Brilliant Genius Quotes & Sayings

Ronald Reagan knew audiences. It was a key element of his political genius. One of the things at which brilliant politicians are better than mediocre ones is smelling new public concerns over the horizon before they are picked up by polls - before the public even knows to call them 'issues' at all. — Rick Perlstein

People link the heart to stupidity. They say the heart wants what it wants; it is foolish and driven. They play the victim and blame their emotions for every pain they suffer. The truth is that we own our body.. Therefore we own our heart and it will feel whatever we attract to it. Be certain that the heart you call stupid has greater sense of intuition than brilliant minds combined. It aches, dreams, hates, loves independently; while the rest of your body awaits signals from the brain to function. The heart is the lighthouse that guides all our senses and it is the essence of our humanity. That is why when they say "follow your heart" it is never easy; because by doing so you've made a choice to follow a natural unexplainable genius that is beyond your comprehension. — Asrarabdulghani

Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is. — Wayne Dyer

Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common. The most conspicuous of these is that they all produce a prodigious amount of work. The second is that they never know fatigue. And the third is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men's lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man's life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws. — Walter Russell

Tolkien was such a brilliant writer in so many ways. He was truly an inspiration. Many people don't realize just how much he researched and how much he based his stories and characters on mythology of various types. He was very deep and in many ways a genius. — Raymond Buckland

Anyway, madness and genius. They're the disturbed pals of the human condition. The Bonnie and Clyde, the Thelma and Louise, the baking soda and vinegar. Insanity just walks alongside the brilliant like some creepy, insistent shadow. — Deb Caletti

Gently the waves would break (Lily heard them in her sleep); tenderly the light fell (it seemed to come through her eyelids). And it all looked, Mr. Carmichael thought, shutting his book, falling asleep, much as it used to look years ago. — Virginia Woolf

Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague. — Honore De Balzac

Whether it's Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde, they're brilliant with genius bon mots. Of course, I find them extraordinary. — Duncan Roy

I'm good at my job for a midwestern American. Maybe it's because people in fashion often mistake common sense for genius. I mean, some model walks down the runway in an impossible outfit, and I state the obvious ? no one is going to wear that ? and people are like, you're brilliant!. — David Wolfe

An average person with average talent, ambition and education can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society, if that person has clear, focused goals. — Brian Tracy

There's a fine line between what would characterize you as a troglodyte and what would characterize you as a brilliant, avant-garde, forward-thinking genius. There's some middle ground. — Michael Eisner

If I look closely, I bet I could see my own past, lying on the floor somewhere between the ancient jukebox and the pool table. — Kol Anderson

The defining character of Steve Jobs isn't his genius, it isn't his talent, it isn't his success. It's his love. That's why crowds came to see him. You could feel that. It sounds ridiculous to talk about love when you are making a gadget. But Steve loved his work, he loved the products he produced, and it was palpable. He communicated that love through bits of steel and plastic. — Larry Brilliant

Richard Curtis, the writer and director of Love Actually, is brilliant at many things, but his genius, I submit, is for thrusting characters into situations in which they feel driven to humiliate themselves. Which is why we love them, especially when it's all in the name of love. He is the Bard of Embarrassment. — David Edelstein

You will stay up all night reading this brilliant and devastating novel the way you might have with a new best friend in junior high-one whose revelations thrilled and terrified you, and whose raw, hard-earned wisdom remade the way you saw the world. It evokes the genius of Angela Pneumans canonical progenitors: Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Walker Percy. Lay It on My Heart is a gorgeous, riveting, and unforgettable book. — Julie Orringer

Why does it so often take a genius to see the obvious? — Ashleigh Brilliant

There are probably brilliant people, geniuses, alive today who don't even know how to say, "Hello, how do you do?" because their minds are absorbed with electronic images. — Beth Henley

Gazzy: (Hugging himself and jumping up and down) "I'm brilliant! I'm a genius! I can blow up the world!"
Max: (Raises her eyebrows)
Gazzy: "Not that I would want to, of course," (coughs) — James Patterson

Manners without sincerity, is called polite society — Josh Stern

MY FATHER was a brilliant man, a true iconoclast, fiercely self-reliant, a dark genius, cruel, selfish, and eternally optimistic. Early in his sales career, a boss called him an "independent son of a bitch," which Dad took as the highest compliment he'd ever received. He wanted me to be the same way. Dad had no hobbies, no distractive activities. He didn't do household chores, wash the car, — Chris Offutt

