Quotes About A Genius

“A genius of means, barren of ends”

— Perry Anderson

“It takes a village to raise a child, they say, and it takes a community to raise a genius, no matter how singular the individual.”

— Orna Ross

“Southerners have a genius for psychological alchemy ... If something intolerable simply cannot be changed, driven away or shot they will not only tolerate it but take pride in it as well.”

— Florence King

“The obvious differences apart, Karl Marx was no more a reliable prophet than was the Reverend Jim Jones. Karl Marx was a genius, an uncannily resourceful manipulator of world history who shoved everything he knew, thought, and devised into a Ouija board from whose movements he decocted universal laws. He had his following, during the late phases of the Industrial Revolution. But he was discredited by historical experience longer ago than the Wizard of Oz: and still, great grown people sit around, declare themselves to be Marxists, and make excuses for Gulag and Afghanistan.”

— William F. Buckley, Jr.

“In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.”

— Thomas Mann

“Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one.”

— David Ogilvy

“It makes me almost hope I'm not a genius; they must be very wearying to have about - and awfully destructive to the furniture.”

— Jean Webster

“Even if he did explain it, no one would believe him because no one would understand him. That's the downside to being a genius - just because you understand something doesn't mean anyone else will.”

— Trenton Lee Stewart

“The only way you can get good, unless you're a genius, is to copy. That's the best thing. Just steal.”

— Ritchie Blackmore

“I do not need drugs to be a genius, do not take a genius to be human, but I need your smile to be happy.”

— Charlie Chaplin

“The media works in sound bites. They can make you look like a genius or stupid.”

— Kato Kaelin

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

— Anthony Hope

“As actors, we deal with rejection so much more than any other business. So I don't care how much of a genius you are, if you don't have the propensity to be able to get back up every time you get knocked down, then you're not going to survive.”

— Ryan Kwanten

“Many now born, by the time they are voters will compose part of a nation with a genius nowhere equaled, and with a vast territory upon which those energies and that genius can operate.”

— Richard Parks Bland

“The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius.”

— Sid Caesar

“Hands down, Rick Ross is a genius. Hands down, Diddy is a genius. Hands down, Kanye is a genius. All of them.”

— Betty Wright

“She was a genius, my mother.”

— Sally Kirkland

“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

“Man who invented the hamburger was smart; man who invented the cheeseburger was a genius.”

— Matthew McConaughey

“If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.”

— J.B. Priestley

“A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.”

— Jean Anouilh

“If you're such a genius, you wouldn't believe in magic."
"If you weren't such an old coot, you wouldn't need it.”

— Rosemary Clement-Moore

“Gene Roddenberry was a genius.”

— Persis Khambatta

“David Fincher is a genius.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I think David Letterman is a genius. Night after night he is funny and smart. He seems to really enjoy his jokes. They seem connected to who he really is. I like watching him, and there is no one better at turning an awkward moment into something very funny.”

— Casey Affleck

“Jennifer Aniston is a genius.”

— Emma Roberts

“When will you ask for your post back?" he whispered in her ear. "I miss the smell of
industrial-strength solvents."
She laughed softly. "Soon. And when will you have papers read at the mathematical society
again? I rather like having my husband called a genius for reasons that are not clear to me."
My husband. The words rolled off her tongue, easy and beautiful. He kissed her fervently.
"Soon. My brilliance quite overflowed on the way home. I have four notebooks to show for
it."
"Good. We don't want people to think I love you for your looks alone."
"In that case we should also put you in some rather revealing gowns once in a while, so that
people don't think I married you for your accomplishments alone.”

— Sherry Thomas

“Then a genius has been born!”

— Napoleon Hill

“What does the earth look like in the places where people commit atrocities? Is there a bad smell, a genius loci, something about the landscape that might incriminate?”

— Robert D. Kaplan

“From the very beginning I used sound business practices in everything I did. White businessman uses them to make money he's a genius. Black businessman uses them he's a crook. That's the way it is.”

