Quotes about genius (1194 quotes, page 7)

“Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

La critique souvent n'est pas une science; c'est un métier, où il faut plus de santé que d'esprit, plus de travail que de capacité, plus d'habitude que de génie. Si elle vient d'un homme qui ait moins de discernement que de lecture, et qu'elle s'exerce sur de certains chapitres, elle corrompt et les lecteurs et l'écrivain.
Aphorism 63
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit

Health , Science , Reading

“Dullness is so much stronger than genius because there is so much more of it, and it is better organised and more naturally cohesive.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Genius, iv
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XI - Cash and Credit

Nature

“What must be acknowledged is that Kim Jong Il has evinced a genius for propaganda ever since managing the efflorescence of his father's cult in the 1960s. Even so, he cannot cover his lack of charisma completely; it's as if Hitler died and left the Third Reich to Goebbels.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2000s, Mother of All Mothers (September 2004)

“The aspiring author, whether genius or not, should never let a day pass without writing at least a few lines.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

The Art of Writing

“An ordinary mistake is one that leads to a dead end, while a profound mistake is one that leads to progress. Anyone can make an ordinary mistake, but it takes a genius to make a profound mistake.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Source: The Lightness of Being – Mass, Ether and the Unification of Forces (2008), Ch. 1, p. 12.

Dead

“Plot involves fragmentary reality, and it might involve composite reality. Fragmentary reality is the view of the individual. Composite reality is the community or state view. Fragmentary reality is always set against composite reality. Virginia Woolf did this by creating fragmentary monologues and for a while this was all the rage in literature. She was a genius. In the hands of the merely talented it came off like gibberish.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Starting from Scratch (1989)

Communication , Literature , Reality , Rage

“For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics, and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics (and its most exacting subspecialty — statecraft). Because if we don't get politics right, everything else risks extinction.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2011, Are we alone in the universe? (2011)

Art , Music , Mathematics , Dependency

“Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge became habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power which seated him on one of the two glorysmitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton аs his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own Ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakspeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XV

Feeling , Mountain , Birth , Nature

“Women have everything to do with bringing culture into everyday life, with the expression of it, with the helping and influencing of a nation, not only because they are mothers but also because they themselves are an example as individuals. The modern world needs a new force for the revitalizing of its ideals. India’s art has always been unconscious, unconscious of its own beauty, unconscious of others’ admiration, unconscious of the physical though expressed in Form. India is now beginning to be conscious and we do not know how to express ourselves consciously. A great dancer’s art must depend first on the life he or she expresses, secondly upon the beauty of technique and lastly only, upon its arrangement, costume, and presentation…. Though form, technique and skill are essential, great Art must have the impetus of genius, and inspiration. Then there is permanency.”

Rukmini Devi Arundale (1904–1986) Indian Bharatnatyam dancer

pdf, A Century of Negotiations: The Changing Sphere of the Woman Dancer in India, 1 December 2013, Performancestudies.ucla.edu, 15-16 http://www.performancestudies.ucla.edu/downloads/SarkarNegotiation.pdf.,

Life , Women , World , Beauty

“By God you are the only great man, except George Pitt, that I care a farthing for, or would wear out a pair of shoes in seeking after. Long-headed cunning people and rich fools are so plentiful in our country that I don’t fear getting now and then a face to paint for bread, but a man of genius with truth and simplicity, sense and good nature, I think worth his weight in gold - [signed:] 'Your Likeness Man”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in Gainsborough's letter to Hon. Constantine Phipps, undated; as cited in 'My Dear Maggoty Sir – The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough' http://thedabbler.co.uk/2011/10/my-dear-maggoty-sir-the-letters-of-thomas-gainsborough/, review by Roger Hudson, in Slightly Foxed, 18 Oct, 2011
undated

God , People , Truth , Fear

“Lee is the greatest military genius in America, myself not excepted.”

Winfield Scott (1786–1866) Union United States Army general

As quoted in Life of General Robert Edmund Lee (1870) by C. Stoctly Errickson, p. 35.

“The news from France is very bad, and I grieve for the gallant French people who have fallen into this terrible misfortune. Nothing will alter our feelings towards them or our faith that the genius of France will rise again. What has happened in France makes no difference to our actions and purpose. We have become the sole champions now in arms to defend the world cause. We shall do our best to be worthy of this high honour. We shall defend our Island home, and with the British Empire we shall fight on unconquerable until the curse of Hitler is lifted from the brows of mankind. We are sure that in the end all will come right.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (17 June 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 566
The Second World War (1939–1945)

People , World , Faith , Feeling

“It would be lovely to think I had become a genius," he smiles, "but the fact is that I've forgotten most of it. Occasionally I can be watching University Challenge and a stray fact emerges from the recesses of my subconscious that I didn't know I knew, but for the most part I'm as vague on the details as I ever was.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Bill Bryson: The accidental chancellor (November 15, 2005)

Love , Smile , Thinking , Universe

“Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Three Times Three (1936)

