Top 100 What Is A Genius Quotes
#1. What is a genius? What is a living legend? What is a megastar? Michael Jackson
that's all. And when you think you know him, he gives you more. I think he is one of the finest people to hit this planet, and, in my estimation, he is the true King of Pop, Rock and Soul.
Elizabeth Taylor
#2. What is a genius? A person who demands little to nothing from others, but is often found extremely difficult to have around.
Criss Jami
#3. I was called a dance prodigy since I was young. A prodigy is like a genius. But I'm not a genius. It's just that what I do a little bit better than others, and that happens to be dancing.
Min
#4. I think Yelena Akhtiorskaya is a genius. What she manages to do, linguistically and emotionally, in the span of a single sentence, is astonishing.
Keith Gessen
#5. Madness is just what a genius looks like to a tiny mind.
Steven Moffat
#6. Art has a double visage: it looks before and after. Romance is its forward-looking face. The germ of growth is in romanticism. Formalism, on the other hand, consolidates tradition; gleans what has been gained and makes it facile to the hand or the mind; economizes the energy of genius.
George Edward Woodberry
#7. Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.
Jean-Paul Sartre
#8. Oh! what a superior man," said Candide below his breath. "What a great genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him.
Voltaire
#9. What happens whenever we convert a writer into a symbol is that we lose the writer himself in all his indefeasible singularity, his particular inimitable genius.
Alfred Kazin
#10. Any man's greatness is a tribute to the nobility of all mankind, so when we celebrate the genius of [Leo] Tolstoy, we say, "Look! One of our boys made it! Look what we're capable of!"
Mel Brooks
#11. Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work.
Henry Ford
#12. Man is a genius when he dreams. Dream what you are capable of. The harder you dream it, the sooner it will come true.
Akira Kurosawa
#13. It is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man thatstands by himself, the universe stands by him also.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#14. What is Genius?- To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#15. What most readers do not realize is that it takes a particular genius to write funny, to satirize.
F. Sionil Jose
#16. There's a difference between thinking you can't be wrong and having no regrets. Wrongness is what occurs prior to empiricism, in hindsight a counterpart of revelation, and revelation is nothing to regret.
Criss Jami
#17. What the great mentor is always looking for is a person who is willing to tap his genius, to put it through the refiner's fire, to do the hard work to develop it. Indeed, mentoring is the medieval art of alchemy-turning plain old human steel into hearts and minds of gold.
Oliver DeMille
#18. All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve marriage to the man of her choice. This is the age-long convention of the romantic novel, but with Jane Austen, what we have is Mills & Boon written by a genius.
P.D. James
#19. Madness is what genius looks like to a small mind
Steven Moffat
#20. After all, what more does a true genius want? The mind itself is the palace where all the real treasures, the works of art, the indulgences exist.
Alex Scarrow
#21. Oh Blimey O'Reilly's pantyhose...what is the point of Shakespeare? I know he is a genius and so on, but he does rave on.
What light doth through yonder window break?
It's the bloody moon, for God's sake, Will, get a grip!!
Louise Rennison
#22. A man who has the inventive genius can't control it exactly as he wishes. Its working depends in great measure on inspiration
on a momentary suggestion
and it is almost impossible to tell beforehand at what moment it will come.
Henrik Ibsen
#24. What basically happens is that when a company becomes great, and I'm being a bit rude here, people think they're some kind of genius. So now we can move into all sorts of other businesses because the net bottom line is, it's because we're just geniuses. They become overconfident and expand too far.
Jorgen Vig Knudstorp
#25. I recognize Eric for what he is: an Erudite disguised as a Dauntless, a genius as well as a sadist, a hunter of the Divergent.
Veronica Roth
#26. Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.
Stephen Vizinczey
#27. The logic is backwards. Genius is the result of doing what you love, not a prerequisite for it.
Charles Eisenstein
#28. What is genius, anyway, if it isn't the ability to give an adequate response to a great challenge?
Bette Greene
#29. People do not respect music anymore ... They go by what's hot ... If you're hot, you deserve 4 or 5 Grammys ... Madonna is a genius and she only has 2 or 3 Grammys ... What is that about?
Timbaland
#30. What I really think about Banksy is I think he's a genius; he's a great artist, and I like his stuff. But he's got to accept it if, from time to time, someone will need to paint over his work.
Boris Johnson
#31. What is a Gallagher Girl?
She's a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy ... a Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be.
Ally Carter
#32. You see Miss Gertrude is a genius. And a genius is a genius. So what if no one understands a word she writes. Some day they might.
Jonah Winter
#33. A genius may perhaps be a century ahead of his age and hence stands there as a paradox, but in the end, the race will assimilate what was once a paradox, so it is no longer paradoxical.
Soren Kierkegaard
#34. I think without a doubt, that what is called "financial genius" is merely a rising market.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#35. What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero.
Pablo Picasso
#36. What is genius? It is the power to be a boy again at will.
