Genius Quotes

“There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”
― Oscar Levant

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
― Aristotle

“It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.”
― Gertrude Stein

“Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”
― Arthur Rimbaud

“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.”
― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays

“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
― E.F. Schumacher

“I'm a misunderstood genius."
"What's misunderstood?"
"Nobody thinks I'm a genius.”
― Bill Watterson

“The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia

“The only genius that's worth anything is the genius for hard work.”
― Kathleen Winsor

“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that
without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”
― Pearl S. Buck

“But 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.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius. And easier. Because it's true. It's a new world every heart beat.”
― Joyce Cary, The Horse's Mouth

“When you make a choice, you change the future.”
― Deepak Chopra

“When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

[Thoughts on Various Subjects]”
― Jonathan Swift , Abolishing Christianity and Other Essays

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
― Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.”
― Claude Monet

“…because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity.”
― William Blake

“A genius in the wrong position could look like a fool.”
― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

“Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Never underestimate the power of thought; it is the greatest path to discovery.”
― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

“I don't want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man.”
― Albert Camus

“People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.”
― Stephen Hawking

“The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“A genius. A criminal mastermind. A millionaire. And he is only twelve years old.”
― Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl

“Solitude is the soil in which genius is planted, creativity grows, and legends bloom; faith in oneself is the rain that cultivates a hero to endure the storm, and bare the genesis of a new world, a new forest.”
― Mike Norton, White Mountain

“People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine. . . . I always wondered, ``Why has nobody discovered me?'' In school, didn't they see that I'm cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn't need? I got fuckin' lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie
``You throw my fuckin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous, '' and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin' genius or whatever I was, when I was a child. It was obvious to me. Why didn't they put me in art school? Why didn't they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin' cowboy like the rest of them? I was different
I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me? A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint - express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin' dentist or a teacher”
― John Lennon