“Actually, art and magic are pretty much synonymous. I would imagine that this all goes back to the phenomenon of representation, when, in our primordial past, some genius or other actually flirted upon the winning formula of “This means that.” Whether “this” was a voice or “that” was a mark upon a dry wall or “that” was a guttural sound, it was that moment of representation. That actually transformed us from what we were into what we would be. It gave us the possibility, all of a sudden, of language. And when you have language, you can describe pictorially or verbally the strange and mystifying world that you see around you, and it’s probably not long before you also realize that, hey, you can just make stuff up. The central art of enchantment is weaving a web of words around somebody. And we would’ve noticed very early on that the words we are listening to alter our consciousness, and using the way they can transform it, take it to places we’ve never dreamed of, places that don’t exist.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

The Believer interview (2013)

World , Dreams , Art , Way

“As for the Internet, I tend to have profound doubts about the value of this communication advance to science. I wonder if, in an era of the Internet, we can have somebody like Eugene Wigner. Eugene Wigner's genius manifested itself in his ability to concentrate for a long time on a single idea. If you are constantly beset by outside ideas, can you really get to the true heart of the matter? It's a very different way of doing science.”

Alvin M. Weinberg (1915–2006) American nuclear physicist

Interview http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev28-1/text/wbgbar.htm by Bill Cabage and Carolyn Krause for the ORNL Review (April 1995).

Way , Communication , Idea , Science

“Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Quia Imperfectum
And Even Now http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/evnow10.txt (1920)

Men , People , Imagination , Thinking

“In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane — the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Summation
Scopes Trial (1925), Summations

Love , War , Suicide , Water

“Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music, and poetry.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël book Corinne

Bk. 10, ch. 5
Corinne (1807)

Love , Religion , Music

“The most profitable and praiseworthy genius in the world is untiring industry.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 347.

World

“Hype. What a marvellous, misused word. If you hype something and it succeeds, you're a genius, it wasn't hype; if you hype it and it fails, then it's just a hype.”

Neil Bogart (1943–1982) American music executive

Neil Bogart, quoted in Loose Talk: The Book of Quotes from the Pages of Rolling Stone Magazine, 1990.

“Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

Wirklich ist jedes Kind gewissermaßen ein Genie, und jedes Genie gewissermaßen ein Kind.
Bd. 2, § 3.31, p. 451
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Way

“No, I wasn’t very smart, this I knew, but I was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, I was some kind of crazy-loco genius, burro genius. I mean, to have been able to hold on to my Spirit for this long had to mean something.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Thinking

““Has the Centre ever considered the merits of a phenomenal Kudiyattam exponent like Mani Madhav Chakkiyar - true genius?”
- Leela Venkatraman- art critic, The Hindu, 1998”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Awards
Source: Leela Venkatraman, An index of merit?, "The Hindu", December 27, 1998 http://www.hindu.com/folio/fo9812/98120100.htm

Art

“Where passion is married to intelligence, you may find genius, neurosis, madness or rapture.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

The Mysteries of Berkeley (March 2002)

Intelligence , Passion , Madness

Ali Shariati (1933–1977) Iranian academic and activist

Source: Where Shall We Begin, 1997-2013, p. 1.

God , Soul , Communication

“I come to a performance of music that I know very well as if I were performing it for the first time. Every day is a new day, a new experience. This is the way I approach a masterpiece. A masterpiece can never age - it's only the people who perform it or listen to it who become insensitive to it. If you come with a fresh feeling toward a masterpiece, it will always feel fresh and give you the benefit of its genius.”

Lorin Maazel (1930–2014) French-American conductor

As quoted in Successories.com http://www.successories.com/iquote/author/14767/lorin-maazel-quotes/1

People , Age , Music , Way

“I love Slim-Jims so much, I once called their hotline. I swear to God. I told them, "I got your next billion-dollar idea." And the lady on the other end goes, "Oh, do tell." I said, "Alright. Men love beer and Slim-Jims. So, what you need to do, is drill a hole in the middle of that Slim-Jim… so we can suck beer through it and take a bite of Slim Jim! [Audience cheers] Yeah. GENIUS!… She hung up on me.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

15° Off Cool (2007)

Love , Men , God , Idea

“No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Men , World , History , Question

“In the United States dramatically, here fortunately much less so, the book store as we have known it is dying. In the United States it is now largely an emporium, featuring music, records, Christmas cards, a large range fo semi-cultural and kitsch products with books fighting for their actual spatial lives. In some of the great university towns such as New Haven, or Princeton, within the past decade, the last good book stores have had to close, and what we have now are text book emporia which are not book stores, but store-houses bracketed according to set reading lists: in other words—where there is none of the genius of waste which a great book store has, where you cannot find what you are not looking for, which is the very essence of a book store.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Do Books Matter? (ed. Brian Baumfield), ISBN 0705700143, p. 27.
Do Books Matter?

