141 Genius Quotes

In a world brimming with complexity and countless voices, certain quotes stand out, shimmering like beacons of wisdom. These pearls of insight, often delivered by history's greatest minds, have the unique ability to inspire, provoke thought, and prompt us to view the world through a different lens. Whether you're seeking motivation, clarity, or simply a moment of reflection, our curated collection of the top 141 genius quotes is here to elevate your day. Dive in and let these powerful words transform your perspective and ignite your inner brilliance.

1. “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

2. “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

3. “Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.” - Woody Guthrie

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

5. “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

6. “These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.” - Abigail Adams

7. “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

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

9. “Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

10. “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 thatwithout 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

11. “In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.” - Baruch de Spinoza

12. “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

13. “Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.” - Orson Welles

14. “There's a thin line between genius and bottom-barrel stupidness. I hover delicately on a tightrope between the two, wondering where I'll land if I'll ever fall.” - Suzanne Crowley

15. “Geniuses have the shortest biographies.” - Claire Messud

16. “Genie währt länger als Schönheit.” - Oscar Wilde

17. “An Widerständen zeigt sich das Genie des Generals, Glück verhüllt es.” - Horace

18. “We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.” - David Mamet

19. “Intelligence, Kant reminds, is not so much a result of genius, rather it is a consequence of a determination to use it.” - Michael R. LeGault

20. “There is no such thing as an evil genius, as evil in it's self is stupidity.” - David Farland

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

22. “Madness is the acme of intelligence.” - Naguib Mahfouz

23. “That's why I've just gone on … collecting this particular kind of stuff – what you might call riff-raff. There's not a book here, Lawford, that hasn't at least a glimmer of the real thing in it – just Life, seen through a living eye, and felt. As for literature, and style, and all that gallimaufry, don't fear for them if your author has the ghost of a hint of genius in his making.” - Walter de la Mare

24. “If for instance the sentiment possessing for the moment the empire of our mind is sorrow, will not the genius sharpen the sorrow and the sorrow purify the genius? Together, will they not be like a cut diamond for which language is only the wax on which they stamp their imprint? I believe that genius, thus awakened, has no need to seek out details, that it scarcely pauses to reflect, that it never thinks of unity: I believe that the details come naturally without search by the poet, that inspiration takes the place of reflection and as for unity, I think there is no unity so perfect as that which results from a heart filled with a single idea...The nature of genius is related to that of instinct; it's operation is both simple and marvelous.” - Charlotte Brontë

25. “Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.” - Stephen Vizinczey

26. “These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.” - Abigail Adams

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

28. “In my opinion, if, as the result of certain combinations, Kepler's or Newton's discoveries could become known to people in no other way than by sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, or a hundred or more people who were hindering the discovery, or standing as an obstacle in its path, then Newton would have the right, and it would even be his duty... to remove those ten or a hundred people, in order to make his discoveries known to mankind. It by no means follows from this, incidentally, that Newton should have the right to kill anyone he pleases, whomever happens along, or to steal from the market every day. Further, I recall developing in my article the idea that all... well, let's say, the lawgivers and founders of mankind, starting from the most ancient and going on to the Lycurguses, the Solons, the Muhammads, the Napoleons, and so forth, that all of them to a man were criminals, from the fact alone that in giving a new law, they thereby violated the old one, held sacred by society and passed down from their fathers, and they certainly did not stop at shedding blood either, if it happened that blood (sometimes quite innocent and shed valiantly for the ancient law) could help them.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

29. “Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

30. “A genius. A criminal mastermind. A millionaire. And he is only twelve years old.” - Eoin Colfer

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

32. “I knew it was coming. I knew they didn't have the nerve.Three days in and they've got faces like vexed tomatoes, their skins flaking sci-fi style: burnt to fuck. They were an embarrassment; not only to me and the wife and The Fall fans but to their own generation.” - Mark E. Smith

33. “Some were brilliant bordering on genius. Others, genius bordering on madness” - Erich Segal

34. “I think MacGregor might be a genius. Anyone so oblivious to the horror of the human world must be.” - Susan Juby

35. “Anyone can put paint on a canvas, but only a true master can bring the painting to life. Anyone can kill, but only a genius can make murder an art.” - Shaun Jeffrey