James M. Barrie
#37. Some very dull and sad people have genius though the world may not count it as such; a genius for love, or for patience, or for prayer, maybe. We know the divine spark is here and there in the world: who shall say under what manifestations, or humble disguise!
Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie
#38. It is remarkable what fine hands men of genius write, even when they are as awkward in all other uses of the hand as a cow with a musket.
Sara Coleridge
#39. Lenny Breau was a genius - inspired and really loose. I loved how he used the guitar as an extension of his inner freedom, because, obviously, on the outside there were a lot of trainwrecks going on. But when you listen to him play, you hear what kind of guy he really is
Steve Vai
#40. What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what
he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing.
Charles Bukowski
#41. Accusing us of being a gimmick is a bit like accusing Jesus Christ of having 'a bit of a messiah complex'. True, maybe, but when faced with the undeniable genius of what we put out, does that really still matter?
Gorillaz
#42. An idiot will do anything, no matter how stupid, because he is afraid of what everybody will think of him if he does nothing. A genius, on the other hand, is content to do nothing, no matter what people think, if he can't find anything worth doing.
Tom Upton
#43. Henry Ford summed it up best. "If I had asked people what they wanted," he said, "they would have said a faster horse." This is the genius of great leadership. Great leaders and great organizations are good at seeing what most of us can't see.
Simon Sinek
#44. I love cooking. My Italian mother is a genius cook, and I picked that up from her. I make my own sauce, which takes four hours, from a recipe that's been refined over many years. I won't tell anybody what it is.
Josh Fox
#45. What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities.
Walter Scott
#46. 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
#47. It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.
Samuel Johnson
#48. I think I'm a vocal genius, not a musical genius. I like background vocals. I consider myself a voice, not a singer. A voice is a sound, and singing is what you do with that sound.
Brian Wilson
#49. And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#50. A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.
Ambrose Bierce
#51. A genius is a person who is more observant and has more patience.
Debasish Mridha
#52. Realism to be effective must be a matter of selection.genius chooses its materials with a view to their beauty and effectiveness; mere talent copies what it thinks is nature, only to find it has been deceived by the external grossness of things.
Julia Marlowe
#53. Even granting that the genius subjected to the test of critical inspection emerges free from all error, we should consider that everything he has discovered in a given domain is almost nothing in comparison with what is left to be discovered.
Santiago Ramon Y Cajal
#54. The genius of culture is to create an ontological system so compelling that what is inside and outside of a person are viewed as of a piece, no seams and patches noticeable.
Richard Shweder
#55. And what fun is it being a genius if no one appreciates you?
Brent Weeks
#56. Life is very narrow. Bring any club or company of intelligent men together again after ten years, and if the presence of some penetrating and calming genius could dispose them to frankness, what a confession of insanities would come up!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#57. I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean?
It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. LIke genius she is ignorant of what she does.
Jeanette Winterson
#58. What a great genius this water is! It has thousands of different beautiful faces: It is a rainbow, an ocean, a lake, an iceberg, a waterfall, a river, a drop, a fog ... What a great genius this water is!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#59. It is not in the outward and visible world of material life that the Celtic genius of Wales or Ireland can at this day hope to count for much; it is in the inward world of thought and science.What it has been, what is has done, what it will be or will do, as a matter of modern politics.
Matthew Arnold
#60. And soon all our minds will be flat as a pancake,
With no room for genius exaltation or heartache.
And our children and theirs will preen, smirk and chatter,
With not even the sense to ask what is the matter.
Stevie Smith
#61. But then the general trouble with ignorance is always that the ignorant person has no idea that that's what they are. You can be ignorant and stupid and go through your whole life without ever encountering any evidence against the hypothesis that you're a genius.
Louis De Bernieres
#62. And indeed if you think you're a genius at something what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you're no good, you're not going to get anywhere.
Diana Wynne Jones
#63. A truly great life. That is what humanity deserves. Not an average life, not even a normal one-a life in which genius is not an anomaly but an expectation. But to achieve such things
Madeleine Roux
#64. I have no physical genius about me. I can't dribble a ball and run at the same time, I can't do lay-ups - I'm not an athlete. But my experience as a kid was, I was made fun of so much that what I did then, is, I wouldn't participate. And I think I cheated myself out of a lot of fun.
Rich Mullins
#65. Of course creativity is a mystery. We don't know what drives it or what constitutes it. It's one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it's impossible to define.
Daniel Tammet
#66. After upwards of two thousand years Epicurus has been exonerated from the reproach that the doctrines of his philosophy recommended the pleasures of sensuality and voluptuousness as the chief good. Calumny may rest on genius a considerable part of a world's duration; what then is the value of fame?
William Benton Clulow
#67. I believe that instinct is what makes a genius a genius.
Bob Dylan
#68. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected by other people: it is reflection, meditation.