Books , Music , Universe , Reading

“On the question of the "origin of species" Mr. Haughton enlarges considerably; but his chief arguments are reduced to the setting-up of "three unwarrantable assumptions," which he imputes to the Lamarckians and Darwinians, and then, to use his own words, "brings to the ground like a child's house of cards." The first of these is "the indefinite variation of species continuously in the one direction." Now this is certainly never assumed by Mr. Darwin, whose argument is mainly grounded on the fact that variations occur in every direction. This is so obvious that it hardly needs insisting on. In every large family there is almost always one child taller, one darker, one thinner than the rest; one will have a larger nose, another a larger eye: they vary morally as well; some are more poetical, others more morose; one has a genius for numbers, another for painting. It is the same in animals: the puppies, or kittens, or rabbits of one litter differ in many ways from each other - in colour, in size, in disposition; so that, though they do not "vary continuously in one direction," they do vary continuously in many directions; and thus there is always material for natural selection to act upon in some direction that may be advantageous. […] I will only, in conclusion, quote from it a short paragraph which contains an important truth, but which may very fairly be applied in other quarters than those for which the author intended it: - "No progress in natural science is possible as long as men will take their rude guesses at truth for facts, and substitute the fancies of their imagination for the sober rules of reasoning."”

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist

"Remarks on the Rev. S. Haughton's Paper on the Bee's Cell, And on the Origin of Species" (1863).

Men , Truth , Family , Way

“My way hither was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose genius you are the symbol: part brute, part woman, and part God — nothing of man in me at all. Have I read your riddle, Sphinx?”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Act I
1890s, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)

God , Way , Reading , Parting

“a million blockheads looking authoritatively into one man of what you call genius, or noble sense, will make nothing but nonsense out of him and his qualities, and his virtues and defects, if they look till the end of time. He understands them, sees what they are; but that they should understand him, and see with rounded outline what his limits are,—this, which would mean that they are bigger than he, is forever denied them. Their one good understanding of him is that they at last should loyally say, "We do not quite understand thee; we perceive thee to be nobler and wiser and bigger than we, and will loyally follow thee."”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Understanding , Sense , Time

“Apart from the greatness of Bizos for his role in the dismantling of apartheid, defending Mandela etc, he also manifested a genius in his role as a leading member of the conservative South African Greek community, by drawing historical parallels between the 400 years of slavery that Greece had suffered under the Ottoman Turks and the 300 years or so of repression and cruelty suffered by the Southern African black tribes and mixed race people under the British and then under the Nationalist Afrikaner rule. By using this strategy Bizos was able to balance his fight for justice in South Africa, and synchronously lead the very conservative Greek community in a more progressive direction.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

On George Bizos
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

People , Justice , Communication , Suffering

“To our unhappy sex genius and sensibility are the most treacherous gifts of Heaven. Why should we cultivate talents merely to gratify the caprice of tyrants? Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show us the narrow limits, the Gothic structure, the impenetrable barriers of our prison.”

Maria Edgeworth book Leonora

Leonora (1806), Letter 1; Tales and Novels, vol. 13, p. 5.

Sex , Knowledge , Light

“It doesn’t take a genius to see what happens when the entitlement state outgrows the economy upon which it rests. The time of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, the rest of insolvent social-democratic Europe — and now Detroit — is the time for conservatives to raise the banner of Stein's Law and yell, ‘Stop.’ You can kick the can down the road, but at some point it disappears over a cliff.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2013, Detroit Ran Into The Inviolable Rule Of Economics (2013)

Law , Time

“[Addressed to Berlusconi who wanted to impose himself on the editorial style of "Il Giornale"] In the art of entrepeneurship, you are certainly a genius, and I an asshole. But in the art of argument the genius is me, and you the asshole.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

cited in Marco Travaglio, Montanelli e il Cavaliere: storia di un grande e di un piccolo uomo.
2000s - 2010s

Art

“His hypothesis goes to this — to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do all that can be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Support

“Woman, in short, has an unconscious life, man a conscious life, and the genius the most conscious life.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 113.

Life

“There is a saying that great genius matures late. If something is not brought to fruition over a period of twenty to thirty years, it will not be of great merit. When a retainer is of a mind to do his work hurriedly, he will intrude upon the work of others and will be said to be young but able. He will become over-enthusiastic and will be considered rather rude.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Hagakure (c. 1716)

“These facts and figures must serve as an eye-opener to the people of Mysore. I refer to them here not because I have any hopes of our reaching the levels of prosperity of the two Colonies, but because it will do us good to know what organization and human endeavour are capable of achieving under favourable conditions. / The nationality of our people rests on a religious and fatalistic basis, not on an economic basis, as in the West. There are still people among us who believe that the golden age was in the past, the world is on the down-grade and the old-word conditions might yet be reproduced some day. The Hindu ideal of life is that this world is a preparation for the next and not a place to stay in and make ourselves comfortable. We are devoted to past ideals, although, out of necessity or from prospect of personal gain, we have partly taken to Western methods of work and business. There is a yearning for the old ideals and a half-hearted acquiescence in the new and, on the whole, the genius of the people is for standing still. / If we are to follow in the wake of other countries in the pursuit of material prosperity, we must give up aimless activities and bring our ideals into line with the standards of the West, namely, to spread education in all grades, multiply occupations and increase production and wealth. All other activities should conform themselves to the economic idea.”

