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SCHOLAR ISLAND |
Genius
"Compilation is a sort of genius."
W.H. Auden
"Truth is the nursing mother of genius."
Margaret Fuller
"Genius is knowing where to stop."
Goethe
"It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas."
-Charles Peguy
"Genius is pain too. It's just pain."
-John Lennon
"Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force; that thoughts rule the world."
Emerson
"The more intelligent the question you ask of Mother Nature, the more intelligent will be her reply."
-Sir Charles Sherrington
"Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way."
William James
"Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple."
-C.W. Ceram
"Every creative act is a sudden cessation of stupidity."
-Dr. Edwin Land Life Mag 1963
"I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues."
-Duke Ellington
"Genius is the talent for seeing things straight. It is seeing things in a straight line without any bend or break or aberration of sight, seeing them as they are, without any warping of vision. Flawless mental sight! That is genius."
Maude Adams
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
-Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes
"We should like to have some towering geniuses to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types."
J.B. Priestley
"Throughout history most of us have had a love-hate relationship with the extraordinary individuals within our ranks. On the one hand, we have cherished and benefited from their contributions; we name buildings and even whole communities after them, we read (and sometimes write) books about them, we construct our courses and our disciplines around their words and their works.
Yet, at the same time, we entertain considerable misgivings about those who have been endowed with great gifts and those who exert a profound influence on our lives. At first, we are reluctant to recognize their accomplishments, sometimes leaving the creators in obscurity, sometimes rejecting their innovations. Then, after their achievements have been acknowledged, we often search for signs of weakness, feet of clay, reasons to demote them, as if in some sense evening the score. Even as we esteem our heroes, we mortals equally love to denigrate them."
-Howard Gardner
Extraordinary Minds
"The more I studied him, the more Newton has receded from me. it has been my privilege at various times to know a number of brilliant men, men whom I acknowledge without hesitation to be my intellectual superiors. I have never, however, met one against whom I was unwilling to measure myself, so that it seemed reasonable to say that I was half as able as the person in question, or a third or a fourth, but in every case a finite fraction. The end result of my study of Newton has served to convince me that with him there is no measure. he has become for me wholly other, one of the tiny handful of supreme geniuses who have shaped the categories of the human intellect, a man not finally reducible to the criteria by which we comprehend our fellow beings.
-Richard Westfall (author of scholarly biography of Newton)
"The real geniuses simply have their ideas closer together."
G.C. Lichtenburg
"It's wonderful how many foolish things you must try in order to find one good idea."
-Einstein
"Some years ago Dr. Charles W. Dorland, of Chicago, investigated the lives of four hundred of the world’s greatest men and women, and found they had made their supreme achievements at the average age of fifty. Although some of them had done their kairos, the ‘the right time,’ seizing chaos by the forelock."
Neitzsche
"No great men are original…the greatest genius is the most indebted man."
Emerson
"The great geniuses suffer and must suffer, but they need not complain; they have known intoxication unknown to the rest of us and, if they have wept tears of sadness, they have poured tears of ineffable joy. That in itself is a heaven for which one never pays what it is worth."
Charles Gounod (1818-1893)
"The most beautiful thing in the world is, precisely, the conjunction of learning and inspiration."
Wanda Landowska
"Something tells me needs only decent attention and confidence to tell more."
Henry S. Haskins
"Nothing spoils a good party like a genius."
Elsa Maxwell
"Genius, by its very intensity, decrees a special path of fire for its vivid power."
Phillips Brooks
"The genius so-called is only one who discerns the pattern of things within the confusion of details a little sooner than the average man."
Ben Shahn
"Men give me credit for genius; but all the genius I have lies in this: When I have a subject on hand I study it profoundly."
Alexander Hamilton
"The barriers are not yet erected which can say to aspiring genius: ‘Thus far and no further."
Ludwig Von Beethoven
"If we read the new masterpiece of a man of genius, we are delighted to find in it those reflections of ours that we despised, joys and sorrows which we had repressed, a whole world of feeling we had scorned, and whose value the book in which we discover them suddenly teaches us."
Marcel Proust
"Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance."
