Quotes & Sayings About Genius Person

Curiosity, or the love of knowledge, has a very limited influence, and requires youth, leisure education, genius and example to make it govern any person — David Hume

Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person. — Immanuel Kant

And human instinct is ancient and reliable, utterly mysterious and possibly capable of great genius. I believe that refined, fluent instincts are a person's most valuable asset. My own instincts have repeatedly guided me against the grain of logic and probability. When I have trusted and followed their direction, they have never been wrong. I don't know how or why. But I know that every significant experience-positive or negative-sharpens them and makes them more accurate. — Augusten Burroughs

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

At this point I feel I would be remiss to not mention the prevalence of a specific kind of person who enters the field of book publishing. This is the English lit major who never should have left academia, a genius who has read all of V.S. Naipaul but can't photocopy title pages right side up. This person is very thin, possibly vegan, probably Ivy League. He or she feels as if answering the phone in a chipper voice is a form of legalized prostitution. He or she has a single quirky fashion piece, usually red or black, and waxes poetic about typewriters and the British, having never truly known either. Regardless of sex, they all want to be David Foster Wallace when they grow up. — Sloane Crosley

I buy everything India Arie, just because she's such a positive person, and I just love her music. Her music's so soulful ... I think Kanye West is a genius musically. — Tika Sumpter

I am not some frill-wearing tramp. I am a genius. I say this because it is a fact. I am smarter than any person you've ever met, except perhaps my twin. My heart does not make my brain a fool. — Pierce Brown

Perhaps these leaders understood that the person sitting at the apex of the intelligence hierarchy is the genius maker, not the genius. — Liz Wiseman

The most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study. — Jonathan Swift

The definition of genius, really, should be that that person can do what the rest of us have to learn how to do. — James Lipton

Franklin was a thin, pink person who was either a genius or, well, not one. Chances weren't. — Ben Marcus

PREFACE A New Look at the Legacy of Albert Einstein Genius. Absent-minded professor. The father of relativity. The mythical figure of Albert Einstein - hair flaming in the wind, sockless, wearing an oversized sweatshirt, puffing on his pipe, oblivious to his surroundings - is etched indelibly on our minds. "A pop icon on a par with Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, he stares enigmatically from postcards, magazine covers, T-shirts, and larger-than-life posters. A Beverly Hills agent markets his image for television commercials. He would have hated it all," writes biographer Denis Brian. Einstein is among the greatest scientists of all time, a towering figure who ranks alongside Isaac Newton for his contributions. Not surprisingly, Time magazine voted him the Person of the Century. Many historians have placed him among the hundred most influential people of the last thousand years. — Michio Kaku

If every Genius has a touch of Madness, does every Normal person have a touch of Ignorance ? — Stanley Victor Paskavich

When you're ten, they call you a prodigy. When you're fifteen, they call you a genius. But once you hit twenty, you're just a normal person. — Masahiro Yokotani

Genius is a thing that happens, not a kind of person. — Jordan Ellenberg

Every person, genius or moron, has a right to reproduce himself. — Lee Kuan Yew

Just reading that - just reading that a person can be black and still perform in blackface, making fun of black people for a living, and at the same time be a genius and be an incredible entertainer and at the same time be extremely conflicted and feel like - just feel terrible for doing that, essentially, which is what Bert Williams felt, from what I gather, from what I read - all of that just made - was so incredible to me. — Cecile McLorin Salvant

Don't put people, or anything else, on pedestals, not even your children. Avoid global labels such as genius or weirdo. Realize those closest get the benefit of the doubt and so do the most beautiful and radiant among us. Know the halo effect causes you to see a nice person as temporarily angry and an angry person as temporarily nice. Know that one good quality, or a memory of several, can keep in your life people who may be doing you more harm than good. Pay attention to the fact that when someone seems nice and upbeat, the words coming out of his or her mouth will change in meaning, and if that same person were depressive, arrogant, or foul in some other way, your perceptions of those same exact words would change along with the person's other features. — David McRaney

The genius of Christian spirituality is to integrate [the] spirit of possession with the spirit of dispossession. The spirit of dispossession implies that all the good and delightful things of this world are never allowed to own, possess, or shackle me. Dispossession implies that I am always free, my own person, liberated from the tyranny that possession can easily exercise over us. — John Powell