36. “Fashion is ephemeral, dangerous and unfair.” - Karl Lagerfeld

37. “I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon.” - Karl Lagerfeld

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

39. “Geniuses don't become geniuses until they find the right moron to compare themselves to.” - James McGregor

40. “Geniusz to brak przystosowania.” - Vladimir Nabokov

41. “You see Miss Gertrude is a genius. And a genius is a genius. So what if no one understands a word she writes. Some day they might.” - Jonah Winter

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

43. “To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius.” - Joyce Cary

44. “this was business.” - Eoin Colfer

45. “The turmoil and dislocations confronting present-day society will not be solved until both the scientific and religious genius of the human race are fully utilized.” - Baha'i International Community

46. “A genius is someone who takes a complex thing and makes it look simple. An academic does the opposite.” - Robert Fanney

47. “One night I was layin' down,I heard Papa talkin' to Mama,I heard Papa say to let that boy boogie-woogie.'Cause it's in him and it's got to come out.” - John Lee Hooker

48. “Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius."The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up.But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word” - Brenda Ueland

49. “Freud was a genius; geniuses are bright but not necessarily right. What they do do, right or wrong, is to provide images that guide, or compel, the lives of the rest of us. If we are not careful we may accept the inevitability of these images. It seems that great men offer us a portion of reality and, because of their greatness, we take it for the whole.” - Peter Redgrove

50. “My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.” - Diane Setterfield

51. “If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius. ” - Michelangelo Buonarroti

52. “If there were a master of stupidity in this world, I would really love to listen to his success story.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

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

54. “The more obscure our tastes, the greater the proof of our genius.” - Jennifer Donnelly

55. “How many stopped-up men and women does it take to produce one Einstein? Ten? A thousand? A hundred thousand? ... So this is what Einstein meant when he looked me in the eye that day and said, I would be nothing without you. It was not success he saw written in my face. He saw, rather, that I would never accomplish anything at all.” - Rana Dasgupta

56. “Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell--the hell of your own meanness.” - Charlotte Brontë

57. “Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius.” - Sam Kean

58. “Something about Bekka and Haylee reminded her of Candace's line between ingenious and insane. Ingenuity inspired their dreams, and insanity gave them the courage to pursue them. It was something Melody wanted for herself.” - Lisi Harrison

59. “All geniuses die young.” - Groucho Marx

60. “Genius is the true mystery, and at its edge--the abyss.” - Guillermo Del Toro

61. “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

62. “Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness.” - Guy de Maupassant

63. “Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.” - An Wang

64. “Genius thinks out of box when leader adjusts the size of box.” - Toba Beta

65. “Kindness is strength. Good-nature is often mistaken for virtue, and good health sometimes passes for genius. Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm. Intelligence is not the foundation of arrogance. Insolence is not logic. Epithets are the arguments of malice.” - Robert Green Ingersoll

66. “It might be said of Miss [Djuna] Barnes,” [T.S. Eliot] wrote, “who is incontestably one of the most original writers of our time, that never has so much genius been combined with so little talent.” - Ross Wetzsteon

67. “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

68. “Genius is neither learned nor acquired. It is knowing without experience. It is risking without fear of failure. It is perception without touch. It is understanding without research. It is certainty without proof. It is ability without practice. It is invention without limitations. It is imagination without boundaries. It is creativity without constraints. It is...extraordinary intelligence!” - Patricia Polacco

69. “Genius inspires resentment. A sad fact of life.” - Eoin Colfer

70. “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

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

72. “[...] with the protecting sky in all its splendour and the golden sun blazing forth against a backdrop of crystalline blue, to use the inspired words of a television reporter[...].” - José Saramago

73. “On, I don't think I'm a genius!' cried Josie, growing calm and sober as she listened to the melodious voice and looked into the expressive face that filled her with confidence, so strong, sincere and kindly was it. 'I only want to find out if I have talent enough to go on, and after years of study be able to act well in any of the good plays people never tire of seeing. I don't expected to be a Mrs. Siddons or a Miss Cameron, much as I long to be; but it does seem as if I had something in me which can't come out in any way but this. When I act I'm perfectly happy. I seem to live, to be in my own world, and each new part is a new friend. I love Shakespeare, and am never tired of his splendid people. Of course I don't understand it all; but it's like being alone at night with the mountains and the stars, solemn and grand, and I try to imagine how it will look when the sun comes up, and all is glorious and clear to me. I can't see, but I feel the beauty, and long to express it.” - Louisa May Alcott