Some were brilliant bordering on genius. Others, genius bordering on madness — Erich Segal

I don't like the fact that no one has any imagination anymore. It doesn't pay to be a dreamer because all they really want you to do is answer the phone. Nobody wants you to think about anything new or use your brain or make anything interesting because everything important has already been made. America is over; it's done being brilliant.Everything genius has already been built, like all the great works of art have already been produced. — Joe Meno

Genius is a curse. That's how I look at it. Some think that the brilliant comprehend the universe in a way the rest of us can't. They see the world how it truly is - and that reality is so horrible the lose their minds. Clarity leads to insanity. — Harlan Coben

What's with the super soaker?" -Stephine
"I had a stork of genius when you called me this morning I said what do I have to do to protect myself from the vampire? And the answer that came to me was holy water! I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner." -Lula
"You have the Super Soaker filled with holy water?" -Stephine
"Yeah I sucked it out of the church. You know that birdbath thing they got right up front?" -Lula
"THe baptismal font?" -Stephine
"That's it. They got it filled with holy water, free for the taking." -Lula
"Brilliant." -Stephine — Janet Evanovich

Sure I eat my feelings, but I save the emotional roller coaster for dessert — Josh Stern

Had Kurt Cobain not committed suicide in 1994, would his genius have survived the continuous incisions of a media that was only too proud of its ability to chisel away at his fragile psyche in the years before he decided that he'd had enough off their invasions? And, had Jimi Hendrix not passed way in 1970, would he, too have eventually fallen into decline, first equalled, then eclipsed by the brilliant wave of new guitarists: Robin Trower, Ritchie Blackmore, Mick Ronson, who emerged during the early 1970s? In death, Hendrix led by example: in life he could have been left for the dead. — Dave Thompson

I really got into 'The Walking Dead.' That was genius. And I have to say, my husband is on 'Shameless,' and I think it's a brilliant show. — Sarah Shahi

Sherlock Holmes gets to be brilliant, solitary, abrasive, Bohemian, whimsical, brave, sad, manipulative, neurotic, vain, untidy, fastidious, artistic, courteous, rude, a polymath genius. Female characters get to be Strong. — Sophia McDougall

Girls are genius at getting through sexual abuse. Often the only way to get through is not to feel. And that is exactly what these fantasy worlds allow: They give girls a place to go so they don't have to be present in their violated bodies. Brilliant. — Patti Feuereisen

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

An idle brain is the Devil's workshop, they say. It is an absurdly incongruous statement. If the Devil is at work in a brain it certainly is not idle. And when one considers how brilliant a personage the Devil is, and what very fine work he turns out, it becomes an open question whether he would have the slightest use for most of the idle brains that cumber the earth. — Mary MacLane

On June 22, 2008, at the age of 71, an American revolutionary died. He was a bona fide genius, an outspoken critich, a literary giant and an unprecedented visionary. For 50 years he entertained, challenged and amazed not only my generation, but also ones before mine and well after. He was sensational, brilliant, iconic and unique - the quintessential individual. He was my lifelong hero. His name was George Carlin. — Corey Taylor

Success in L.A. is completely arbitrary. One day you're the brilliant genius of life, the next day people act like there's a bad smell when you approach. Lots of expensive, late-model cars are offered in the L.A. Times every day by people who have suddenly begun to smell bad. The stakes are just too high for human dignity. — Cynthia Heimel

R.I.P. Alexander McQueen, a kind soul and brilliant creative genius. Sad and shocking. You've touched us all. — Joe Zee

If people can't tell when I'm being an idiot and when I'm being a genius, perhaps they'll assume my blunders are brilliant political maneuvers. — Brandon Sanderson

Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair! Here was a man, who could not spell, and did not care to read
who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whose aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, or enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul; and yet he had rank, and honours, and power, somehow: and was a dignitary of the land, and a pillar of the state. He was high sheriff, and rode in a golden coach. Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had a higher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue. — William Makepeace Thackeray

The genius who doesn't imagine is merely a brilliant idiot. — Kenneth Wilkinson

Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius. — Peter Thiel

Anybody who is stupid enough often stumbles on an effect that could never be thought up by the most brilliant. I suspect that there is a thing which you might call the genius of stupidity. — Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett

Poetry is not a lost art. Poetry is better than ever. Of course you've got the usual gang of idiots (as the Mad magazine staff writers used to call themselves) hiding in the thickets, folks who have gotten pretension and genius all confused, but there are also many brilliant practitioners of the art out there. Check the literary magazines at your local bookstore, if you don't believe me. For every six crappy poems you read, you'll actually find one or two good ones. And that, believe me, is a very acceptable ratio of trash to treasure. The — Stephen King

(Democracy: a brilliant invention, that Penbury wished he had thought of, whereby citizens could voice their political will on pieces of paper, which actually gave them little or no choice, that were then deposited in a sealed box which, when opened elsewhere, were emptied onto the nearest fire and ignored while the politicians brokered real power between themselves. Genius.) — Paul Dale

I think I have had so much blessing - I've had my brother, who was brilliant - I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother - Bailey was just all of that. He loved me. — Maya Angelou

Modina lowered her voice and said, "I'll tell you a secret - it's not me at all, really. Sure, on occasion, I come up with something intelligent - and I am usually surprised by it myself - but the real genius behind my throne is Nimbus. Amilia deserves everything this empire can give her for hiring him. The man is a wonder: quiet, unassuming, but utterly brilliant. If he had a mind to, he could replace me in a heartbeat. I am convinced he could organize a perfectly lovely coup, but he has no aspirations for power at all. — Michael J. Sullivan

I ... I don't, I don't think I can do this."
"Do what?"
It didn't answer.
"Do the tests?"
"I can't work with you when you're like this!" it blurted. "To every one of my specimens, I am the last thing they see! Terrror is what I am used to
terror is what I like! I prefer my subjects to scream and beg, not ask to see results!"
"I'll scream my questions, if that helps."
"It won't," it said sadly. "I'll know you're only trying to make me feel better. — Derek Landy

In my view, ideas and other intellectual productions are more interesting, more indicative of intelligence, and more productively debated than IQ alone. — Christopher Langan

James was sixteen, Cam seventeen, perhaps. She had looked round for someone who was not there, for Mrs. Ramsay, presumably. But there was only kind Mrs. Beckwith turning over her sketches under the lamp. Then, being tired, her mind still rising and falling with the sea, the taste and smell that places have after long absence possessing her, the candles wavering in her eyes, she had lost herself and gone under. It was a wonderful night, starlit; the waves sounded as they went upstairs; the moon surprised them, enormous, pale, as they passed the staircase window. She had slept at once. — Virginia Woolf

I compensate for my debauchery by being brilliant at it. I make sacrifices for it by waking up in a gutter covered in the fruits of my genius. — Bauvard

It is not the color of the skin that makes the man or the woman, but the principle formed in the soul. Brilliant wit will shine, come from whence it will; and genius and talent will not hide the brightness of its lustre. — Maria W. Stewart

Even when writing your own poems, you need to talk to people; you need to magpie around, getting words and things. I'm very against the celebrity culture that wants to say: 'this is a genius, this is one person who has done something brilliant.' There are always a hundred people in the background who have helped to make it. — Alice Oswald

I believe that in the process of locating new avenues of creative thought, we will also arrive at an existential conservatism. It is worth asking repeatedly: Where are our deepest roots? We are, it seems, Old World, catarrhine primates, brilliant emergent animals, defined genetically by our unique origins, blessed by our newfound biological genius, and secure in our homeland if we wish to make it so. What does it all mean? This is what it all means: To the extent that we depend on prosthetic devices to keep ourselves and the biosphere alive, we will render everything fragile. To the extent that we banish the rest of life, we will impoverish our own species for all time. And if we should surrender our genetic nature to machine-aided ratiocination, and our ethics and art and our very meaning to a habit of careless discursion in the name of progress, imagining ourselves godlike and absolved from our ancient heritage, we will become nothing. — Edward O. Wilson

It is this ideal of progress through cumulative effort rather than through genius - progress by organised effort, progress which does not wait for some brilliant stroke, some lucky discovery, or the advent of some superman, has been the chief gift of science to social philosophy. — William Wickenden

People marvel at the genius of Mozart because he supposedly wrote "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" at the age of three and composed his first symphony at the age of twelve. And yes, of course he was a genius, but another way to look at it is that he just discovered early what it was God made him to do. That's all. For some reason, God gave him a little extra, or a little something different, and Mozart found out what that was and then got a head start on using it. Of course he was brilliant, but that's not the point. The point is he knew, and then he got to work. — Charles Martin

