Quotes & Sayings About Geniuses

The closest that either Voltaire or the other historical geniuses of the age -- Hume and Gibbon -- came to understanding unreason's creative potentialities was in their Ironic criticism of themselves and in their own efforts to make sense out of history. This, at least, led them to view themselves as being as potentially flawed as the cripples they conceived to be acting out the spectacle of history. — Hayden White

The USA marketing team are geniuses at what they do. They do the right kind of thing for every medium. They're very active on social media; they're releasing videos every day up to the premiere. — Lennon Parham

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it. — Alan Perlis

Geniuses are their own saviors. — Anthony O'Neill

If we treat each other as if we are geniuses, poets and artists, we have a better chance of becoming that on stage. — Del Close

Geniuses are always marginalized to one degree or another. Someone wholly invested in the status quo is unlikely to disrupt it. — Eric Weiner

The general's staff is a handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs. There's a former head of British Special Forces, two Navy Seals, an Afghan Special Forces commando, a lawyer, two fighter pilots and at least two dozen combat veterans and counterinsurgency experts. They jokingly refer to themselves as Team America, taking the name from the South Park-esque sendup of military cluelessness, and they pride themselves on their can-do attitude and their disdain for authority. — Michael Hastings

So in the tradition of Poland Spring, Evian, and other hydro-geniuses, we've decided to bottle something that was freely available and charge you money for it. — Steven D. Levitt

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

We started an organization that's the only sub-organization of the MacArthur Foundation and we are called the Macarturos.Usually when I win something, I'm the only one of my ethnicity to get it, but this time I met all these Latinos, and I was so excited. I'd meet someone and I'd go, "Can you come to San Antonio?" And they'd go, "Oh yeah." And suddenly I had twelve people that said they would come. And I didn't know how it was going to be. And that's how the Macarturos became a reality, where these very generous geniuses come to San Antonio and work together. — Sandra Cisneros

We've all experienced pondering a problem all day long only to find we receive the solution when forgetting about the problem and thinking of something else. When we stop concentrating so hard, we allow our subconscious to flourish, and those who do this more than others are often called geniuses. — James Morcan

We are all on the same road, some ahead of us and some behind. We do not always recognize ourselves as being among those who are struggling farther back, and misunderstand, scorn, and even persecute the ones who move ahead of us. History is littered with such as these: eccentrics, geniuses, idealists among those most noticeable. These change the world by force, though the change most often does not take place during their own time, they are so far ahead of it and therefore so rarely understood. — Nell Gavin

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten. — Aldous Huxley

With thimble and thread And wax and hammer, and buckles and screws, And all such things as geniuses use; - Two bats for patterns, curious fellows! A charcoal-pot and a pair of bellows. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

If there are nine guys auditioning and they're all gorgeous, I have an advantage, because gorgeous guys are a dime a dozen. But if they need someone else - like a goofy guy with bad hair who is just okay - then that's me. And finally, the other 2 percent who audition are geniuses that I could never touch. — Tom Hanks

In the work of the greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere, but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare ... I am not concerned with who wrote the works of Shakespeare ... but I can hardly think it was the Stratford boy. Whoever wrote them had an aristocratic attitude. — Charlie Chaplin

We are having wool pulled over our eyes if we let ourselves be convinced that scientists, taken as a group, are anything special in the way of brains. They are very ordinary professional men, and all they know is their own trade, just like all other professional men. There are some geniuses among them, just as there are mental giants in any other field of endeavor. — Anthony Standen

New York is eating young geniuses [businessmen] up alive. It's eating them up alive, Stone. And it's showing the beauty of the city, but it's showing the toughness and the viciousness of the city. — Donald Trump

Inventors and geniuses, at the beginning of their careers (and very often at the end as well), have almost always been regarded in society as no more than fools - that is a most routine observation, well known to everyone. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Prodigies! Geniuses! Artists! The lumer-lumpen are some of the most sensitive, the most brilliant, the wisest creatures on the earth or inside of it. There is more wisdom in the head of a lumpen than you will find in all the libraries of the world ... If only they could speak ... — Lauren Oliver

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

All of us, you, your children, your neighbors and their children are everyday geniuses, even though the fact is unnoticed and unremembered by everyone. That's probably because school hasn't encouraged us to notice what's hidden inside us waiting for the right environment to express itself. — Peter Kline