74. “I quite agree with Dr. Nordau's assertion that all men of genius are insane, but Dr. Nordau forgets that all sane people are idiots.” - Oscar Wilde

75. “You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be.” - Günter Grass

76. “Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.” - Fulton J. Sheen

77. “Music resembles poetry, in eachAre nameless graces which no methods teach,And which a master hand alone can reach.” - Alexander Pope

78. “Color me....BRILLIANT.” - Jamie Weise

79. “I am incapable of mediocrity.” - Serge Gainsbourg

80. “The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic genius - a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in in general circulation. "A genius working alone," he says, "is invariably ignored as a lunatic."The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find; a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad. "A person like this working alone," says Slazinger, "can only yearn loud for changes, but fail to say what their shaped should be."The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or pigheaded they may be. "He will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting," says Slazinger. "Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas turkey.” - Kurt Vonnegut

81. “There never was a man who could sit down and say: 'Now I am going to be the first man to write.” - David Diringer

82. “Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, ‘Look at my beautiful home! Isn’t it fine?’ And not, ‘Look at the home so-and-so has built.’ Thus we shouldn’t cry, ‘Look what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!’ But rather, ‘Look at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave?” - Roman Payne

83. “In order to share one's true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool: genius is like a wheel that spins so fast, it at first glance appears to be sitting still.” - Criss Jami

84. “An exceedingly confident student would in theory make a terrible student. Why would he take school seriously when he feels that he can outwit his teachers?” - Criss Jami

85. “Emotion is always multiplied in the art of a person who doesn't really show much emotion. It once expanded deep within his hidden soul, and following the downplay his audience is blown away.” - Criss Jami

86. “Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.” - Criss Jami

87. “The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.” - B.F. Skinner

88. “What is a genius? A person who demands little to nothing from others, but is often found extremely difficult to have around.” - Criss Jami

89. “Vivid simplicity is the articulation, the nature of genius. Wisdom is greater than intelligence; intelligence is greater than philosobabble.” - Criss Jami

90. “I am not sure if women are attracted to genius. Can you imagine the wise wizard winning the woman over the gallant swordsman? It seems rather otherworldly in more ways than one.” - Criss Jami

91. “Rocket shipsare excitingbut so are roseson a birthday.” - Leonard Nimoy

92. “Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.” - Charles Baudelaire

93. “If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.” - Richard Feynman

94. “True genius without heart is a thing of nought - for not great understanding alone, not intelligence alone, nor both together, make genius. Love! Love! Love! that is the soul of genius.” - Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin

95. “Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow.” - John Stuart Mill

96. “Show Holmes a drop of water and he would deduce the existence of the Atlantic. Show it to me and I would look for a tap. That was the difference between us.” - Anthony Horowitz

97. “I must know, he thinks. It must be clear to me. There is a world which is closed to him, a world of shadings, gradations, nuances, and subtleties. He is a genius and yet he is too explicit. June slips between his fingers. You cannot posses without loving.” - Anais Nin

98. “Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.” - Leonardo da Vinci

99. “The role of genius is not to complicate the simple, but to simplify the complicated.” - Criss Jami

100. “Genius is finding the invisible link between things.” - Vladimir Nabokov

101. “When your efforts run in the face of conventional wisdom and accepted mastery, persistence can look like madness. If you succeed in the end, this extreme originality reformulates into a new level of mastery, sometimes even genius; if you fail in the end, you remain a madman in the eyes of others, and maybe even yourself. When you are in the midst of the journey…there’s really no way of knowing which one you are.” (p.129)” - Hilary Austen

102. “Genius tries to conquer the world with art, with songs, with words; stupid tries to conquer it with sword, with guns, with arrows!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

103. “What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

104. “L'essere umano è davvero una creatura straordinaria. Ha scoperto il fuoco, edificato città, scritto magnifiche poesie, dato interpretazioni del mondo, inventato mitologie etc... Ma allo stesso tempo non ha smesso di fare la guerra ai suoi simili, non ha smesso di ingannarsi, di distruggere l'ambiente circostante. La somma algebrica fra vigore intellettuale e coglioneria dà un risultato quasi nullo. Dunque, decidendo di parlare di imbecillità, rendiamo in un certo senso omaggio a questa creatura che è per metà geniale, per metà imbecille” - Umberto Eco