Clarissa will be bereaved, deeply lonely, but she will not die. She will be too much in love with life, with London. Virginia imagines someone else, yes, someone strong of body but frail-minded; someone with a touch of genius, of poetry, ground under by the wheels of the world, by war and government, by doctors; a someone who is, technically speaking insane, because that person sees meaning everywhere, knows that trees are sentient beings and sparrows sing in Greek. Yes, someone like that. Clarissa, sane Clarissa -exultant, ordinary Clarissa - will go on, loving London, loving her life of ordinary pleasures, and someone else, a deranged poet, a visonary, will be the one to die. — Michael Cunningham

Money is a way of measuring wealth but is not wealth in itself. A chest of gold coins or a fat wallet of bills is of no use whatsoever to a wrecked sailor alone on a raft. He needs real wealth, in the form of a fishing rod, a compass, an outboard motor with gas, and a female companion. But this ingrained and archaic confusion of money with wealth is now the main reason we are not going ahead full tilt with the development of our technological genius for the production of more than adequate food, clothing, housing, and utilities for every person on earth. — Alan W. Watts

It reflects no great honor on a painter to be able to execute only one thing well
such as a head, an academy figure, or draperies, animals, landscapes, or the like
in other words, confining himself to some particular object of study. This is so because there is scarcely a person so devoid of genius as to fail of success if he applies himself earnestly to one branch of study and practices it continually. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Who am I??
I'm a person who was scammed by somebody and who scammed people - First! (Don't worry that's my past! Everyone have such past do they??)
I'm the guy who was punched and kicked in School when we are talking about this (This reminds me for some films like Monk - check out he in school (his past!))
I'm the guy who follow the crowd, what I found was horrible that I went in a place where most people play the games which other play like "League of Legends" - outside and home all they talking about this game which one round takes 60 minutes. I'm now 2016 year in school and still listening about the football what has happen, who has played, who has won, who has won privious round, which is the best team and I'm sure that I'm genius because of listening this discussion. I can say it from here....
I'm just ironic, I don't like football, logicaly I don't like to listen = so I don't like to watch why?? You must find out! — Deyth Banger

You know the difference between right and wrong,' he repeated finally. 'Man, why did you need Initiation - by the Golden Dawn, or by anybody else? You are a genius, a sage, a giant among men. You have solved the problem which philosophers have been debating since antiquity - the mystery about which no two nations or tribes have ever agreed, and no two men or women have ever agreed, and no intelligent person has ever agreed totally with himself from one day to the next. You know the difference between right and wrong. I am overawed. I swoon. I figuratively kiss your feet. — Robert Anton Wilson

The critic is genius at one remove; he is not unlike an actor on the stage, and incarnates in his mind, as the actor embodies in his person, another's work; only thus does he understand art, realize it, know it; and having arrived at this, his task is done. — George Edward Woodberry

One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of "much cleverer" people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to be original. But this class of person, as we have observed above, is far less happy than the first. The difficulty is that the intelligent "ordinary" man, even if he does imagine himself at times (and perhaps all his life) a person of genius and originality, nevertheless retains within his heart a little worm of doubt, which sometimes leads the intelligent man in the end to absolute despair. If he does yield in this belief, he is still completely poisoned with inward-driven vanity. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Hitler, who founded the Third Reich, who ruled it ruthlessly and often with uncommon shrewdness, who led it to such dizzy heights and such a sorry end, was a person of undoubted, if evil genius. It is true that in the German people, as a mysterious Providence and centuries of experience had molded them up to that time, he found a natural instrument which he was able to shape to his own sinister ends. — William L. Shirer

My opinion is that we have, in the person of Da Free John, a Spiritual Master and religious genius of the ultimate degree. I assure you I do not mean that lightly. I am not tossing out high-powered phrases to 'hype' the works of Da Free John. I am simply offering to you my own considered opinion: Da Free John's teaching is, I believe, unsurpassed by that of any other spiritual Hero, of any period, of any place, of any time, of any persuasion. — Adi Da

The knowledge of the Spirit is the true secret of creativity, leadership and happiness. It is spiritual intelligence that makes an ordinary person a genius. When a genius loses his spiritual intelligence, he becomes quite ordinary. — Awdhesh Singh

The true genius of a great manager is his or her ability to individualize. A great manager is one who understands how to trip each person's trigger. — Marcus Buckingham