One of the tragic ironies of history is that such original and creative geniuses as Buddha and Jesus have been extolled as perfect patterns for all to emulate. In the very struggle to be like someone else rather than to be one's own true self, or to do one's own best in one's own environment, a child is in danger of losing the pearl that is really beyond price - the integrity of his (or her) own soul. — Sophia Lyon Fahs

If you skip one class, everyone knows about it. The teacher will track you down, or one of the guidance counselors will track you down and ask if you're smoking pot. According to the geniuses running this place, the only reason you would skip class is if you're smoking pot, though I actually find my classes more enjoyable when I'm high. — Flynn Meaney

I don't think there is the same space for fashion designers to create like Yves was doing it. So, it's that he's one of the last, great geniuses in fashion. — Gaspard Ulliel

The geniuses who conduct the motion-picture business killed glamour when they decided that what the public wanted was not dream stuff, from which movies used to be made, but realism. — Hedda Hopper

No single man makes history. History cannot be seen, just as one cannot see grass growing. Wars and revolutions, kings and Robespierres, are history's organic agents, its yeast. But revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track mind, geniuses in their ability to confine themselves to a limited field. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days, the whole upheaval takes a few weeks or at most years, but the fanatical spirit that inspired the upheavals is worshiped for decades thereafter, for centuries. — Boris Pasternak

Do you want to be like Goethe or any of those so-called geniuses who marry a nothing hausfrau? — Nathaniel Branden

We're all geniuses. Life is merely overpopulated with singers who play drums, and, drummers who sing, to pay rent. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Oh, there's so much ego with men; in their head, they can't possibly think about Tesco's when they are doing Othello. Er, why not? They want to think that they are such geniuses they can't muddy their day with domesticity, and I've got no truck with it whatsoever. — Lesley Manville

Sappho and Emily Dickinson are the only woman geniuses in poetic history. — Camille Paglia

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

The world needs only a few geniuses; civilization is maintained and extended by those lesser souls who corral the men of greatness, tie them down with explanations and footnotes and annotated editions, explain what they meant when they didn't know themselves, show their true place in the awesome progression of mankind. — Iain Pears

When I think of musical geniuses, I think of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson and Prince. That's who comes to mind. — R. Kelly

Most of the books I have are indicators of my insecurity. I really wanted to be an intellectual. I really wanted to understand Sartre. I thought that was what made people smart. I have tried to read Being and Nothingness no fewer than twenty times in my life. I really thought that every answer had to be in that book. Maybe it is. The truth is, I can't read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better. I underline profusely but I don't retain much. Reading is like a drug. When I am reading from these books it feels like I am thinking what is being read, and that gives me a rush. That is enough. I glean what I can. I finish some of the unfinished thoughts lingering around in my head by adding the thoughts of geniuses and I build from there. There are bookmarks in most of the denser tomes at around page 20 to 40 because that was where I said, "I get it." Then I put them back on the shelf. — Marc Maron

I would love to work with Guillermo del Toro and J.J. Abrams. I think they are creative geniuses that are constantly producing great work, and they're two people that I would just love to work with. — Fiona Gubelmann

I have been motivated by this idea since I was a kid that if we invented machines that were created in the way that people are - were aware, have free will, inventive machines, machines that would be geniuses - potentially, they could reinvent themselves. They're not just applying it to other things - they could actually redesign themselves. — David Hanson

(About Cesare Borgia) What cruelties were not the result of his? Who could count all his crimes? Such was the man that Machiavel prefers to all the great geniuses of his time, and to the heroes of antiquity, and of which he finds the life and action make a good example for those that fortune favors. — Frederick The Great

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants. — Jonathan Swift

Holly frowned at her. "Glad to see you've forgiven yourself so quickly."
"Harboring feelings of guilt can have a negative affect on mental health."
"Child geniuses," growled Holly.
"Genii," said Minerva. — Eoin Colfer

Children share with geniuses an open, inquiring, uninhibited quality of mind. — Chauncey Guy Suits

Fathers are the geniuses of the house because only a person as intelligent as we could fake such stupidity. — Bill Cosby

I went to a very academically competitive high school. So I was always quite studious and quiet, just to keep up with the other geniuses who were in my school. — Ben Barnes

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings. — Peter Drucker

And how would he learn his history now? Imagine growing up in a world where only generals and geniuses, empires and companies, had histories, not your own town or grandfather, house or Samantha - none of the things you'd loved. — William H Gass

