If you want your children to be smart, tell them stories. If you want them to be really smart, tell them more stories. If you want your children to be brilliant, tell them even more stories.
How do you measure whether or not a strategy of economic growth that is articulated by a very smart, capable economist actually yields growth? You can't. But you can influence.
I have no interest in increasing the size of government. I just want to make sure we have got a smart government that is regulating, for example, the financial institutions smartly, so I don't have to engage in any kind of bank bailouts.
We have to have better intelligence. We have to have better interdiction capabilities. And so the issue is not how much we spend or how hard we try; the issue is are we doing it the right way? Are we being smart about it?
I was always amused that people were either skeptical or surprised that I would choose a Hillary Clinton as a secretary of state. To my mind, having somebody smart, tough, capable with her own stature, who could travel around the world and command the stage, was a huge asset.
I've seen more people fail because of liquor and leverage -- leverage being borrowed money. You really don't need leverage in this world much. If you're smart, you're going to make a lot of money without borrowing.
A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spurt at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur.
I often went entire days without speaking - unable to get a word in over my inner taskmaster, who never shut up: “You fat, disgusting slob, you'll never be thin enough, good enough, smart enough, tough or talented enough.
I don't even really understand that concept of someone being 'smart' or someone else being 'smarter.' I think that except for the obvious special cases, we're all equal.
Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.
Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty; It is its own reward. Everything else is in god's hands. It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.