Mokshagundam Visveshvaraya (1860–1962) Indian engineer, scholar, statesman and the Diwan of Mysore

148-149
[Speeches by Sir M. Visvesvaraya, K.C.I.E, https://archive.org/details/VisvesvarayaSpeeches, 1917, Bangalore Government Press, 148]

Life , People , Age , World

“If John Logie Baird had been born in 1971 would he have been a genius? The only thing we know with any certainty is that he wouldn't have invented the television. Some people believe he would have still established his genius; that he would have simply found another arena in which to work. I disagree. I think he would have been distracted from such brainy pursuits by all that television.”

Dave Gorman (1971) English author, comedian, and television presenter

"Dave Gorman: What makes a genius?," http://artsandentertainment.independentminds.livejournal.com/274381.html The Independent (2009-03-14)

People , Thinking

“The democratization of genius is made possible by the fact while one can quarrel with judgments, one cannot quarrel with feelings.”

Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Source: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), Chapter 3, The Sensibility of the Sixties, p. 134

Feeling

“Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Le génie commence les beaux ouvrages, mais le travail seul les achève.

Beauty

“But a kind of genius can come of this deprivation of sensation, of experience. It has been mistaken as naïve intelligence, when in fact it is empty intelligence, pure intelligence. The composition of the mind is altered. Its previous cultivation is disintegrated and it has greater access to the brain, the body: it is Supersanity. Learning is turned inside out. You have to start from the top and work your way down. You must study mathematical theory before simple arithmetic; theoretical physics before applied physics; anatomy, you might say, before you can walk.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

Way , Intelligence , Mathematics , Study

“The great man of science, unless he is also a philosopher, … deserves the title of genius as little as the man of action.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), pp. 139-140.

Science

“Kuhn had the genius to find the words and sketch the concepts that made important old philosophical problems relevant to the public and newly discussable by philosophers. He had the strength of mind and commitment to lead the discussion. He could speak the truly incommensurable languages of physics, philosophy, and history, all necessary to frame and advance his epistemological quest. He wrote, as one of his admirers, Margaret Masterman, put it, in a "quasi-poetic style," sometimes veiled, sometimes with "rhetorical exaggeration," but always after careful and even painful thought. Or, to switch metaphors, he drew the portrait of science in the manner of the Impressionists. At a distance, where most viewers stand, the portrait appears illuminating, persuasive, and inspiring; close in, where historians and philosophers stare, it looks sketchy, puzzling, and richly challenging.”

John L. Heilbron (1934) American historian

Thomas Samuel Kuhn: 18 July 1922-17 June 1996 (1998)

Pain , History , Problem , Appearance

“Taking on the responsibility of portraying a real person in history, preserving his genius while demonstrating the vulnerable crumbling of his personality, I researched carefully, and gained great respect for the contributions Mr. Hughes shared with the world.”

Carson Grant (1950) American actor

VanSchalkwyk, Cindy, "Native Son's Heart is in the Arts", Warren Times Gazette, Jan 11, 2007, p 1.
About portraying Howard Hughes printed 2007 in the Warren Times Gazette

World , History , Personality

“I am for the legal government of Republican Spain against Franco, since Spain herself, at a properly conducted election, chose that Government and rejected the party which now supports Franco. I am also against Fascism; the reforms of Diocletian were a work of genius and made many people temporarily happy, but failed in the end and added greatly to human misery. I see no reason why this inferior modern copy of them should succeed.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

"Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War" (1937), edited by Nancy Cunard, reprinted in The Spanish Front: Writers on the Civil War (1986), edited by Valentine Cunningham

People , Support , Happiness

“I will propose a Highway Safety Act of 1966 to seek an end to this mounting tragedy. We must also act to prevent the deception of the American consumer—requiring all packages to state clearly and truthfully their contents—all interest and credit charges to be fully revealed—and keeping harmful drugs and cosmetics away from our stores. It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention. We must change to master change. I propose to take steps to modernize and streamline the executive branch, to modernize the relations between city and state and nation. A new Department of Transportation is needed to bring together our transportation activities. The present structure—35 government agencies, spending $5 billion yearly—makes it almost impossible to serve either the growing demands of this great nation or the needs of the industry, or the right of the taxpayer to full efficiency and real frugality. I will propose in addition a program to construct and to flight-test a new supersonic transport airplane that will fly three times the speed of sound—in excess of 2,000 miles per hour. I propose to examine our federal system-the relation between city, state, nation, and the citizens themselves. We need a commission of the most distinguished scholars and men of public affairs to do this job. I will ask them to move on to develop a creative federalism to best use the wonderful diversity of our institutions and our people to solve the problems and to fulfill the dreams of the American people. As the process of election becomes more complex and more costly, we must make it possible for those without personal wealth to enter public life without being obligated to a few large contributors. Therefore, I will submit legislation to revise the present unrealistic restriction on contributions—to prohibit the endless proliferation of committees, bringing local and state committees under the act—to attach strong teeth and severe penalties to the requirement of full disclosure of contributions—and to broaden the participation of the people, through added tax incentives, to stimulate small contributions to the party and to the candidate of their choice.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life , Men , People , Penalty