If what we think of ourselves were true, the planet would overflow with geniuses. — Dejan Stojanovic

The church is not built on the rock foundation of geniuses and influencers but of apostles and prophets. — Russell D. Moore

The thing that Von Neumann had, which I've noticed that other geniuses have, is the ability to pick out, in a particular problem, the one crucial thing that's important. — Walter Isaacson

So, okay, I'm not a genius. Vincent Van Gogh and Albert Einstein were geniuses. — Bonnie Bassler

Alan Turing is so important to me and to the world, and his story is so important to be told, so it was a big thing to take up, and I was a little petrified. Like, who am I to write the Alan Turing story? He's one of the great geniuses of the 20th century - who was horribly persecuted for being gay - and I'm a kid from Chicago. — Graham Moore

Instead of labeling and discriminating against one or the other, we need to learn to blend our gifts and complement our geniuses. — Robert Kiyosaki

If people are always comfortable with you, you're probably not telling them the whole truth. — Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel

Crazy people who are productive are geniuses. Crazy people who are rich are eccentric. Crazy people who are neither productive nor rich are just plain crazy. Geniuses and crazy people are both out in the middle of a deep ocean; geniuses swim, crazy people drown. Most of us are sitting safely on the shore. Take a chance and get your feet wet. — Michael J. Gelb

Most geniuses are geniuses because of the way they manage their natural talents. He was one because of the way he took advantage of the world's defects.
-pg 129 — Albert Sanchez Pinol

The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded. — Gustave Flaubert

Genius is nothing but a mastery of the subject at hand — Bangambiki Habyarimana

That's the big mistake a lot of people make when they wonder how soldiers can put their lives on the line day after day or how they can fight for something they may not believe in. Not everyone does. I've worked with soldiers on all sides of the political spectrum; I've met some who hated the army and others who wanted to make it a career. I've met geniuses and idiots, but when all is said and done,we do what we do for one another. For friendship. Not for country, not for patriotism, not because we're programmed killing machines, but because of the guy next to you. You fight for your friend, to keep him alive, and he fights for you, and everything about the army is built on this simple premise. — Nicholas Sparks

People who sleep only two or three hours in the twenty-four are always geniuses. The ones you hear about, anyway. Never mind if the ones you don't hear about are dolts. Insomnia is genius. It must be. Think of all the work you could do the thoughts you could think, the books you could read, the love you could make, while the dull clods lie snoring. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The vast majority of child prodigies don't become adult geniuses. — John Green

We live in an era of technological geniuses and analytical idiots. — Zalin Grant

It is a law of life that human beings, even the geniuses among them, do not pride themselves on their actual achievements but thatthey want to impress others, want to be admired and respected because of things of much lower import and value. — Stefan Zweig

He wastes his time over his writing, trying to accomplish what geniuses and rare men with college educations sometimes accomplish. — Jack London

Between their rise in the thirteenth century and their sudden fall in the seventeenth, when the line abruptly ended, the Medicis produced three popes, two queens, and many Florentine rulers, and they supported the work of Galileo, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Botticelli - a veritable parade of geniuses. — Hanya Yanagihara

All geniuses are not successful just like all successful people are not geniuses. I would rather be successful than a genius. — Majid Kazmi

The dull pray; the geniuses are light mockers. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not only must the most privileged feel they are brothers and sisters of the most destitute, but the most destitute must feel as well that something within them makes them equal to the greatest sages and geniuses. — Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

There's very few geniuses that come and revolutionize everything. For the rest of us that want to be artists and have something to say, it's a lot of work and a lot of luck. — Oscar Isaac

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

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water. — Mark Twain

Some people see things others cannot, and they are right, and we call them creative geniuses. Some people see things others cannot, and they are wrong, and we call them mentally ill. And some people, like John Nash, are both. — Nancy C. Andreasen

Germany is a machine for producing geniuses. Its crowning product was the German Jew which in suitably dramatic style it then tried to destroy. — Michel Tournier

You don't even really need a place. But you feel like you're doing something. That is what coffee is. And that is one of the geniuses of the new coffee culture. — Jerry Seinfeld

He has fantastic powers. He can be imperious, abrupt, impatient with sloppy procedures, but he is also poetic, visionary, romantic. He is possessed by two geniuses: dry-eyed, rigorous exactitude, and generous leaps of imagination - non-rigid, non-uniform and innovative. — Warren Winiarski

