Motivational Quotes

Genius

His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.

- Edison, Thomas A.

Best Quotes about 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

Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

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

The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Geniuses themselves don't talk about the gift of genius, they just talk about hard work and long hours.

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Nabokov, Vladimir

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius.

Beauvoir, Simone De

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

10.

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

11.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

12.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

13.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

Huxley, Aldous

14.

His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.

Edison, Thomas A.

15.

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

Ray, Man

16.

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

17.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

19.

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

Thomajan, Puzant Kevork

20.

Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.

Wilde, Oscar

21.

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

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.

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

Picasso, Pablo

25.

Genius is sorrow's child.

Adams, John

26.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

Oscar Wilde

27.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm

28.

To see things in the seed is genius.

Lao-Tzu

29.

Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

30.

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

31.

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

32.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Picasso, Pablo

33.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

34.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

35.

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

36.

The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.

Hume, David

37.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

38.

The first and last thing required of genius is, love of the truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

40.

He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.

Robertson Davies

41.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

42.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

Oscar Levant

44.

Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Lund, Robert S.

45.

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

William Hazlitt

46.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

Williams, Bern

47.

It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.

Lowell, James Russell

48.

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

Churchill, Winston

49.

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

50.

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