Consequently, the value and importance of the monarchic idea cannot reside in the person of the monarch himself except if Heaven decides to lay the crown on the brow of the heroic genius like Frederick the Great or a wise character like William I. — Adolf Hitler

[In 2011 on Steve Jobs] He was the most amazing person I have ever know. He was a genius. He was an innovator. He was the best client we ever had. He was my friend. — Lee Clow

Each individual is unique in ordinary life. The uniqueness becomes even more sharp and clear, crystal clear, when the person becomes enlightened - because only then his pure genius, his pure individuality, uncontaminated, unpolluted, is revealed. — Rajneesh

Voltaire," says M. Guizot, "was the first person in France who spoke of Shakespeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbarian genius, the French public were of the opinion that he had said too much in his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation to apply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crude as they were coarse. — William Shakespeare

The finest piece of mechanism in all the universe is the brain of man. The wise person develops his brain, and opens his mind to the genius and spirit of the world's great ideas. He will feel inspired with the purest and noblest thoughts that have ever animated the spirit of humanity. — Alfred Armand Montapert

The greatest genius is the most indebted person. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

(In response to a picture critic.)

I'm actually a very joyful person. But being a genius with a photographic memory mixed with a strong case of OCD makes for a difficult picture sometimes. — Calvin W. Allison

I wish my genius ran to making automatons," he said. "I would invent one that would follow you around with a tray. It would wait patiently for you to look up from whatever you were doing, and as soon as you did, it would say, 'Lady Cambury, you must have something to eat.'"

She swallowed her bite of apple. "That would be extremely annoying."

"I do not consider that a detriment."

"I consider it a waste of a good automaton. I would modify your invention," she said, reaching for some cheese. "I'd dress my version up in my best silk and send it out to pay morning calls. Oh, how I hate making morning calls. It wouldn't need much of a vocabulary. 'Yes,' my automaton would say, 'this weather is dreadful, isn't it?' In fact, I think that's how I would do it. Whatever the other person says, it would answer, 'Yes, it most certainly is, isn't it?' My automaton would have perfect manners. — Courtney Milan

Today people look at me, at my job and my Ivy League credentials, and assume that I'm some sort of genius, that only a truly extraordinary person could have made it to where I am today. With all due respect to those people, I think that theory is a load of bullshit. Whatever — J.D. Vance

I would be a genius now," Quilty has said three times already, "if only I'd memorized Shakespeare instead of Lulu." "If only," says Mack. Mack himself would be a genius now if only he had been born a completely different person. But what could you do? He'd read in a magazine once that geniuses were born only to women over thirty; his own mother had been twenty-nine. Damn! So fucking close! — Lorrie Moore

My definition of genius is not being that person the actual human is a genius, but it's a person that just allows God to work through them. — Kanye West

I feel Aleister Crowley is a misunderstood genius of the 20th century. Because his whole thing was liberation of the person, of the entity, and that restrictions would foul you up, lead to frustration which leads to violence, crime, mental breakdown, depending on what sort of makeup you have underneath. The further this age we're in now gets into technology and alienation, a lot of the points he's made seem to manifest themselves all down the line. — Jimmy Page

Person of genus are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people - less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without harmful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character. If from timidity they consent to be forced into one of these moulds, and to let all that part of themselves which cannot expand under the pressure remain unexpanded, society will be little the better for their genius. — John Stuart Mill

While Genius was thus wasting his strength in eccentric flights, I saw a person of a very different appearance, named Application. — Anna Letitia Barbauld

In my experience, some Dzogchen masters are better teachers than others. I have been in the presence of several of the most revered Tibetan lamas of our time while they were ostensibly teaching Dzogchen, and most of them simply described this view of consciousness without giving clear instructions on how to glimpse it. The genius of Tulku Urgyen was that he could point out the nature of mind with the precision and matter-of-factness of teaching a person how to thread a needle and could get an ordinary meditator like me to recognize that consciousness is intrinsically free of self. There might be some initial struggle and uncertainty, depending on the student, but once the truth of nonduality had been glimpsed, it became obvious that it was always available - and there was never any doubt about how to see it again. I came to Tulku Urgyen yearning for the experience of self-transcendence, and in a few minutes he showed me that I had no self to transcend. — Sam Harris