The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was one of the few authentic geniuses among nineteenth-century statesmen. — Niall Ferguson

I think pattern makers are some of the most underrated, undervalued people in fashion. They're the people who are sometimes the geniuses in designing clothing. — Thom Browne

Geniuses don't go mad," he said. "That's what people don't understand. They get out so far out that the water is like glass and they can see for miles and see so much, and in ways people have never seen before. — Steven Hall

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine - everybody drinks water. — Marilyn French

It was a vicious circle, though. The more gratification we found in our own geniuses, the more isolated we grew. Our home was like an artists' colony. We ate together, but otherwise were absorbed in our separate pursuits. And in this isolation, our creativity took on an aspect of compulsion. — Alison Bechdel

I know so many women, comic geniuses. Where are the parts? — Melanie Mayron

Where Chanel came from in France is anyone's guess. She said one thing one day and another thing the next. She was a peasant - and a genius. Peasants and geniuses are the only people who count and she was both. — Diana Vreeland

Don't be ashamed of the creative urges which drive you. And certainly don't be ashamed of your ego. Hubris is only hubris when it fails. When Hubris pays off, we call these people geniuses. — Kieron Gillen

Some Italians are geniuses, but you have to find a balance. — Alain Prost

We need creative people working with broadcasters, making smart content to inspire people to be geniuses. — Will.i.am

When people say that the Internet is going to make us all geniuses, that was said about the telegraph. On the other hand, when they say the Internet is going to make us stupid, that also was said about the telegraph. — James Gleick

Though it may be the peculiar happiness of Socrates and other geniuses of his stamp, to reason themselves into virtue, the human species would long ago have ceased to exist, had it depended entirely for its preservation on the reasonings of the individuals that compose it. Par 1, 36 — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Treat your audience like poets and geniuses and they'll have the chance to become them. — Del Close

Many people can reach for and achieve excellence. To do this consistently is what separates masters and geniuses from everyone else. — Paul Russo

Bowman, too, had been born in a great city, in the French Hospital in Manhattan, in the burning heat of August and very early in the morning when all geniuses are born, as Pearson once told him. There had been an unbreathing stillness, and near dawn faint, distant thunder. It grew slowly louder, then gusts of cooler air before a tremendous storm broke with lightning and sheets of rain, and when it was over, — James Salter

Let me be very clear. For me geography does not exist! I strongly object to the whole concept of "foreign literature"...and speaking of national identity: that is how dictatorships get started! In literature there is no periphery and no center; there are only writers. The problem is not geographic but rather numeric. In the 19th century there were at least thirty literary geniuses in Russia, Germany, France, England and the United States. Today we are lucky if there are five writers of that caliber in the whole world...Where does one find good literature today? Mostly in third world countries, because adversity, isolation, combat provide good working conditions. It is harder to be a good writer in a so-called "civilized" country, in the so-called "democracies. — Antonio Lobo Antunes

In literature, there are only oxen. The biggest ones are the geniuses-the ones who toil eighteen hours a day without tiring. — Jules Renard

It is bad enough that our geniuses cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society who has fine traits.He is admired at a distance, but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Geniuses never pay attention. — Michael Crichton

I am thankful that geniuses and artists and good people, no matter how hard it is, will eventually be recognized. I am doubly thankful that also goes for idiots. — Elayne Boosler

Translated into ordinary human language this means that the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still "reigns" and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the "geniuses" of financial manipulation. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Being an investment banker is pretty much the perfect job for an all around triple-threat genius, and because I'm doing so well with it, I know I'm actually smarter than certifiable geniuses like Stephen Hawking and Einstein. — A.D. Aliwat

A nation orients itself by its own geniuses, and derives from them its ideas of its own ideals, but the guiding star serves also as a light to other nations. As speech has been created by a few great men, the most extraordinary wisdom lies concealed in it, a wisdom which reveals itself to a few ardent explorers but which is usually overlooked by the stupid professional philologists. — Otto Weininger

Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only critical tut-tut for him. The producer, director and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it's a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it's a flop. — Ben Hecht

God thinks within geniuses, dreams within poets, and sleeps within the rest of us. — Peter Altenberg

True dreamers are both geniuses and madmen. Most lands can tolerate only a few, and those die young. — N.K. Jemisin

Even geniuses could get things wrong-look at Einstein's unfortunate choice of a hairdresser. — Joss Stirling