“Society expresses its sympathy for the geniuses of the past to distract attention from the fact that it has no intention of being sympathetic to the geniuses of the present.”
The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)
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Celia Green 50
British philosopher 1935Related quotes

Broca's Brain (1979), p. 64 http://books.google.com/books?id=90DuAAAAMAAJ
Source: Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
Context: 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.

Delacroix était passionnément amoureux de la passion, et froidement déterminé à chercher les moyens d'exprimer la passion de la manière la plus visible. Dans ce double caractère, nous trouvons, disons-le en passant, les deux signes qui marquent les plus solides génies, génies extrêmes.
L’œuvre et la vie d’Eugène Delacroix http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/L%27%C5%92uvre_et_la_vie_d%27Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix#III [The Life and Work of Eugène Delacroix] (1863), published in Curiosités esthétiques (1868)

Quote of Breton, from La Clé des Champs (1953); as cited by Thomas Molnar, The Decline of the Intellectual (1961)
after 1930