105. “Henry held up his taco- formerly Vlad's- and grinned. " Little known fact, gentlemen. Tacos are the food of genius."pg248 Henry to Vlad & Joss” - Heather Brewer

106. “A true genius is my brother, for his ability to measure and adapt his imagination to knowledge is unbounded. He can turn laziness into tactics. He can drop tactics for strategy without anyone or anything realizing it. He can comprehend grand principles of creation effortlessly and flawlessly. His capacity for knowledge surpasses even my own, and it's not because he constantly takes steps forward. It's because he has unconsciously taught himself to understand the principles behind possibility and nothingness. That is a true genius.” - Lionel Suggs

107. “I think a lot of psychopaths are just geniuses who drove so fast that they lost control.” - Criss Jami

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

109. “But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.” - Marcel Proust

110. “I've proved my point. I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up as a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... Only you won't admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling! God you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that... Something like that happened to me, you know. I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha! But my point is... My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you? I mean, you're not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last world war? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! Telegraph poles! Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?” - Alan Moore

111. “Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.” - Terry Pratchett

112. “Il genio è un africano che vede in sogno la neve.” - Vladimir Nabokov

113. “Genius: Range of mind, power of imagination, and responsiveness of soul: this is genius. The man of genius has a soul with greater range, can therefore be struck by the feelings of all beings, is concerned with everything in nature, and never receives an idea that does not evoke a feeling. Everything stirs him and everything is retained within him.When the soul has been moved by an object itself, it is even more affected by the memory of the object. But in a man of genius imagination goes further: it recalls ideas with a more vivid feeling than it received them, because to these ideas are connected a thousand others more appropriate to arouse the feeling.” - Jean-François de Saint-Lambert

114. “Intelligence entails a strong mind, but genius entails a heart of a lion in tune with a strong mind.” - Criss Jami

115. “The truth is that solitude is the creative condition of genius, religious or secular, and the ultimate sterilising of it. No human soul can long ignore "the giant agony of the world" and live, except indeed the mollusc life, a barnacle upon eternity.” - Helen Waddell

116. “I refuse to settle for what you call reality.” - Solange nicole

117. “There's a difference between thinking you can't be wrong and having no regrets. Wrongness is what occurs prior to empiricism, in hindsight a counterpart of revelation, and revelation is nothing to regret.” - Criss Jami

118. “That’s the problem with any ‘simple truth’—it always takes a gaggle of complete idiots or a team of all-knowing geniuses to miss it.” - Ali Sheikh

119. “You're a Genius all the time” - Jack Kerouac

120. “In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.” - Robert G. Ingersoll

121. “I went to some classes. Vampire was in the Hair of Magical Magic Creatures. He looked all depressed because Draco had disappeared and he had used to be in love with Draco. He was sucking some blood from a Hufflepuff.” - Tara Gilesbie

122. “The twin aspects of genius, the passive and the active, are possessed by the fully realized artist; they also form the necessary equipment of the Adept. Yet in very few people are these twin aspects manifested. Nearly everyone has a capacity for the passive aspect, which involves some sort of appreciation of aesthetic values. There are few people totally unresponsive to the beauties of nature, and none at all that is not responsive to its ferocious manifestations.Fewer are able to respond profoundly to the beauty of natural phenomena, and fewer still to so-called works of art. It takes a degree of genius to respond to such manifestations the whole time. Artists in this category are among the saints, some of whom thrilled with rapture at the constant awareness of the total unity, harmony, and beauty of things.Such were Boehme, Ramakrishna, etc. Some yogis are immersed in an unsullied and vibrant bliss derived from the incessant contemplation of this 'world-bewitching maya'4-the breath-taking wonder of the great and glamorous illusion which surrounds us.On the other side of the fence, on the side of active or creative genius, there are yet fewer. Active or creative genius means nothing less than the ability to translate the wonder or the terror of the great lfla (the great play of life) in terms of visual, tactile, audible, olfactory, or some other sensual presentation of phenomena.But there is a third aspect of genius which is yet more rare. It is the ability to open the door of the theatre and admit the influences from outside, from the swarming gulfs beyond the grasp of the mind, and accessible only to the magical entity whose fantastic feelers can snare the most fugitive impulses as they flash through the holes in space, the kinks in time, to be reflected in the magic mirror of the artist's mind.” - Kenneth Grant