Yes, I know that. And you shall always have my friendship as well. But I do not wish to press anyone into loving me. The person who loves me will see me for who I am, good and bad, and say, Yes, that's the handsome gentleman I have been hoping to meet all along, that handsome, charming, witty, disarming, genius, remarkable, dashing - "
"Mr. Kent."
"See? That is not going to be you, Ev - Miss Wyndham. Which is why I will leave you to the most ridiculous man in London - who is made much less ridiculous by you. Indeed, I might even say he is tolerable. — Tarun Shanker

Stay Stupid The three dumbest guys I can think of: Charles Lindbergh, Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill. Why? Because any smart person who understood how impossibly arduous were the tasks they had set themselves would have pulled the plug before he even began. Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur's indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be - and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway. How do we achieve this state of mind? By staying stupid. By not allowing ourselves to think. A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It's only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate. Don't think. Act. — Steven Pressfield

A person of genius should marry a person of character. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

MUSIC MAY NOT MAKE YOU A GENIUS, or rich, or even a better person. But it helps train you to think differently, to process different points of view - and most important, to take pleasure in listening. — Joanne Lipman

How can you regret never having found true love? That's like saying you regret not being born a genius. People don't have control over such things. It either happens or it doesn't. It's a gift - a present that most never get. It's more like a miracle, really, when you think of it. I mean, first you have to find that person, and then you have to get to know them to realize just what they mean to you - that right there is ridiculously difficult. Then ... then that person has to feel the same way about you. It's like searching for a specific snowflake, and even if you manage to find it, that's not good enough. You still have to find its matching pair. What are the odds? — Michael J. Sullivan

There was no such person as Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe was an invention of hers. A genius invention that she created, like an author creates a character. She understood photography, and she also understood what makes a great photograph. She related to it as if she were giving a performance. She gave more to the still camera than any actress-any woman- I've ever photographed. — Richard Avedon

She smiled darkly and shook her head. 'I'm not crazy. I'm not. Of course what else would a crazy person claim? That's the Kafkaesque genius of it all. If you're not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point. Do you see what I'm saying? — Dennis Lehane

The genius writer was correct. In obtaining freedom, man suddenly understands that he has shouldered a heavy burden, because freedom involves responsibility. A person must make decisions himself and himself answer for them. — Alexander Lukashenko

The evil genius bent upon wrecking my life had not taken in account one thing: a man crushed and utterly wretched cares less for himself than a happy one. In presence of that indifference fate becomes more or less powerless. I was and am still in that frame of mind that, if angry Fortuna came to me in person, and said: "Go to perdition," I should reply calmly: "Be it so," - not out of sorrow for the loss of Aniela, but from mere indifference to everything within or without me. This — Henryk Sienkiewicz

The genius of culture is to create an ontological system so compelling that what is inside and outside of a person are viewed as of a piece, no seams and patches noticeable. — Richard Shweder

What makes a genius? The ability to see. To see what? The butterfly in a caterpillar, the eagle in an egg, the saint in a selfish person, life in death, unity in separation,
God in the human and human in God and suffering as the form in which the incomprehensibility of God himself appears. — Brennan Manning

We can arrive at better solutions to any problem or pain together, than we can by ourselves. The beauty of the modern age is that you are able to source answers, and sometimes the genius is in the combination of ideas and energy that does not reside in only one person. — Desmond Tutu

No company should depend on one person no matter how that person is smart or genius, whether it's Apple or News Corp, or Citibank or any other company in the world. — Al-Waleed Bin Talal

I think if we push the analysis to its ultimate point we have to say that each earthly father accuses us of our impotence if we become truly creative personalities; they remind us that we are born of men and not gods. No living person can give genius the powers it needs to shoulder the meaning of the world. — Ernest Becker

The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away. — Walter Wriston

If a great mansion is located in a wrong environment, it loses its real value! So it is, when a great and true genius fails to get the right stage, its real value is least seen! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

But then the general trouble with ignorance is always that the ignorant person has no idea that that's what they are. You can be ignorant and stupid and go through your whole life without ever encountering any evidence against the hypothesis that you're a genius. — Louis De Bernieres

[Rousseau is] the person whom I most revere both for the Force of [his] Genius and the Greatness of [his] mind [ ... ] — David Hume