I don't use the word lightly, in fact, I don't use it at all, but Ben Marcus is a genius, one of the most daring, funny, morally engaged and brilliant writers, someone whose work truly makes a difference in the world. His prose is, for me, awareness objectified-he makes the word new and thus the world. — George Saunders

Life is a very brief candle especially when you burn it at both ends — Josh Stern

I'm a huge Muppets fan. Gigantic. I think they're genius. I think they're some of the best work out there and completely underrated, just because of how genius they are. I love that kind of humor. It's so innocent but brilliant. — Andie MacDowell

Color me....BRILLIANT. — Coco J. Ginger

Maybe you've decided you're not a genius, that you're not brilliant, that you're not prosperous, that you're not wonderful, that you're not lovable. Well, you know what? You're both: you're unlovable and you are lovable. And they both need equal time. — Debbie Ford

Some performers are brilliant comedians, some are genius musicians, and some just make you happy to be alive. THE BOBS are all of that - and then some. — Paul Provenza

The first job I ever did in the theatre, I was supposed to be a genius piano player. I couldn't play the piano, but you just sit there at a piano like you're playing, and suddenly all this amazing music comes out and the audience believes you can do it. It's the same with computers. I love scenes where there are people yanking at monitors, "yes I'll put you through now," and you know they're just doing that. But you can look brilliant at all this technology. I love it. — Michael Sheen

Similarly the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is most brilliant, or their culture broadest, but those who have had the power, ceasing in a moment to live only for themselves, to make use of their personality as of a mirror. — Marcel Proust

Over his shoulder, she saw Skulduggery walk in. "Oh, hell," she muttered.
Wreath's smile reappeared. "It's Skulduggery, isn't it?"
Over his shoulder, she saw Skulduggery walk in. "Oh , hell," she muttered.
Wreath's smile reappeared. "It's Skulduggery, isn't it?"
"Please don't annoy him."
"Me? When have I EVER annoyed the great Skulduggery Pleasant?"
Skulduggery arrived at their table. Wreath smile up at him. "Hello."
"I will shoot you in the eye," Skulduggery said.
Wreath glanced at Valkyrie. "I think I've annoyed him. — Derek Landy

When King Lear dies in Act V, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He's written "He dies." That's all, nothing more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential work of dramatic literature is "He dies." It takes Shakespeare, a genius, to come up with "He dies." And yet every time I read those two words, I find myself overwhelmed with dysphoria. And I know it's only natural to be sad, but not because of the words "He dies." but because of the life we saw prior to the words. — Suzanne Weyn

I am a genius, I am brilliant, I am outstanding and I can achieve whatever I choose to achieve with a ... given by my Creator. That is how I am helping people. — John Assaraf

Each of us is born brilliant. Then we spend the rest of our lives having our brilliance buried by people, circumstances, and experiences. Eventually, we forget that we ever had genius and special talents, and our brilliance is locked away in a vault deep within. So we settle for who we are, instead of striving for who we were meant to be. — Simon T. Bailey

The most agreeable of all companions is a simple, frank man, without any high pretensions to an oppressive greatness; one who loves life, and understands the use of it; obliging alike at all hours; above all, of a golden temper and steadfast as an anchor. For such an one we gladly exchange the greatest genius, the most brilliant wit, the profoundest thinker. — Lessing G.

The Nook is an under-appreciated genius of a lovemark. The team at Barnes & Noble got a lot right with the Nook, and from a lovemark perspective, I think they created a more intimate product than any other dedicated e-reader. The rubber back behind the Nook is soft and pliable - not hard metal like the later Kindles - making it sensual and intimate. Barnes & Noble also recreated the engraved faces of famous authors from their stores and used them as Nook screensavers. It's brilliant, not just because it makes reading more intimate, but also because it solidifies the Barnes & Noble brand itself. — Jason Merkoski

There's a really brilliant photographer who's deceased who in my sort of fashion and modelling days, I was fortunate enough to get to work with before he passed away, but Richard Avedon was utterly genius and creatively brilliant. — Gabriel Mann

Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning: the meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination. — Virginia Woolf

I was forced to confront my own prejudice. I had come to the farm with the unarticulated belief that concrete things were for dumb people and abstract things were for smart people. I thought the physical world - the trades - was the place you ended up if you weren't bright or ambitious enough to handle a white-collar job. Did I really think that a person with a genius for fixing engines, or for building, or for husbanding cows, was less brilliant than a person who writes ad copy or interprets the law? Apparently I did, though it amazes me now. — Kristin Kimball