“An average idea enthusiastically embraced will go further than a genius idea no one gets.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p.93

Idea

“I will add that I have recently received from Hungary a little paper on non-Euclidean geometry in which I rediscover all my own ideas and results worked out with great elegance… The writer is a very young Austrian officer, the son of one of my early friends, with whom I often discussed the subject in 1798, although my ideas were at that time far removed from the development and maturity which they have received through the original reflections of this young man. I consider the young geometer J. Bolyai a genius of the first rank.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

Letter to Gerling (1832)

Idea , Time

“The great problem facing modern man is that, that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live. So we find ourselves caught in a messed-up world. The problem is with man himself and man's soul. We haven't learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the basis of our problem. The real problem is that through our scientific genius we've made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we've failed to make of it a brotherhood.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Rediscovering Lost Values http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/rediscovering_lost_values/, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954)
1950s

Love , World , Soul , Problem

“An example of this way of thinking is an exchange that took place when someone told Goethe that he admired him for his genius, towering over German intellectual life like a gigantic mountain, to which Goethe replied that "great mountains are found only in mountainous landscapes." The traditional history of art is concerned exclusively which such mountain peaks, and often, as Goethe critically pointed out, they are not even seen in relation to each other.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

Jorn's quote, on the publication of the book Thidrek of Folk Art (1948)
1949 - 1958, Various sources

Life , Art , Way , History

“Is this the end? Is it to be merely a chapter in a cruel and senseless story? Will a new generation in their turn be immolated to square the black accounts of the Teuton and Gaul? Will our children bleed and gasp again in devastated lands? Or will there spring from the very fires of conflict that reconciliation of the three giant combatants, which would unite their genius and secure to each in safety and freedom a share in rebuilding the glory of Europe.”

Winston S. Churchill book The World Crisis

The World Crisis, 1916-1918 Part II : Chapter XXIII (Victory), Churchill, Butterworth (1927), p. 544.
Early career years (1898–1929)

Children , Spring , Freedom

“The true greatness of Mr. Jefferson was his fitness for revolution. He was the genius of innovation, the architect of ruin, the inaugurator of anarchy. His mission was to pull down, not to build up… He proposed to govern boys without the authority of masters or the control of religion, supplying their places with Laissez-faire philosophy, and morality from the pages of Lawrence Sterne. His character, like a philosophy, is exceptional—invaluable in urging on revolution, but useless, if not dangerous, in quiet times.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), pp. 201-202

Religion , Boy , Time

“So far as one understands a man, one is that man. The man of genius takes his place in the above argument as he who understands incomparably more other beings than the average man. Goethe is said to have said of himself that there was no vice or crime of which he could not trace the tendency in himself, and that at some period of his life he could not have understood fully. The genius, therefore, is a more complicated, more richly endowed, more varied man; and a man is the closer to being a genius the more men he has in his personality, and the more really and strongly he has these others within him.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Einen Menschen verstehen heißt also: auch er sein. Der geniale Mensch aber offenbarte sich an jenen Beispielen eben als der Mensch, welcher ungleich mehr Wesen versteht als der mittelmäßige. Goethe soll von sich gesagt haben, es gebe kein Laster und kein Verbrechen, zu dem er nicht die Anlage in sich verspürt, das er nicht in irgend einem Zeitpunkte seines Lebens vollauf verstanden habe. Der geniale Mensch ist also komplizierter, zusammengesetzter, reicher; und ein Mensch ist um so genialer zu nennen, je mehr Menschen er in sich vereinigt, und zwar, wie hinzugefügt werden muß, je lebendiger, mit je größerer Intensität er die anderen Menschen in sich hat.
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 106.

Life , Men , Understanding , Personality

“I am heartily glad to witness your veneration for a Book which to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 33.

Books

“Dryden's genius was of that sort which catches fire by its own motion; his chariot wheels get hot by driving fast.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

1 November 1833
Table Talk (1821–1834)

“Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands”

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) Italian painter, architect, writer and historian

Often attributed to Giorgio Vasari, while in the text Vasari attributes these words to Leonardo da Vinci in: Giorgio Vasari. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects as translated by Mrs. Jonathan Foster (1852), Vol. 2;
Misattributed

Men , Idea , Thinking , Perfection

“Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Notebook E, edited by Edmund Wilson (1945)
Quoted, The Crack-Up (1936)

Life , Youth , World , Fools

“We have found that our great philosophers and our great men of action are optimists. So, too, our most potent men of letters have been optimists in their books and in their lives. No pessimist ever won an audience commensurately wide with his genius, and many optimistic writers have been read and admired out of all measure to their talents, simply because they wrote of the sunlit side of life.”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Life , Men , Books , Reading

“All these words we use, anybody can be a genius now. It used to be you had to have a thought no one ever had before or you had to invent a number. Now, it’s like, “Hey, I’ve got a cup in case we need another cup.””