Danny had no idea what the thing was. All he knew was that he lived more or less in a constant state of expecting something any day, any hour, that would change everything, knock the world upside down and put Danny's whole life into perspective as a story of complete success, because every twist and turn and snag and fuckup would always have been leading up to this. Unexpected stuff could hit him like the thing at first: a girl he'd forgotten giving his number to suddenly calling up out of the blue, a friend with some genius plan for making money, better yet a person he'd never heard of who wanted to talk. Danny got an actual physical head rush from messages like these, but as soon as he called back and found out the details, the calls would turn out to just be about more projects, possibilities, schemes that boiled down to everything staying exactly like it was. — Jennifer Egan

Intelligence and common sense, what makes a person a real genius. — Wazim Shaw

No person is so grand or wise or perfect as to be the master of another person. Teacher, perhaps. Setter of good example, perhaps. Genius, perhaps. But master, no. — Karl Hess

A person with a melancholy temperament had been fated with both an awful burden and what Byron called "a fearful gift." The burden was a sadness and despair that could tip into a state of disease. But the gift was a capacity for depth, wisdom - even genius. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

Genius is the talent of a person who is dead. — Edmond De Goncourt

Memory exercised in a particular way is a natural gift of poetic genius. The poet above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can relive again as though with all their original freshness. — Stephen Spender

The lucky person passes for a genius. — Euripides

When we conceive an enterprise and commit to it in the face of our fears, something wonderful happens. A crack appears in the membrane. Like the first craze when a chick pecks at the inside of its shell. Angel midwives congregate around us; they assist as we give birth to ourselves, to that person we were born to be, to the one whose destiny was encoded in our soul, our daimon, our genius. — Steven Pressfield

Among the great men who have philosophized about [the action of the tides], the one who surprised me most is Kepler. He was a person of independent genius, [but he] became interested in the action of the moon on the water, and in other occult phenomena, and similar childishness. — Galileo Galilei

Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. — Ayn Rand

The power of "can't": The word "can't" makes strong people weak, blinds people who can see, saddens happy people, turns brave people into cowards, robs a genius of their brilliance, causes rich people to think poorly, and limits the achievements of that great person living inside us all. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

If you set the attractiveness bar really low, people have to compliment you on your looks when they meet you in person. I'm pretty much a genius. I'm actually applying to work at the Genius Bar based on this trick. — Megan Amram

A genius could be anybody that he wants, but ingenious is always one person at that time. — Matthew McConaughey

A genius is a person who is seeing further and probing deeper than other people has a different set of ethical valuations from their and has energy enough to give effect to this extra vision and its valuations in whatever manner best suits his or her — George Bernard Shaw

There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. — Walt Whitman

The genius inside a person wants activity. It's connected to the stars; it's connected to a spark and it wants to burn and it wants to make and it wants to create and it has gifts to give. That is the nature of inner genius. — Michael Meade

Eggs Benedict is genius. It's eggs covered in eggs. I mean, come on,
that person should be the president. — Wylie Dufresne

He [Jesus] was the greatest human being who has ever lived. He was a moral genius. His ethical sense was unique. He was the intrinsically wisest person that I've ever encountered in my life or in my reading. His commitment was total and led to his own death, much to the detriment of the world ... — Charles Templeton

The most terrifying burden of the creature is to be isolated, which is what happens in individuation: one separates himself out of the herd. This move exposes the person to the sense of being completely crushed and annihilated because he sticks out so much, has to carry so much in himself. These are the risks when the person begins to fashion consciously and critically his own framework of heroic self-reference. Here is precisely the definition of the artist type, or the creative type generally. We have crossed a threshold into a new type of response to man's situation. No one has written about this type of human response more penetratingly than Rank; and of all his books, Art and Artist is the most secure monument to his genius. I — Ernest Becker

Every single person in the world could be a genius at something, if they practiced it daily for at least ten years (as confirmed by the research of Anders Ericsson and others). — Robin Sharma

The ultimate trick is to convince, persuade. Every single person out there is an idiot, but collectively they're a genius. — Billy Wilder

What the great mentor is always looking for is a person who is willing to tap his genius, to put it through the refiner's fire, to do the hard work to develop it. Indeed, mentoring is the medieval art of alchemy-turning plain old human steel into hearts and minds of gold. — Oliver DeMille

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

Michael Jackson? He was something more (than one of my favorite entertainers), a true friend. He wasn't just a genius. Above all, he was a good person, who gave so much. He gave people values, he encouraged them to better themselves all the time. He was far deeper and more authentic than people could see. He was misunderstood too many times — Kobe Bryant

