Quotes about brilliant
page 5

“Asia gave us dowry deaths and the caste system. Africa elevated famine to an art form. North America cultivated chattel slavery for far longer than I would have dared hope; South America has done things with political oppression that I am obliged to call brilliant; Australia showed the world that the only good aborigine is a dead aborigine; and Antarctica has fabulous weather. Of all the continents that constitute Earth’s terrain, however, Europe remains dearest to my heart and closest to my soul.
I allude here not to the sweatshops, the world wars, or totalitarian socialism (though none of these innovations has escaped my notice) but to the fact that the European imagination endowed me with a degree of glamour—you might even say charm—that in pre-coma times enabled me to function with extraordinary effectiveness. The concept of an Evil One is intrinsic to Islam, of course; the ancient Hebrews had their “adversary,” their satan; the Egyptians feared a dark deity called Set; Zoroastrians believed in Ahriman, essence of destruction (forever warring with Ohrmazd, source of all things bright and beautiful). But only in Christian Europe did the Prince of Hell acquire a personality as vivid and endearing as any you will meet in a Dickens novel.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 253; spoken by the Devil)

Soul, Hell, Imagination, Time

“For more than three decades the Americans had been gradually sliding into isolationism and industrial decline. Space, he thought ruefully, they should have gone into space. He'd never understood the strange paralysis of will that had seemed to grip their brilliant early efforts. Or perhaps it was simply a failure of imagination, of vision.”

William Gibson Burning Chrome

"Red Star, Winter Orbit"
Burning Chrome (short story anthology, 1986)

Imagination, Failure, Effort

“How can a man be so brilliant and so obtuse?”

John Brunner book Total Eclipse

Source: Total Eclipse (1974), Chapter 8 (p. 69)

“Self-promotion is self-defeating. No matter how brilliant an individual, one becomes instinctively "leery" when he toots his own horn.”

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) American academic

Leonard Read Journals, September 18, 1959 https://history.fee.org/leonard-read-journal/1959/leonard-e-read-journal-september-1959

“Where have they gone, the brilliant, the insightful ones, the proud?”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
VIII, 25
Meditations (c. AD 121–180), Book VIII

“The human brain is evolution’s most magnificent disaster, a beautiful and glorious cesspool of brilliant analytical powers, infinite creativity, and pure madness.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

Beauty, Madness

“My ability to persuade my wife to marry me [was] quite my most brilliant achievement ... Of course, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to have got through what I had to go through in peace and war without the devoted aid of what we call, in England, one's better half.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: As cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 511, ISBN 1586489577

War, Peace

“Wise people have the ability to grasp the positive side of every situation, they have a brilliant, perverse mind and a spirit that loves to dare and sin: to live life to the fullest.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Le persone sagge hanno la capacità di cogliere il lato positivo di ogni situazione, hanno una mente brillante, perversa ed uno spirito che ama osare e peccare: vivere appieno la vita.
Source: prevale.net

People, Love, Life

Quotes about brilliant page 5

Quotes about brilliant
page 5