

67. "A word of kindness is seldom spoken in vain, while witty sayings are as easily lost as the pearls slipping from a broken string."

- George Dennison Prentice.

68. "Everyone has a sense of humor. If you don’t laugh at jokes, you probably laugh at opinions."

- Criss Jami.

69. "Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."

- P. J. O'Rourke.

70. "By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day."

- Robert Frost.

71. "Arguing with a fool proves there are two."

- Doris M. Smith.

Clever Friendship Quotes

Here are some clever quotes about friends.

72. "A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they’re not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they’re not so bad."

- Arnold H. Glasgow.

73. "You can always tell a real friend: when you’ve made a fool of yourself he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job."

- Laurence J. Peter.

74. "A good friend is a connection to life — a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world."

- Lois Wyse.

75. "A good friend will help you move. But a best friend will help you move a dead body."

- Jim Hayes.

76. "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'"

- C.S. Lewis.

77. "Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes."

- Friedrich Nietzsche.

78. "A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked."

- Bernard Meltzer.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for clever quotes then why not take a look at satire quotes, or funny quotes for kids.

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Written by Martha Martins

Bachelor of Arts specializing in Linguistics

Martha Martins picture

Martha MartinsBachelor of Arts specializing in Linguistics

Martha is a full-time creative writer, content strategist, and aspiring screenwriter who communicates complex thoughts and ideas effectively. She has completed her Bachelor's in Linguistics from Nasarawa State University. As an enthusiast of public relations and communication, Martha is well-prepared to substantially impact your organization as your next content writer and strategist. Her dedication to her craft and commitment to delivering high-quality work enables her to create compelling content that resonates with audiences.

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