It is in everyone's interest that every person's creative genius be encouraged and allowed to develop and express. — Efiong Etuk

Genius is by definition a style of consciousness characterized by the ability to access high energy attractor patterns. It is not a personality characteristic. It is not something that a person has, nor even something that someone is. Those in whom we recognize genius commonly disclaim it. A universal characteristic of genius is humility. The genius has always attributed his insights to some higher influence. — David R. Hawkins

Genius in a person was like weed that takes over the entire garden, that won't allow anything else to grow. (p. 251) — Rebecca Goldstein

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet. — Novalis

Which is to say, the Romans didn't believe that an exceptionally gifted person was a genius; they believed that an exceptionally gifted person had a genius. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I'm too young and ridiculous a person to speak for my generation, but I'd be happy to talk about my own experiences as a generation Y writer. I was raised by a generation of hippies. Throughout my childhood, teachers urged me to fight the establishment. My English teacher assigned Ginsberg and Kerouac and declared Bob Dylan "a genius." My science teacher told me that television was "the new opiate of the masses" and bragged about never having owned one. My drama teacher made us perform Beckett. — Simon Rich

Like most geniuses, the Countess was a very limited person. Sigmund Freud was so ignorant of the art that Surrealist painters had to explain then- use of Freudian symbols over and over again, and he still didn't get it. Einstein never could remember to take the biscuits out of oven. Those same forces that drive a genius to create things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces (Should you invite Van Gogh to your home he might stand on your sofa in his muddy boots and pee where he pleased), and the very act of creation requires such focused concentration that vast areas of knowledge may be completely overlooked. Well, so what? There is no evidence that generalized skills are in any way superior to specialized brilliance, and certainly that sputter less little candle. Same of the mediocre mind known as "common sense" has never produced anything worth celebrating. — Tom Robbins

In my dreams," said Ender, "I'm never sure whether I'm really me. — Orson Scott Card

Besides, when you found me, I was a much different person."

"I remember," the wizard said thoughtfully. "You were like a rabid dog, snapping at everything and everyone. Clearly, my genius in matching you up with Hadrian worked wonders. I knew his noble heart would eventually soften yours."

"Yeah, well, travel with a guy long enough and you start picking up his bad habits. You have no idea how many times I almost killed him when we first started. I never bothered, because I expected the jobs would take care of that for me, but somehow he kept surviving. — Michael J. Sullivan

When Clive stood from the piano and shuffled to the doorway to turn out the studio lights, and looked back at the rich, beautiful chaos that surrounded his toils, and had once more a passing thought, the minuscule fragment of a suspicion that he would not have shared with a single person in the world, would not have even have committed to his journal and whose key word he shaped in his mind only with reluctance ; the thought was, quite simply, that it might be going too far to say that he was ... a genius. A genius. Though he sounded it guiltily on his inner ear, he would not let the word reach his lips. — Ian McEwan

Herr Hitler is the very person he wants to eradicate. He might have started out with good intentions, but he is mentally unbalanced and now almost insane." "Then how come he is loved by the whole nation?" Harold interjected. "His first programs of building the Autobahn, of installing the Reichsarbeitsdienst (national labor service) were almost strokes of genius. This endeared him with our people suffering from unemployment. Then he promised things which he is unable to deliver. His hypnotic power as an orator causes the people to cheer. They don't love him. They are simply mesmerized by a charlatan. — Horst Christian

Titus's jaw dropped. 'Those caravanists, they were mages?'
'They most certainly were.'
'But one fainted and two reached for their rifles when they saw the sand wyvern.'
'It's a good policy for at least one member of the group to pretend to fall unconscious at a mage sighting. And I always think the rifles are a touch of genius - any time you see someone holding a firearm, your instinct is to dismiss that person as a nonmage. — Sherry Thomas

By that time it was already clear that the next prime minster was going to be Golda Meir, a woman whom I frankly detested - a mutual sentiment, I might add. I knew her as an opinionated, obstinate person, primitive in her outlook, rigid in her attitudes, with a genius for reaching and exploiting the deepest fears and prejudices of the Jewish masses. I was certain that with her as prime minister, all peace efforts would come to a total standstill. — Uri Avnery