Genius Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Arthur Schopenhauer

Simone de Beauvoir

Thomas Edison

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Arthur Conan Doyle

Marilyn Monroe

John Ruskin

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

Simone de Beauvoir

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

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.

William Gilmore Simms

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in 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 the 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.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts—the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last. The acts of a nation may be triumphant by its good fortune; and its words mighty by the genius of a few of its children: but its art, only by the general gifts and common sympathies of the race.

But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius.

Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Of Harold Macmillan

Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.

Cesare Lombroso

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

The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing.

Gamal Abdel Nasser

I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!"

My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry 'til a more convenient season.

Mary Todd Lincoln

There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.

Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.

Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.

This was Shakespeare's form;
Who walked in every path of human life,
Felt every passion; and to all mankind
Doth now, will ever, that experience yield
Which his own genius only could acquire.

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Vladimir Nabokov

You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

Joshua Reynolds

But I have always thought the only genius that's worth anything is the genius for hard work.

Kathleen Winsor