Brainy Quotes

You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.

I like both athletic girls and girly girls. It depends on their personality. I like girls who can go out and play sports with me and throw the football around, but you don’t want a girl who’s too much tougher than you. I like brainy girls who can respond to what I’m saying.

Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.

If youth knew; if age could.

Prosperity tries the fortunate, adversity the great.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.

Be sure your wisest words are those you do not say.

All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.

He who defends everything defends nothing.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

The joy of the mind is the measure of its strength.

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

It’s the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who are clever never think of trying to be.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

The possible ranks higher than the actual.

Man is born to live and not to prepare to live.

We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.

A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

A brainy person does not abuse copyright; instead they respect it and uphold it.

We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.

I was super brainy and a proper geek at school, but there would always be a boy. But that sort of obsession did turn me into a songwriter. My writing has always come from that feeling of infatuation.

It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

Never mistake motion for action.

Fortune favors the audacious.

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.

None so deaf as those that will not hear. None so blind as those that will not see.

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.

Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.

Clarity is the counterbalance of profound thoughts.

Brainy’s the new sexy.

It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.

One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.

There are no elements so diverse that they cannot be joined in the heart of a man.

Sometimes you can know too much. A lot of brainy people like Stephen Fry are quite depressive.

You create your own reality.

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

We can learn something new anytime we believe we can.

If not me, who? And if not now, when?

To be is to be the value of a variable.

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?

If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.

It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson’s administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s brilliant ‘whiz kids’ tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.

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

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

Talent works, genius creates.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

Be intent upon the perfection of the present day.

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

Every man must decide for himself whether he shall master his world or be mastered by it.

Great tranquility of heart is his who cares for neither praise nor blame.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

A man must not deny his manifest abilities, for that is to evade his obligations.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.

You exist only in what you do.

You can’t be taught to be brainy. You’ve either got it or you don’t.

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.

I hear, I know. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.

The pine stays green in winter… wisdom in hardship.

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

‘I don’t need brains,’ says the billionaire contemptuously. ‘I’m brainy enough myself!’ The broker cries out in desperation, ‘What, in heaven’s name, do you want?’ ‘Goodness,’ is the answer.

I’m reading a book, because I’m brainy. No, it is a book – if you don’t know, it is like a blog except bigger.

Well begun is half done.

Be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet them on your way down.

The final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

Nothing endures but personal qualities.

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

All serious daring starts from within.

An education system suits some more than others. It can lead you out into life or lead you on a wild goose chase. It can help to make you miserable, or dull and nasty and insipid, or profoundly stupid in the special way that ‘brainy’ people can be.

The brainy class is made up of individuals who think for themselves and beyond formal education are continuous learners who tend to be self-taught.

There is no fixed physical reality, no single perception of the world, just numerous ways of interpreting world views as dictated by one’s nervous system and the specific environment of our planetary existence.

Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will.

Ideals are the world’s masters.

We are what we believe we are.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

I think; therefore I am.

Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.

You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

We see things as we are, not as they are.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.

We may pass violets looking for roses. We may pass contentment looking for victory.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.

One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.

We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope.

The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

The time is always right to do what is right.

The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger.

I’m 27. I feel like I get it. I’m OK with being sexy if I feel like it. Some days I’m brainy, some days I’m funny, some days I’m sexy, and sometimes, I just want to dance.

After all is said and done, more is said than done.

What do you hang on the walls of your mind?

The final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.

We adore chaos because we love to produce order.

To work with the hands or brain, according to our requirements and our capacities, to do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable than rank and title.

The farther reason looks the greater is the haze in which it loses itself.

Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.