Genius Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.

Christopher Morley

We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans.. For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.

William J. Brennan, Jr.

I am a genius. Then it amused me to keep saying so, but now it does not. I expected to be happy sometime. Now I know I shall never be.

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

Kathleen Winsor

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.

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

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.

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

As we discern a fine line between crank and genius, so also (and unfortunately) we must acknowledge an equally graded trajectory from crank to demagogue. When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.

Stephen Jay Gould

I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, I speak like a child.

Vladimir Nabokov

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is none but he
Whose being I do fear; and under him
My genius is rebuked, as it is said
Mark Antony's was by Caesar.

William Shakespeare

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor.

Henry David Thoreau

[In the world below...] The wise and orderly soul is conscious of her situation, and follows in the path; but the soul which desires the body, and which... has long been fluttering about the lifeless frame and the world of sight, is after many struggles and many sufferings hardly and with violence carried away by her attendant genius, and when she arrives at the place where the other souls are gathered, if she be impure and have done impure deeds or have been concerned in foul murders or other crimes... from that soul everyone flees and turns away; no one will be her companion, no one her guide, but alone she wanders in extremity of evil until certain times are fulfilled...

Was I to believe him in earnest in his intention to penetrate to the centre of this massive globe? Had I been listening to the mad speculations of a lunatic, or to the scientific conclusions of a lofty genius? Where did truth stop? Where did error begin?

The most attractive class of people are those who are powerful obliquely, and not by the direct stroke: men of genius, but not yetaccredited: one gets the cheer of their light, without paying too great a tax.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me, in the elegant Lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyrick, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your great poetical Talents. In honour of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the Poem, had I not been apprehensive, that, while I only meant to give the World this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of Vanity. This and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public Prints.

George Washington

On his first visit to America, upon being inquired by American Customs if he had anything to declare:

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully cultivated by the inferiority complex of the public.

But of all the sciences, the most absurd, and that which in my opinion, is most calculated to stifle genius of every kind, is geometry. The objects about which this ridiculous science is conversant are surfaces, lines, and points, that have no existence in nature.

I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Palestine, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, - the Genius and creative Principle of each and of all eras, in my own mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

All men of genius, and all those who have gained rank in the republic of letters, are brothers, whatever may be the land of their nativity.

Napoleon I of France

It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.

Henry David Thoreau

Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates.