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What is Genius?
Quotes on Genius, Originality, Intelligence, Motivation, Ability and Creativity
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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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A genius is one who can do anything except make a living. Genius is sorrow's child. If you
wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience
your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian
genius. |
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It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius,
especially ambitious young men and women.
To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius. We
know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years
later. Let us love winter, for it
is the spring of genius. Genius is mainly an affair
of energy. There
is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head,
frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the
strangulation that life had prepared for him.
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do. Genius, that power which
dazzles mortal eyes, |
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Since when was genius found respectable? What is genius? It is the
power to be a boy again at will. As diamond cuts diamond,
and one hone smooths a second, all of the parts of intellect are whetstones
to each other; and genius, which is but the result of their mutual
sharpening, is character too. |
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Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.
Genius is childhood recaptured. One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius. Common
sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius. Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of
genius.
Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.
A genius is someone who has TWO great ideas. Genius has somewhat of the
infantine: Between genius and talent
there is the proportion of the whole to its part. Genius is only a greater
aptitude for patience. Every man who observes
vigilantly and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius. Genius does what it must,
and talent does what it can. |
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People think it must be fun
to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with
all the idiots in the world. Some of Shakespeare's fellow playwrights, like Christopher
Marlowe, did have university degrees, but the fact is that many of the greatest authors in history never set foot in college. Geniuses are geniuses precisely because they do not play by the ordinary
rules. |
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But sometimes still harder requisitions are laid upon the poor aspirant to poetry; for it is hinted he should have been born two centuries ago, inasmuch as poetry about that date vanished from the earth and became no more attainable by men! Such cobweb speculations have, now and then, overhung the filed of literature; but they obstruct not the growth of any plant there. The Shakespeare or the Burns, unconsciously and merely as he walks onward, silently brushes them away. Is not every genius an impossibility till he
appears?
It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the very Sun, which, though the highest published creation of genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amidst its effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dullness, double-vision, and even utter
blindness. Genius is the ability to
reduce the complicated to the simple.
Passion holds up the bottom of the universe and genius paints up its roof.
Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame. A
prophet is not unhonored except in his home territory and among his
relatives and in his own house. Genius is of no country. True genius resides in the
capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting
information. Intelligence
recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen. Genius is fostered by
industry. Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or
never.
Genius, in one respect, is
like gold, - numbers of persons are constantly writing about both,
who have neither. Genius
knows where the questions are hidden. Nothing
in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is
more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded
genius is almost a proverb. Education will not the world is full of educated
derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan,
'Press on,' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. Talent is
what you possess; genius is what possesses you.
When human power becomes so great and original that we can account for it only as a kind of divine imagination, we call it genius. |
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Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active. The education of the gentleman-amateur, which at its best fostered sound judgment and the ability to express oneself, to assimilate great figures of the past and find one's way around in new terrain, sustained [Edmund] Wilson as a professional
journalist. Genius,
like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien. The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents. |
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Have no fear of perfection - You will never reach it. He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities. Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them. It
is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well. Genius
is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed
unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it
flows forth. Oh!
how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise
statues to them. Philosophy becomes poetry and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of
genius.
Patience is a necessary
ingredient of genius. Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius. Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. |
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Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Quotes of Albert Einstein on Genius and Knowledge:
Every gun
that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the
final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are
cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It
is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the
hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.
Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. Quotes of Ralph Waldo Emerson on Genius:
No one respects a talent that is concealed. Genius is entitled to respect only when it promotes the peace and improves the happiness of mankind. |
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Genius is the ability to
put into effect what is on your mind.
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. Genius is
another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is
inexplicable. Genius without education is
like silver in the mine. |
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Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade.
It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant. Genius
will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the
watering- pot and pruning-knife. The
especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive
in function, spiritual in tendency. Everyone
is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them. |
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Geniuses
used to be rare. Today, thanks to popular interpretation of test scores,
every elementary or secondary school has its quota. Quotes of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Genius:
Both
wit and understanding are trifles without integrity. The ignorant peasant
without fault is greater than the philosopher with many. What is genius or
courage without a heart? Genius
differs from talent not by the amount of original thoughts, but by making
the latter fertile and by positioning them properly, in other words, by
integrating everything into a whole, whereas talent produces only fragments,
no matter how beautiful. Genius
resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and
when a foreign body touches it, its joyful tone is silenced. Genius
unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun. What is genius, anyway, if
it isn't the ability to give an adequate response to a great challenge. |
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Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have is this. When I
have a subject in mind. I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before
me. My mind becomes pervaded with it... the effort which I have made is what
people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and
thought.
Nothing is so envied as genius, nothing so hopeless of attainment by labor alone. Though labor always accompanies the greatest genius, without the intellectual gift labor alone will do little. |
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If
we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we
wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may study his
commentators. Great genius takes shape by
contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by
friction. Genius is nothing but continued
attention.
To do what others cannot do is talent. To do what talent cannot do is genius. Nature is the master of
talents; genius is the master of nature.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
Unpretending
mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in
an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality
of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil
a draught of fair water.
Unless you are a genius, it
is best to aim at being intelligible. In America a person with some kind of title, however trivial, will have an easier time of it than someone without. 'Person' is not good enough in the world's greatest democracy, not even 'individual.' One must be something. A dentist or accountant or lawyer is good, but even titles denoting lesser status--plumber, mechanic, farmer--make life easier. 'Artist' is an excellent title in some cases, a handle to give otherwise scruffy characters entrée to people and places which would otherwise be off
limits. The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. One machine can do the work
of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. Genius is
only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and
success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it; so fine that we
are often on the line and do not know it. Genius:
the superhuman in man. An
invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has
come. The secret of genius is to
carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your
enthusiasm. The
secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity |
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Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish to the
crowd. |
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Genius
defines itself. Genius... means little more
than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. The essence of genius is to
know what to overlook. A
just society can help people in need without resorting to discrimination on
the basis of irrelevant criteria involving group-membership.
Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. |
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Genius . . . that energy
which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates. Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads. Some superior minds are unrecognized because there is no standard by which to weigh
them.
A
man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the
portals of discovery. |
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There
are many examples of old, incorrect theories that stubbornly persisted,
sustained only by the prestige of foolish but well-connected scientists. ...
Many of these theories have been killed off only when some decisive
experiment exposed their incorrectness. .. Thus the yeoman work in any
science, and especially physics, is done by the experimentalist, who must
keep the theoreticians honest. Works of genius are the
first things in the world. The
difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which
ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of
our minds. |
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Genius
sits in a glass house—but in an unbreakable one—conceiving ideas. After
giving birth, it falls into madness. Stretches out its hand through the
window toward the first person happening by. The demon’s claw rips, the
iron fist grips. Before, you were a model, mocks the ironic voice between
serrated teeth, for me, you are raw material to work on. I throw you against
the glass wall, so that you remain stuck there, projected and stuck....
(Then come the lovers of art and contemplate the bleeding work from outside.
Then come the photographers. “New art,” it says in the newspaper the
following day. The learned journals give it a name that ends in “ism.”) All of us, you, your children, your neighbors and their children are everyday geniuses, even though the fact is unnoticed and unremembered by everyone. That's probably because school hasn't encouraged us to notice what's hidden inside us waiting for the right environment to express itself.
The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers. Genius
is an overused word. The world has known only about a half dozen geniuses .
I got only fairly near. |
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We are the leaves of one branch, the drops of one sea, the flowers of one garden. To see
things in the seed, that is genius. Our
brightest minds are our greatest and most cost-effective resource, and the
chance of helping even one "real genius" whose work is of critical
benefit to the world justifies helping a thousand of extraordinary promise. |
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I've
often observed that God can use anyone in the furtherance of teleology,
exploiting the good through their strengths and the bad through their
weaknesses. His true servants, on the other hand, need not be exploited at
all, but voluntarily adopt His will as their own. Doing that properly, as
opposed to deluding oneself in a spirit of blind egoism, naturally requires
and confers a measure of genius. No
doubt about it, Isaac Newton was a genius, and you'll never hear me argue
otherwise. Still, his powers of conceptualization were limited by the height
of those shoulders on which he stood.
Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.
If confusion is the first
step to knowledge, I must be a genius. There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers. No
doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love
of truth exceeded their love of power; in every mixed movement the efficacy
comes from the good elements not from the bad. But the presence of bad
elements in not irrelevant to the direction the efficacy takes. It might be
going too far to say that the modern scientific movement was tainted from
its birth; but I think it would be true to say that it was born in an
unhealthy neighbourhood and at an inauspicious hour. Its triumphs may have
been too rapid and purchased at too high a price: reconsideration, and
something like repentance, may be required.
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto
unexplored. Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a
stone.
Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power man is. Freedom
is the only law which genius knows. 'There are a few men who are not dupes of ignorance,' said Hermes to Charon, but 'you see how they stand aloof from the crowd and laugh at what goes on; they are not in the least satisfied with it all, but are cleverly planning to make their escape from life to your own regions. Indeed they have reason, for they are disliked because they expose the follies of
men.'
Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead. |
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Genius
is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and
fine linen. The man of genius of today will in fifty years’ time be in
most cases no more than a man of talent. Change the worldview; change the world. — Mega Foundation motto Use those talents you have. You will make it. You will give joy to the world. Take this tip from nature: The woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except those who sang best. |
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Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can. I
saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. Genius
is eternal patience. It
is strange that all great men should have some oddness, some little grain of
folly mingled with whatever genius they possess. Take back
the beauty and wit you bestow upon me; leave me my own mediocrity of
agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy, and
my plain dealing; 'tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of
others or myself. No one appreciates the very
special genius of your conversation as the dog does. 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. |
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I think like a genius, I
write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child. Genius is an African who
dreams up snow. If
I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of
giants. On
how he made discoveries: What
is genius?—To will both a lofty goal and the means to achieving it. |
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The life of Ortega is complicated by no less than five parallel careers. He is at once a teacher, an essayist, a publisher-editor, a philosopher, and a statesman. . . . perhaps his very breadth of experience led him to an overall understanding that a narrower view of life would never have inspired. . . . Today few thinkers can venture into the wider reaches of school and society without becoming dangerously unskilled
amateurs. |
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Better
beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand
and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things
clearly. |
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Genius is the father of a
heavenly line; but the mortal mother, that is industry.
No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius. Every
positive value has its price in negative terms...The genius of Einstein
leads to Hiroshima. |
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The
most important key is desire and energy. I know many friends
in school that were more intelligent than me but they turned out to be less
creative and productive in life, at least by some measures of creativity and
productivity. Their decreased creativity or productivity, at least from my
perspective, has to do with their drive and energy to be creative and
productive. It's not that they did not have the intelligence to write
twenty-five books—these people were far more intelligent than me—but
rather they didn't feel like doing it. They lacked the desired and
activation energy. [Nietzsche] must have known that the book [Birth of Tragedy] would ruin his career in scholarship and make his life in Basel very difficult . . .[H]is anxiety over alienating himself from his profession was largely balanced by the pleasure he now anticipated from Wagner's approval . [I]t required Wagner, who was a recognized genius, to name Nietzsche one. . . . the objective knowledge that the genius has of the [Platonic] Ideas is not directly relevant to day-to-day life. His direct apprehension of the nature of things gives his knowledge a timeless quality incompatible with the strivings of his contemporaries, who are so full of momentary purpose. His very insight estranges him from his
fellows. [Nietzsche's point was that] Only through emulating a genius could an aspiring individual be redeemed from his own limitations and the opposition of the world. In this sense, as an object of emulation, Schopenhauer had served Nietzsche as redeemer . . . . The genius, redeemed from himself and his contemporaries by the example of the genius preceding him, justifies his generation. The genius creates the mental world in which the next generation will live, including that generation's genius. And that progression of genius is what constitutes history. History is a genealogy of
geniuses. No man's genius, however
shining, can raise him from obscurity, unless he has industry, opportunity,
and also a patron to recommend him. (Nequ enim cuiquam tam ckarum statim
ingenium, ut possit emergere, nisi illi materia, occasio, fautor etiam
commendatorque contingat.) Men have called me mad but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence--whether much that is glorious; whether all that is profound--does not spring from disease of thought, from moods of mind exalted at the expense of general
intellect. One science only will one genius fit:
A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression. Genius
... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and
where the man of talent sees two or three, plus the ability to register that
multiple perception in the material of his art.
We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in
colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of
our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative
types. The
mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual
greed. |
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One
man’s observation is another man’s closed book or flight of fancy. |
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One
of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy. Artistic
genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness. If you have a genius,
industry will improve it; if you have none, industry will supply its place. I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It's what you do with it that counts. |
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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.
Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom,
just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines.
We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it. |
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Reason
is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit. Talent is like a marksman who hits a target that others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target . . . others cannot even
see. Nature
shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for
pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering
reaches its supreme point. A
man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from
anyone else, playing on a single instrument—a piano, say, which is a
little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the
effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed,
in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a
symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself—in solitude, it may be;
or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for
setting the tone, as in singing. The
poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and
situations, sets them all in motion and leaves it to the beholder to let
these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This
is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed
fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not
life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and
then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far
as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small. Talent
works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is,
on the other hand, less easy to determine. It isn’t money, for genius
seldom gets any. It isn’t fame: fame is too uncertain and, more closely
considered, of too little worth. Nor is it strictly for its own pleasure,
for the great exertion involved almost outweighs the pleasure. It is rather
an instinct of a unique sort by virtue of which the individual possessed of
genius is impelled to express what he has seen and felt in enduring works
without being conscious of any further motivation. It takes place, by and
large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and
demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can
flourish. The
fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the
inexplicable. Great
minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great
buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in
all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them. Talent works, genius
creates. There is no great genius
free from some tincture of madness. A
man of genius is not a man who sees more than other men do. On the contrary,
it is very often found that he is absentminded and observes much less than
other people.... Why is it that the public have such an exaggerated respect
for him—after he is dead? The reason is that the man of genius understands
the importance of the few things he sees.
