Cleverness Quote by William Gaddis

“Most people are clever because they don't know how to be honest." William Gaddis, The Recognitions.” quote by William Gaddis — Download Open image

““Most people are clever because they don't know how to be honest." William Gaddis, The Recognitions.””

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More by William Gaddis

“That after an hour's silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness... That's all, it took him an hour to…

William Gaddis

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“What is it they want from a man that they didn't get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of…

William Gaddis

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“-We live in Rome, he says, turning his face to the room again, -Caligula's Rome, with a new circus of vulgar bestialized suffering in the newspapers every morning. The masses, the fetid masses, he says, bringing all his weight to his feet.-How can they even suspect a self who can do more, when they live under absolutely no obligation. There…

William Gaddis

“It is a naked city. Faith is not pampered, nor hope encouraged; there is no place to lay one's exhaustion: but instead pinnacles skewer…

William Gaddis

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“-And there's this twelve thousand dollars item for books. -That supposed to be twelve hundred, the twelve thousand is for paper. towels. Besides there is already that bequest for the library. -Did it say books in so many words? No. It's just a bequest for the library. -Use it for pegboard. You need pegboard in a library. Books you don't…

William Gaddis

“There was the cell where Fr. Eulalio, a thriving lunatic of eighty-six who was castigating himself for unchristian pride at having all the vowels…

William Gaddis

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Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.

William Gaddis

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“Venerable age had not, for him, arranged that derelict landscape against which it is privileged to sit and pick its nose, break wind, and damn the course of youth groping among the obstacles erected, dutifully, by its own hands earlier, along the way of that sublime delusion known as the pursuit of happiness. Not to be confused with the state…

William Gaddis

“They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands on them, people…

William Gaddis

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We're comic. We're all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

William Gaddis

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“Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress…

William Gaddis

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“What greater comfort does time afford, than the objects of terror re-encountered, and their fraudulence exposed in the flash of reason?”

William Gaddis

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“Passion often makes a madman of the cleverest man, and renders the greatest fools clever.”

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If we fail to appreciate the soul that Easternism gives us, then what we have is a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented,…

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A fool is a person who guesses and gets it wrong, a clever man is one who guesses, regardless of time period, and gets…

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Ultimately, of course, you must decide for yourself whether the subjective psychological effects created by your evolved cognitive biases reflect an objective reality, perhaps as evidence that God designed your mind to be so receptive to Him. Or, just maybe, you will come to acknowledge that, like the rest of us, you are a hopeless pawn in one of natural…

Jesse Bering

Limits have to be set on how far one can simply use the... cleverness that we have to make changes.

Leon Kass

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Sometimes people try way too hard to sound clever on Facebook.

Anonymous

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Many of the greatest men have owed their success to industry rather than to cleverness.

John Lubbock

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What a curious picture it is to find man, homo sapiens, of divine origin, we are told, seriously considering going underground to escape the consequences of his own folly. With a little wisdom and foresight, surely it is not yet necessary to forsake life in the fresh air and in the warmth of the sunlight. What a paradox if our…

J. William Fulbright

“Neither the Russians nor the Americans were the cleverest people, or the most experienced, in the world that followed 1945. The French were rather more civilized, the British more knowledgeable, and even the Italians at times more practical. But if you have the ships, the guns, and the money, too, cleverness or experience is not really necessary. Even a reasonable…

T.R. Fehrenbach