— Don King

“I begged her to write a song and she said yes. I am a huge Regina Spektor fan. I think she's a genius and just a lovely soul, and I wanted her voice on it. And she agreed, which is just the coolest thing, ever. She knocked it out of the park.”

— Jenji Kohan

“Perhaps only a Genius can truly understand Genius.”

— Robert Schumann

“That Ted Turner is a genius ... He has taken what used to be a carnival side show and turned it into a gold mine. Yes - wrestling has become prime time for the masses. He's making these giant men into millionares with movie star status.”

— Samantha Barks

“Jim Dean and Elvis were the spokesmen for an entire generation. When I was in acting school in New York, years ago, there was a saying that if Marlon Brando changed the way people acted, then James Dean changed the way people lived. He was the greatest actor who ever lived. He was simply a genius.”

— Martin Sheen

“When you're one step ahead of the crowd you're a genius. When you're two steps ahead, you're a crackpot.”

— Shlomo Riskin

“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

“Now I am a genius; before that I was a drudge.”

— Niccolo Paganini

“There's a fine line between eccentrics and geniuses. If you're a little ahead of your time, you're an eccentric, and if you're too late, you're a failure, but if you hit it right on the head, you're a genius.”

— Thomas Watson, Jr.

“It is impossible that a genius - at least a literary genius - can ever be discovered by his intimates; they are so close to him that he is out of focus to them and they can't get at his proportions; they can't perceive that there is any considerable difference between his bulk and their own.”

— Mark Twain

“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

“I don't think you could teach someone to be a genius, but you can certainly teach them to not make rookie mistakes and to look at writing the way a writer looks at writing, and not just the way a reader looks at writing. There are a lot of techniques and skills that can be taught that will be helpful to anybody, no matter how gifted they are, and I think writing programs can be very good for people.”

— Michael Chabon

“One wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genius; he should be conscientious but by no means strait-laced; he should be cautious but never timid, bold but never venturesome; he should have a good digestion, genial manners, and, above all, a thick skin.”

— Anthony Trollope

“The biggest thinker that's influenced my feminism is definitely Bell Hooks, who's a feminist cultural critic, because of her accessibility but also just because she's a genius.”

— Jessica Valenti

“We [Christians] have the dilemma of using a symbol system that was not made for our worldview, to give our worldview ... I think the thing we're waiting for is a genius to come forth who can either make a new symbol system which is still modern, or more properly, as symbol systems don't come overnight, a group of people to modify the symbol systems of our day, so that we can use them for our Christian message without a disadvantage.”

— Francis Schaeffer

“As the mental endowment of a man varies with the organisation of his accumulated experiences, the better endowed he is, the more readily will he be able to remember his whole past, everything that he has ever thought or heard, seen or done, perceived or felt, the more completely in fact will he be able to reproduce his whole life. Universal remembrance of all its experiences, therefore, is the surest, most general, and most easily proved mark of a genius.”

— Otto Weininger

“I truly believe we all have a sleeping giant within us. Each of us has a talent, a gift, our own bit of genius just waiting to be tapped. It might be a talent for art or music ... a special way of relating to the ones you love. It might be a genius for selling or innovating ... I choose to believe that our Creator doesn't play favorites, that we've all been created unique, but with equal opportunities for experiencing life to the fullest.”

— Tony Robbins

“You can eat beef on a weekly basis and become a genius intuitive if your energy is in present time.You can consume only organic food while running thirty-five miles a day and "om-ing" until dawn, but if your spirit is raging about your history and is saturated in regrets and unfinished business, you won't be able to intuit your left hand from your right ...”

— Caroline Myss

“Everyone is born a genius.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

“America has a genius for the encouragement of fame.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

“I have a lot of respect for L. Ron Hubbard and I consider him to be a genius and perhaps less acknowledged than he ought to be.”

— Werner Erhard