123. “I place my fingers upon these keys typing 2,000 dreams per minute and naked of spirit dance forth my cosmic vortex upon this crucifix called language.” - Aberjhani

124. “Developing your unique thought to the level of being appreciated and adopted by the world - that's genius.” - Ogwo David Emenike

125. “Being innovative is to allow yourself to expose your mind to something great that has potential to change lives and the world positively and you take action on it.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

126. “There is no gap as wide as the one between mediocrity and genius.” - Rutvik Oza

127. “Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.” - Elbert Hubbard

128. “Genius is always accompanied by enthusiasm.” - Bryan McGill

129. “Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.” - Amelia E. Barr

130. “Perhaps if I had made his life more difficult, he would have written less, or less freely. I cannot claim to be the midwife to genius, but if I have not facilitated,I have at least not, as many women might have done, prevented. This is a very small virtue to claim, a very negative achievement to hang my whole life on.” - Byatt A. S.

131. “...why do people venerate Einstein or Bill Gates? Clive Bell explains: Genius worship is the inevitable sign of an uncreative age....” - John Geddes

132. “What a vapid job title our culture gives to those honorable laborers the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians variously called Learned Men of the Magic Library, Scribes of the Double House of Life, Mistresses of the House of Books, or Ordainers of the Universe. 'Librarian' - that mouth-contorting, graceless grind of a word, that dry gulch in the dictionary between 'libido' and 'licentious' - it practically begs you to envision a stoop-shouldered loser, socks mismatched, eyes locked in a permanent squint from reading too much microfiche. If it were up to me, I would abolish the word entirely and turn back to the lexicological wisdom of the ancients, who saw librarians not as feeble sorters and shelvers but as heroic guardians. In Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian cultures alike, those who toiled at the shelves were often bestowed with a proud, even soldierly, title: Keeper of the Books. - p.113” - Miles Harvey

133. “She will try to find the nice way to exercise intelligence. But intelligence is not ladylike. Intelligence is full of excesses. Rigorous intelligene abhors sentimentality, and women must be sentimental to value the dreadful silliness of the men around them. Morbid intelligence abhors the cheery sunlight of positive thinking and eternal sweetness; and women must be sunlight and cheery and sweet, or the woman could not bribe her way with smiles through a day. Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized. Any vital intelligence has passionate questions, aggressive answers; but women cannot be explorers; there can be no Lewis or Clark of the female mind.” - Andrea Dworkin

134. “Philosophy is to the mind of the architect as eyesight to his steps. The Term 'genius' when applied to him simply means a man who understands what others only know about. A poet, artist or architect, necessarily 'understands' in this sense and is likely, if not careful, to have the term 'genius' applied to him; in which case he will no longer be thought human, trustworthy or companionable. Whatever may be his medium of expression he utters truth with manifest beauty of thought. If he is an architect, his building is natural. In him, philosophy and genius live by each other, but the combination is subject to popular suspicion and appellation 'genius' likely to settle him--so far as the public is concerned.” - Frank Lloyd Wright

135. “Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.” - Samuel Goldwyn

136. “He challenged the world with his genius, and the world defeated him by ignoring the challenge and starving him. He stopped writing because he had failed and because he had no choice but to accept the world’s terms: there is no mystery here. This was not insanity, but common sense.” - Raymond Weaver

137. “Clever man is a chicken; it can fly, but a little. Genius, on the other hand, is a migratory bird; it can fly at high altitudes until He disappears on the horizon!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

138. “العبقري يخترق حجاب المألوف .. ويخرج من أسْر العادة .!” - مصطفى محمود

139. “There have only been two geniuses in the world — Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.” - Tallulah Bankhead

140. “Genius is a sovereign power; it forms schools; it lays hold on the spirits of men, with irresistible might; and it exercises an immeasurable influence on the whole condition of human life. This sovereignty of genius is a gift of God, possessed only by his grace. It is subject to no one and is responsible to him alone who has granted it this ascendancy.” - Abraham Kuyper

141. “At the edge of madness you howl diamonds and pearls.” - Aberjhani