Genius Quotes - Page 24

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

  Gertrude Stein

  Time, Women, Philosophical

  Everybody's Autobiography (1937) ch. 2

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• I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster. … The temptation towards resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment? The most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning. That’s genius.

  Sam Shepard

  Hate, Temptation, Why Not

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• With the proper training, I could've been an evil genius.

  George Carlin

  Evil, Training, Evil Genius

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• Preparation is - if not the key to genius - then at least the key to sounding like a genius.

  Winston Churchill

  Keys, Preparation, Ifs

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• The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Doe, World, Arms

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• Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

  Herman Melville

  Running, Hands, Circles

  "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (1850)

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• Your genius will shine through, and happiness will fill your life, the instant you discover your higher purpose and direct all your energies towards it.

  Robin Sharma

  Happiness, Shining, Over You

  Robin Sharma (2016). “The Robin Sharma Pack”, p.207, Jaico Publishing House

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• When leadership rises to genius it has the power of transforming, of transforming experience into power. And that is what experience is for, to be made into power. The great leader creates as well as directs power.

  Mary Parker Follett

  Leadership, Great Leader, Made

  Mary Parker Follett (2013). “Freedom and Co-ordination (RLE: Organizations): Lectures in Business Organization”, p.52, Routledge

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• The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Real, Science, Technology

  1967 The New Industrial State.

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• It has been said that genius is only the power of making continuous effort. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it. We are told that there is no failure, except in no longer trying - no defeat, except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own weakness of purpose.

  Kate Smith

  Effort, Trying, Lines

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• I know of no genius but the genius of hard work.

  J. M. W. Turner

  Hard Work, Mastery, Knows

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• A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Motivation, Men

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• Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.

  Seth Godin

  Artist, People, Connections

  Seth Godin (2010). “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?”, p.11, Penguin

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• [On Einstein:] You cannot analyze him, otherwise you will misjudge him. Such a genius should be irreproachable in every respect. But no, nature doesn't behave like this. Where she gives extravagantly, she takes away extravagantly.

  Elsa Einstein

  Nature, Giving, Talent

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• It appears to me that strong sense and acute sensibility together constitute genius.

  George Pope Morris

  Strong, Together, Sensibility

  Samuel Woodworth, George Pope Morris, Nathaniel Parker Willis (1830). “The New York Mirror: A Weekly Gazette of Literature and the Fine Arts”, p.344

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• I have often noticed that the need for cash and the production of a masterpiece just don't coincide with me. Money will hit me at a big off-period and genius will hit me in starvation, that is, I often get the money when I don't think I deserve it and have been lolling around for days and days thinking the most abysmal thoughts.

  Bessie Head

  Thinking, Needs, Cash

  Bessie Head, Randolph Vigne (1991). “A gesture of belonging: letters from Bessie Head, 1965-1979”, Heinemann

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• By cultivating an interest in a few good books which contain the result of the toil or the quintessence of the genius of some of the most gifted thinkers of the world, we need not live on the marsh and in the mists. The slopes and ridges invite us.

  Thomas Starr King

  Book, Toil, Needs

  Thomas Starr King (1880). “Christianity and Humanity ...: Ed., with a Memoir”

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• Genius, apart from natural sensitiveness, is prone equally to unreasoning joy and to bitterest morbidness.

  Mary MacLane

  Joy, Natural

  Mary MacLane (2014). “I Await the Devil's Coming: The Story of Mary MacLane”, p.63, The Floating Press

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• Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

  Albert Einstein

  Art, Crazy, Moving

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• When I was younger I would have told you it was my genius, but now I don't believe that for a second. Music just comes out of you, it flows through, it's weird. If you think about it intellectually, how does someone come up with two hundred riffs over their life time?

  Tracii Guns

  Believe, Thinking, Two

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• The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Fear, Weight Loss, Criticism

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• We have three approaches at our disposal: the observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation serves to assemble the data, reflection to synthesise them and experimentation to test the results of the synthesis. The observation of nature must be assiduous, just as reflection must be profound, and experimentation accurate. These three approaches are rarely found together, which explains why creative geniuses are so rare.

  John Dewey

  Science, Reflection, Data

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• If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude.

  A. E. Housman

  Science, Men, Inspire

  Marcus Manilius, A. E. Housman (2011). “Astronomicon”, p.19, Cambridge University Press

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• [Man] ... his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspiration, Science, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.46, Booklassic

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• He that would travel for the entertainment of others, should remember that the great object of remark is human life. Every Nation has something peculiar in its Manufactures, its Works of Genius, its Medicines, its Agriculture, its Customs, and its Policy. He only is a useful Traveller, who brings home something by which his country may be benefited; who procures some supply of Want, or some mitigation of Evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Country, Home, Medicine

  "The Idler".

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