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

“Dude, you’re a genius!
http://splitsider.com/2013/02/the-annotated-wisdom-of-louis-c-k/

“Genius is a power of the soul and that powers of the soul can be developed by everyone.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 8

Soul

“When you allow millions of people to immigrate from places where they mutilate their daughters as a matter of course; where they kill them in a heartbeat over some twisted sense of honor; and where rape victims are treated as criminals; it doesn't take a genius to know that you're going to be importing these values and attitudes as well, wholesale, unless you take steps to prevent it. And that's something we've spectacularly failed to do in Europe. Indeed, we've encouraged it by fostering separatism and ghettoization in the guise of our old friend, Multiculturalism. And as a consequence, Islamic violence against women and girls is an ugly reality in Europe. And for anyone to use the law to try and suppress discussion of it is not enlightened or tolerant or liberal. It's shameful and stupid and cowardly and unforgivable.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"The Criminal Truth" (28 January 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=IEkelAsmcf4
2011

Women , People , Stupidity , Law

“The only book that I have read that really struck home with me giving a possible explanation for UFOs was […] The Cosmic Conspiracy by Stan Deyo. […] Deyo, a Christian, is a genius who wrote the book way over my head. […] He says that Satan has always used that mode of transportation to get around because the devil can only be at one place at one time […] I do not know if it is true, but it is an interesting theory.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

Books , Way , Home , Time

“It was thought that he had genius, if only because he had been able to delegate his duties in so intricate a way that there was never any need for him to do anything at all. His signature, which was necessary from time to time at the end of long notices which no one read, was always faked, and even the ingenious system of delegation whereon his greatness rested was itself worked out by another.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 11 (p. 440)

Way , Time , Reading

“Schumann is the most representative musical figure of central European Romanticism as much because of his limitations as because of his genius: in his finest works, indeed, he exploited these limitations in such a way that they gave a force to his genius that no other contemporary could attain.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 12 : Schumann: Triumph and Failure of the Romantic Ideal

Music , Way

“From the union of power and money,
from the union of power and secrecy,
from the union of government and science,
from the union of government and art,
from the union of science and money,
from the union of ambition and ignorance,
from the union of genius and war,
from the union of outer space and inner vacuity,
the Mad Farmer walks quietly away.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"The Mad Farmer, Flying the Flag of Rough Branch, Secedes from the Union" in Entries (1997).
Poems

Money , War , Art , Science

“This pride of race is a quality which the German, fundamentally, does not possess. The reason for this is that for these last three centuries the country has been torn by internal dissension and religious wars and has been subjected to a variety of foreign influences, to the influence, for example, of Christianity—for Christianity is not a natural religion for the Germans, but a religion that has been imported and which strikes no responsive chord in their hearts and is foreign to the inherent genius of the race.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

13 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

War , Religion , Nature , Heart

“By the miracle of genius he created a masterpiece [Parzival], epic in scope, noble in purpose, humorous, humane, tender, and rational.”

Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170–1220) German knight and poet

Roger Sherman Loomis The Development of Arthurian Romance (New York: Dover, [1963] 2000) p. 67.
Criticism

“Kalidasa, the immortal poet and playwright, is a peerless genius whose works have won world-wide fame. The matchless qualities of his work have been lavishly praised both by the ancient Indian critics and modern scholars. (…) In modern times the translations of Kalidasa's works in numerous Indian and foreign languages have spread his fame all over the world and now he ranks among the few topmost poets and playwrights of the world.”

Ram Gopal (1925) Indian author and historian

Kālidāsa: His Art and Culture by Ram Gopal (1984)

World , Time

“In those villages, he wondered, how much ability and genius might be lying barren, ability and genius that the world could use but would never know because of the intolerance and hate which was held against the very people who were least qualified as the targets of it.
And the pity of it was that such hate and such intolerance would never have been born, could never have existed, had it not been for men like Finn—the bigots and the egomaniacs; the harsh, stern Puritans; the little men who felt the need of power to lift them from their smallness.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 30 (p. 227)

Men , Hate , People , World

“The Pact of Munich is signed. Czechoslovakia as a power is out. The genius of the Führer and his determination not to shun even a world war have again won victory without the use of force. The hope remains that the incredulous, the weak and the doubters have been converted and will remain that way.”

Alfred Jodl (1890–1946) German general

Munich Conference, September 29, 1938. Quoted in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany" - Page 422 - by William Lawrence Shirer - Germany - 1990.

War , World , Hope , Way

“The outstanding personalities of Euclid and Archimedes demand chapters to themselves. Euclid, the author of the incomparable Elements, wrote on almost all the other branches of mathematics known in his day. Archimedes's work, all original and set forth in treatises which are models of scientific exposition, perfect in form and style, was even wider in its range of subjects. The imperishable and unique monuments of the genius of these two men must be detached from their surroundings and seen as a whole if we would appreciate to the full the pre-eminent place which they occupy, and will hold for all time, in the history of science.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

Preface p. viii
A History of Greek Mathematics (1921) Vol. 1. From Thales to Euclid

Men , History , Mathematics , Science

“For our genius of a father did not limit himself to math. His brain was an octopus, the tentacles of which extended in all directions. He could scan Latin verse and Greek verse as well, and it was as if he were hearing Homer or Theocritus in person. Not to mention the fact that he read Greek from volumes filled with characters which in no way resembled the ones in our Greek grammar or book of excerpts from Greek literature. He also read Sanskrit, with its truly bizarre letters. He spoke Italian like Dante, Spanish like Cervantes, and so for almost every living language.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

From At home with André and Simone Weil by Sylvie Weil, pp. 31–32 https://books.google.com/books?id=OdeDlT9-GBUC&pg=PA31
Quote About

Books , Way , Literature , Reading

“[Henry] Kissinger has always been a paradox for me. I was profoundly impressed by his book about European politics in the first half of the last century. One of his main theses was that peace agreements are valueless if a major party to the conflict is left out and sees in the agreement a threat to its basic interests. If ever this rule were true – as it surely is – this is the case with the Palestinians in the Middle East conflict. It is also true for the Soviet Union. Yet once he became the political genius of the Nixon and Ford administrations, Kissinger behaved as if he had never read his own book – the classic example of power blinding the intellectual. He tried to make peace of some kind without the Palestinians, treating the rulers of the various Arab countries as so many Metternichs and Castlereaghs, trying to push the Soviets out of the Middle East altogether. I strongly suspected him of obstructing any real move towards peace, favoring the salami approach of little pieces of peace, so as to keep everybody screaming for American support and dependent on American protection. This was the famous step-by-step approach.”

Uri Avnery (1923–2018) Israeli writer

My Friend, the Enemy (1986) – Page 144

Books , Peace , Support , Reading

“If it really were the case, as popular opinion has tried to establish, that the genius were separated from ordinary men by a thick wall through which no sound could penetrate, then all understanding of the efforts of genius would be denied to ordinary men, and their works would fail to make any impression on them. All hopes of progress depend on this being untrue. And it is untrue. The difference between men of genius and the others is quantitative not qualitative, of degree not of kind.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 121.

Men , Hope , Understanding , Effort

“On the eve of that going out, we gather to participate in this stately and solemn service to Almighty God, in Whose name this University was founded and in Whose name it has labored from generation to generation… Wherever the cause of liberty is in danger, there Columbia's hand will be found to help avert it. Wherever the rule of despotism is extending, there Columbia's hand will be found to remove It. Wherever there is need of scientific skill and genius to serve, to cure, to invent, to construct, there a Columbia hand will be found ready to do its duty for the advancement of the public good and for the glory of Almighty God.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Address The Call to Service (1917); " A world in ferment; interpretations of the war for a new world https://archive.org/stream/worldinfermentinw00butl/worldinfermentinw00butl_djvu.txt"

God , Universe , Help

“The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

1840s, Letters from New York (1843)
Source: Letters from New York http://www.bartleby.com/66/62/12262.html, vol. 1, letter 39

Nature

“…the German's defense was stretched out like a spandex at Miami Beach…once again the pure genius of Raúl to anticipate the throw-in…the throw-in is perfection…sublime…and the finish is the personification of grace under pressure…”

Ray Hudson (1955) English footballer

[Mandis, Steven G., The Real Madrid Way: How Values Created the Most Successful Sports Team on the Planet, 2016, BenBella Books, https://books.google.fi/books/about/The_Real_Madrid_Way.html?id=IEbQDAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y, 978-1-942952-54-1]
After Madrid's Raúl had timed his run and sent the ball left-footed past Bayer Leverkusen's Hans-Jörg Butt.
2002 UEFA Champions League Final

Perfection

“The cookie-cutter education system has failed both genius kids and special-needs children. Status quo stifles creativity.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Children , Education

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

Hopper quoted this from Ralph Waldo Emerson's book Self Reliance, the book he loved throughout his life
1941 - 1967
Source: 'How Edward Hopper Saw the Light', by Joseph Phelan, at Artcyclopedia online

Back To Work

“From the midst of the flat plain of human reason, there arises the terrible, fire-spewing mountain of genius.”

Constantin Brunner (1862–1937) German philosopher

Source: Our Christ : The Revolt of the Mystical Genius (1921), p. 168

Mountain

“The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument
1910s, Memories and Studies (1911)

Men , People

“Persistence isn’t very glamorous. If genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the 1 percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other 99 percent.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Hughey, Aaron W. (book reviewer), "Book review: ‘Quiet’ suggests introverts are undervalued by society," The Daily News (Kentucky; BGDailyNews.com), July 15, 2012.

Love

“By the sense of mystery I understand the experience of certain places and times when one's whole nature seems to be in touch with a prescence, a genius loci, a potency.”

Richard Aldington (1892–1962) English writer and poet

Introduction to Complete Poems, 1948

Understanding , Nature , Sense , Time

“If they [the Department of Justice] are investigating Hillary Clinton, it doesn’t take a genius, let alone a stable genius, to see why. It’s not because there is some new evidence that has come to light. It’s because they’re being badgered by the White House to do it. I think that these cracks that we’re seeing in the independence of the Justice Department ought to concern every American.”

Adam Schiff (1960) American politician

Open Letter to the Committee Hearing Re: FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers

Justice , Thinking , Light , Housing

“We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On Milton (1825)

Age

“George Lucas should have distributed the "source code" to Star Wars. Millions of fans would create their own movies and stories. Most of them would be terrible, but a few would be genius.”

Gabe Newell (1962) American computer programmer and businessman

It's A Mod, Mod Underworld, Victoria Murphy Barret, Forbes, 2005-12-12, 2008-02-21, http://web.archive.org/web/20080501213031/http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2005/1212/064_2.html, 2008-05-01 http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2005/1212/064_2.html,

War , Star

“This tendency, however, to ascribe an universality of genius to great men, led Dryden to affirm, on the strength of two smart satyrical lines, that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. But, with all due deference to Dryden, I conceive it much more manifest, that Juvenal could have written a better epic than Virgil, than that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. Juvenal has many passages of the moral sublime far superior to any that can be found in Virgil, who, indeed, seldom attempts a higher flight than the sublime of description. Had Lucan lived, he might have rivalled them both, as he has all the vigour of the one, and time might have furnished him with the taste and elegance of the other.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; CCCCXII
Lacon (1820)

Men , Universe , Time

“Naturalness is the seal of genius.”

François-Joachim de Pierre de Bernis (1715–1794) Catholic cardinal

Réflexions sur les passions et sur les goûts (1741).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 131.

Nature

“I have a plan,” said Xaros, “improbable only in its genius.”

Tanith Lee book The Storm Lord

Source: The Storm Lord (1976), Chapter 22 (p. 310)

“[About Algol 60] Due credit must be paid to the genius of the designers of ALGOL 60 who included recursion in their language and enabled me to describe my invention [Quicksort] so elegantly to the world.”

C. A. R. Hoare (1934) British computer scientist

The Emperor's Old Clothes

World

“Lazy geniuses! There are no such men. Laziness and genius never go hand in hand. Each excludes the other. Laziness is the best proof of the absence of genius.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

As quoted in “Don Pañong – Genius" by A.V.H. Hartendorp in Philippine Magazine (September 1929), p. 211.
ULOL

Men

“The age-long history of thinking on gravitation, too, was erased from the collective consciousness, and that force somehow became the serendipitous child of Newton's genius. The new attitude is well illustrated by the anecdote of the apple, a legend spread by Voltaire, one of the most active and vehement erasers of the past. … The need to build the myth of an ex nihilo creation of modern science gave rise to much impassioned rhetoric.”

Lucio Russo (1944) Italian historian and scientist

11.10, "The Erasure of Ancient Science", pp. 390–391
The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004)

Age , History , Thinking , Science

“Look up and below and all round and see the wonderful creations of God, not only our earth but the whole host of celestial worlds, planets, constellations etc. – many still unknown to us. See with what minute precision and order they move and are regulated. Only God could have created them. Ev all the accumulated genius of Mankind from the time of Creation through eons and eons of time and even to the end of existence, were all pooled together, yet it would not be able to evolve even a fraction of this order. God only could do so, and without him it would be utter chaos.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Planning for a Better World

God , World , Time

““.. I felt angry when I learnt that a great artist like Mani Madhava Chakyar was awarded a mere Padma Shri. A man of his artistic genius and erudition deserved to be decorated with the highest state honour (Bharat Ratna)”
- RKG (Editor, The Illustrated Weekly, Columnist for Times of India), 2000”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Awards
Source: RKG, India : A Nation in Turmoil, Vedam Books, New Delhi (2000), ISBN 81-7476-268-X, p. 256 http://books.google.com/books?id=pKkBbf7doAUC&pg=RA1-PA256&ots=46YGGQqKUK&dq=Mani+Madhava+Chakyar&sig=BtI2LnPjtmf8b9sIMMlC4ihk40Y#PRA1-PA256,M1

Time

“Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?”

William Carlos Williams book Al Que Quiere!

"Danse Russe"
Al Que Quiere! (1917)

Happiness

“This acquaintance [with Marianne Werefkin ] would change my life. I became a friend of hers, of this clever woman gifted with genius.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

from his memoirs, 1936/41: in Lebenserinnerungen (Memories), Alexej Jawlensky - Köpfe-GesichteMeditationen (Heads-Faces-Meditations), ed. Clemens Weiler (Hanau: H. Peters, 1970), p. 106
1936 - 1941

Life , Change

Quotes about genius page 7

Quotes about genius
page 7