
“You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius….”
Quoted in Jack Fishman's My Darling Clementine, the biography of Winston Churchill's wife. (p. 131).
Source: Little Women
“You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius….”
Quoted in Jack Fishman's My Darling Clementine, the biography of Winston Churchill's wife. (p. 131).
"The Modern Drama" in Art, Literature and the Drama (1858).
Quote from a program at a Coolidge memorial service (1933); cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999). The passage did not originate with Coolidge, but evolved over several decades, appearing as early as 1881 in a youth guidance book. From [Garson O’Toole, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/01/12/persist/, Purpose and Persistence Are Required for Success: Unrewarded Genius Is Almost a Proverb, Quote Investigator, January 12, 2016]
1930s
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
Source: The Valley of Fear
Source: Interview from Programmers at Work (1986)
“Talent does what it can: Genius does what it must.”
“Genius does what it must, talent does what it can.”
Last Words, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Alfred Binet (1903). "La creation litteraire. Portrait psychologique de M. Paul Hervieu", L’Anne´e psychologique (10), p. 3; As cited in: Carson (1999, 361-2)