The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement in a manner that would be amusingly absurd were it not so monstrously unjust and socially harmful. The poets' scrolls will
outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by
death. Genius is
essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it. Genius can never despise
labour.
It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. I may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius and each time a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken, and I may say in each case it was before there was
any general recognition of the quality of genius in them. The three genius of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Whitehead. . . .I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it . . . . I remember once coming into the room and hearing Bernard Faÿ say that the three people of first rate importance that he had met in his life were Picasso, Gertrude Stein and Andre Gidé and Gertrude Stein inquired quite simply, that is quite right but why include
Gidé. I
know that the twelve notes in each octave and the varieties of rhythm offer
me the opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust. When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that
the dunces are all in confederacy against him. |
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Science
is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the
betterment of humanity. Peace
can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment...
True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genius.
The
Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed is commonly, an Artist, but
the two are not to be confounded. The Man of Genius, referred to mankind, is
an originator, an inspired or demonic man, who produces a perfect work in
obedience to laws yet unexplored. The artist is he who detects and applies
the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or nature.
The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
There has been no man of pure Genius, as there has been none wholly
destitute of Genius.
The function of genius is
not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity
can resolve. On
Genius and Opportunity: |
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I
read ... an article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what
conscientious pains he had brought up all his children to be skeptical of
everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own
feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a
persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything.... I
think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them
with an ax. |
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Consistency
is the horror of the world. ...
the great artists ... do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Science
is a cemetery of dead ideas. To
fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be. When
we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of
the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the
very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept—the realm
of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation. Unfortunately,
the balance of nature decrees that a super-abundance of dreams is paid for
by a growing potential for nightmares. |
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The
lamp of genius burns quicker than the lamp of life. Everybody
is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes. Talent
without genius isn't much, but genius without talent is nothing
whatever. Common
sense is not so common. Genius
is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitariness, but rather of freedom, just as
wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We
should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it. Reason
is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit. |
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The divine egoism
that is genius. Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in
the domain of thought. The
world is a welter and always has been one; but through all the cranks and
the theorists cannot master the old floundering monster, or force it for
long into any of their neat plans of readjustment, here and there a saint or
a genius suddenly sends a little ray through the fog, and helps humanity to
stumble on, and perhaps up. |
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[In
New York] as in most provincial societies, the scholars, artists and men of
letters shut themselves obstinately away from people they despised as
'fashionable,' and the latter did not know how to make the necessary
advances to those who lived outside their little conventions. It is only in
sophisticated societies that the intellectual recognize the uses of the
frivolous, and that the frivolous know how to make their house attractive to
their betters. . . My readers, by this time, may be wondering what were the
particular merits, private or civic, of these amiable persons. Their lives,
as one looks back, certainly seem lacking in relief; but I believe their
value lay in upholding two standards of importance in any community, that of
education and good manners, and of scrupulous probity in business and
private affairs. The
Paris salon: 'the ease and amenity to be found only where intelligent people
of various callings, with a few cultivated idlers among them, predominate
over the highly-trained specialist. The only completely agreeable society I
have ever known is that wherein the elements are selected and blent by a
woman of the world, instinctively alert for every shade of suitability, and
whose light hand never suffers the mixture to stiffen or grow heavy. Genius
lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such
pains to over-educate ourselves. I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my
works. The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius. Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of
many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so
that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. |
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The
media is the most powerful entity on earth... they control the minds of the
masses. Only
by great risks can great results be achieved. |
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We
cannot expect in the immediate future that all women who seek it will
achieve full equality of opportunity. But if women are to start moving
towards that goal, we must believe in ourselves or no one else will believe
in us; we must match our aspirations with the competence, courage and
determination to succeed. |
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When
touched by genius, when led by chance, the most superior truth can come into
being from even the most foolish error. It
is a law of life that human beings, even the geniuses among them, do not
pride themselves on their actual achievements but that they want to impress
others, want to be admired and respected because of things of much lower
import and value. |
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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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