Andrew Roberts
#69. Postal inspectors have been given advanced warning that Publishers Clearinghouse is sending packets of laundry detergent that could be mistaken for anthrax. Oh, good timing. What genius came up with this promotion? What's next - a ticking alarm clock? Let's put that in a box.
Jay Leno
#70. It is crazy. It's our first kid, and all of a sudden, she identifies letters as what they are, and you go, 'This kid is a genius - she's obviously some sort of savant!'
Max Greenfield
#71. What good is being a math genius if your life doesn't add up?
Marty Rubin
#72. An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left.
Lawrence Durrell
#73. The book is what we have come to expect from Marion: challenging, subtle and nuanced analyses, dassling formulations, . a provocative and original philosophical genius.
John D. Caputo
#74. What has been done in the world - the works of genius - cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#75. One good thing about being a woman is we haven't too many examples yet of what a genius looks like. It could be me.
Sheila Heti
#76. Girls are genius at getting through sexual abuse. Often the only way to get through is not to feel. And that is exactly what these fantasy worlds allow: They give girls a place to go so they don't have to be present in their violated bodies. Brilliant.
Patti Feuereisen
#77. Alber Elbaz is just a genius. He'll be in a dinner jacket and he doesn't care what time of day it is: I love that about him. He just marches to the beat of his own drum.
Pharrell Williams
#78. Bobbie Ann Mason's genius only grows stronger and wiser and funnier with every new book, and Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail is my absolute favorite so far. What an ear she has for the telling phrase, what an eye for the heartbreaking detail. These new stories are stunning.
Josephine Humphreys
#79. I wouldn't want to compare myself to David Byrne whom I consider a genius, but what I think what we have in common is that he's also a guy who is very interested in the world and who has a lot of passions beyond singing and playing guitar.
Anthony Bourdain
#80. To be a mere verbal critic is what no man of genius would be if he could; but to be a critic of true taste and feeling is what no man without genius could be if he would.
Charles Caleb Colton
#81. The only difference between a genius and one of common capacity is that the former anticipates and explores what the latter accidentally hits upon; but even the man of genius himself more frequently employs the advantages that chance presents to him;
Guillaume-Thomas Francois Raynal
#82. The frenetic pace of modern life can lead to an obscuring or even a loss of what is truly human ... Perhaps more than in other periods of history, our time is in need of that genius which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance.
Pope John Paul II
#83. One who knows what he or she knows as well as what he or she does not know is a genius.
Abhijit Naskar
#84. A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he's worth something. And if I know for sure that I'm a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?
Andrei Tarkovsky
#85. I've met some real talents that were ... real talents and I've met some real talents that were incredible people.People like Al Williamson, Gray Morrow, to a certain extent Jim Steranko, who is an institution all to himself. What a talent. What a genius talent.
Mike Royer
#86. It is not difficult to grasp and express thoughts that float on the stream of current opinion: but to think and rightly utter what is permanently true and interesting, what shall appeal to the best minds a thousand years hence, as it appeals to them to-day, this is the work of genius.
John Lancaster Spalding
#87. Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.
Amelia E. Barr
#89. Marvin Gaye is our John Lennon. The longer he's gone, the more young people appreciate his art. 'What's Going On' was a work of genius far ahead of it's time.
Janet Jackson
#90. What we've got here is a lunatic genius ghost-in-the-computer monorail that likes riddles and goes faster than the speed of sound. Welcome to the fantasy version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Stephen King
#91. You are not a woman. You may try-but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl.
George Eliot
#92. A product is usually created to improve people's lives; otherwise, why buy it? I'm no genius, but I am an American, and gosh-darnit, I consume, so I know what I'm talking about.
Steven Weber
#93. The brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, "in truth," was at the bottom of this equality.
Karl Marx
#94. Genius is not only a what or a who, it is a where. It is grounded in a place every single time.
Eric Weiner
#95. Genius: 1. to believe your own thought. To believe that what is true for you is ultimately true. 2. a sledgehammer. 3. the fruit of labour and thought. 4. soul. 5. the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. 6. something one can become.
Heinrich Heine
#96. I think that when people hear the president [George W. Bush] speak, frankly, they think he's really stupid. But what people don't realize is that there's a genius behind that stupidity, and that genius is Harlan McCraney.
Arianna Huffington
#97. A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius. Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain? But in the morning my daughter asks me what a cloud is and I cannot say.
Jenny Offill
#98. If it turns out that the Mayans are right and the world is going to end, you know what this means?
Lindsay Lohan is a genius. She's been partying her brains out. She owes taxes. She's crashing cars. She's a genius!
Jay Leno
#99. What drives intellectuals and professors crazy is somebody with a high school diploma who made a fortune in business. They agree with Lenin, who thought success in business was a matter of luck, when in reality it is a matter of genius.
James Cook
#100. Clearly, I'm a genius at picking boyfriends. In my defense, have you seen what there is to choose from? The sea is big, but the fish are scraggly, immature, and obsessed with video games.
Nicole Christie
