Motivational Quotes

Genius

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

- Carl Sagan

Best Quotes about Genius

Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien.

Dahlberg, Edward

As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius -- the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.

Lewes, George Henry

A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.

Pound, Ezra

Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.

Lydia M. Child

It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.

Fuller, Margaret

Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught of fair water.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Genius is the ability to act rightly without precedent -- the power to do the right thing the first time.

Hubbard, Elbert

Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds.

Samuel Butler

10.

Carl Sagan

11.

All the means of action -- the shapeless masses -- the materials -- lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

12.

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.

Stael, Germaine De

13.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

14.

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

Woolf, Virginia

15.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

16.

One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.

Ray, Man

17.

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.

Hugo, Victor

18.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

Churchill, Winston

19.

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.

William Hazlitt

20.

Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it.

Schlegel, Friedrich

21.

It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace.

Picasso, Pablo

22.

A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.

Adams, Joey Lauren

23.

Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

24.

To see things in the seed is genius.

Lao-Tzu

25.

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

Calvino, Italo

26.

There is one subtle but important difference between genius and stupidity and that is that genius has its limits. You'll see yourself clearest in the eyes of your friends.

27.

Genius is of no country.

Charles Churchill

28.

Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an inhabitual way.

James, William

29.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

30.

The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.

Child, Lydia M.

31.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Picasso, Pablo

33.

The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve.

Trevor-Roper, H. R.

34.

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Nabokov, Vladimir

35.

Nothing is so envied as genius, nothing so hopeless of attainment by labor alone. Though labor always accompanies the greatest genius, without the intellectual gift labor alone will do little.

Hayden, B. R.

36.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.

Beerbohm, Sir Max

38.

Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police.

Joyce, James

39.

Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.

Edgard Varese

40.

I really cannot know whether I am or am not the Genius you are pleased to call me, but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never can be till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, has sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.

Byron, Lord

41.

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Edison, Thomas A.

42.

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

43.

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.

Auden, W. H.

44.

All of us, you, your children, your neighbors and their children are everyday geniuses, even though the fact is unnoticed and unremembered by everyone. That's probably because school hasn't encouraged us to notice what's hidden inside us waiting for the right environment to express itself.

Kline, Peter

45.

True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genius.

Thomajan, Puzant Kevork

46.

What makes men of genius, or rather, what they make, is not new ideas, it is that idea -- possessing them -- that what has been said has still not been said enough.

Delacroix, Eugene

47.

Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.

Weil, Simone

48.

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

Koestler, Arthur

50.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.