“There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.”

— Antonin Artaud

Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947)

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Antonin Artaud 44

French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre direc… 1896–1948

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

“Some people think I'm a mythical genius, others think I'm a junkie madman.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

“As a student in England he had befriended Jawaharlal Nehru whose progressive ideas had influenced him, and who became his close friend and mentor.”

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (1905–1977) the fifth President of India and a politician

Source: First among equals President of India, P.50

“He had no knowledge and had no desire to acquire any; wherein he conformed to his genius whose engaging fragility he forbore to overload; his instinct fortunately telling him that it was better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Il ne savait rien, ne voulait rien savoir, en quoi il se conformait à son génie, dont il ne surchargeait point l’aimable petitesse, et son heureux instinct lui conseillait de comprendre peu plutôt que de comprendre mal.
La Révolte des Anges http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_R%C3%A9volte_des_anges_-_1 [The Revolt of the Angels], (1914), ch. I

“He wasn't just a genius, he had the genius's impatience with the whole idea of doing something again. He reinvented an art form, exhausted its possibilities, and just left it. There is always something frightening about that degree of inventiveness… He didn't lose his powers. He just lost interest in proving that he possessed them.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Vale, Peter Cook' ( The Pembroke College, Cambridge, Society Annuel Gazette http://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm/odds+ends/petercook.html, September 1995)
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