Samuel Johnson
"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"India venerates its great men, but we do not. Here the devotion is immense, in our world, the brutality is immense. We forced Shakespeare to beg for tips, and Milton to sell his poems for a few pounds. We reduced Tasso to rags, Verlaine to begging, Cervantes to slavery, Dante to exile, Rembrandt to desperation, Vondel to strvation, Weininger to suicide. We threw the bodies of Mozart and Leopardi into a potters’ field and have never found their remains…"
Piero Scanziani
The Entronauts
"You want good genius, one with moderation and decorum, one without folly; in brief, a seemly, measured, and adjusted genius, not an unruly, untamed (one)."
Wlhelm Reich
"Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more."
Henry Ford
"Geniuses are interesting to read about, but you can't learn anything from them."
-Alan Axelrod
Edison: On Invention
"Genius is mainly an affair of energy."
Mathew Arnold
"sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of Centipede-Not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can’t count above fourteen."
George C Lichtenberg
"I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought of as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up."
-Albert Einstein
"The idea of the alter ego, the other self, or higher self, recurs wherever genius becomes conscious of its own processes, and we have testimony for it in age after age."
Dorothea Brande
Becoming a Writer
"You must create the space in your life to enable your inner guide to share her wisdom, her creativity, her vision, her courage. Unleashed, she is the single most potent resource you have."
Marilyn D Sifford
"The average man fears, distrusts, ignores, or knows nothing of that (genius) element of his nature. In moments of deep emotion, in danger, in joy, occasionally when long sickness has quieted the body and the mind, sometimes in a remote, dim apprehension which we bring back with us from sleep, or from moments under an anesthetic, everyone has intimations of it. Traces of it may be seen at its most unmistakable and mysterious in lives of the prodigies of music. However mysterious and incomprehensible it is, it exists; and it is no more ‘an infinite capacity for taking pains’ – as the old definition of genius would have it – than ‘inspiration is perspiration’; a pure American delusion if ever there was one. The process of transmitting one’s intuitive knowledge, of conveying one’s insight at all satisfactorily, maybe infinitely laborious. Years may be spent finding the words to set forth the illuminations of a moment. But to confuse the labor with the genius that instigated it is to be misled. When one learns to release this faculty even inexpertly, or when it is released fortuitously, one finds that so far from having to toil anxiously and painstakingly for his effects one experiences, on the contrary, the miracle of being carried along on the creative current."
Dorothea Brande
Becoming a Writer
J.P Tarcher PUB
"A genius is a man whose theoretical side enormously outweighs his practical. Even though he cannot grasp eternal relations, he can see a little deeper into the things of this world; atten est quodam prodire tenus. It is quite true that this does render the intellect of genius less fit to grasp the finite tings of earth; just as a telescope is a good thing, but not in a theatre."
Shopenhaur
"A genius is a man in whose mind the world is presented as an object is presented in a mirror, but with a degree more of clearness and a greater distinction of outline than is obtained by ordinary people."
Shopenhaur
"Thus genius may be defined as an eminently clear consciousness of things in general, and therefore, also of that which is opposed to them, namely, one’s own self."
Shopenhaur
"I was convinced that beyond the limits of my life of labor and renunciation, there was a choice life, an affable, elegant, enlightened society where gifted persons could be welcomed and have a chance to share their feelings and ideas. I didn’t know that genius, whether locked up in a cell or roaming at large, is always solitary, oppressed, suffering, ignored…"
George Sand
"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."
(attributed to Mozart)
"At least once a year everyone is a genius."
G.C. Lichtenberg
Reflections 1799
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
Jonathan Swift
Thoughts on Various Subjects
"Genius…had been defined as a supreme capacity for taking trouble…It might be more fitly described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds and keeping them there so long as the genius remains."
Samuel Butler
"Men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. In fact, to appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius, is to possess all the genius by which the work was produced."
Edgar Allen Poe
"What is Genius? It is the power to be a boy again at will."
James M Banie
"The genius will come through despite everything, for there is something absolute and indomitable in his nature. The so-called ‘Misunderstood genius’ is rather a doubtful phenomenon. Generally he turns out to be a good-for-nothing who is forever seeking a soothing explanation of himself."
C G Jung
The Gifted Child
Collected works 17 The Development of Personality
"Dying young is the only manifestation of genius that is warmly encouraged."
Oscar Wilde
"A man of Genius is a high spiritual phenomenon which one must approach with a believing soul."
Berdyaev
Dostoevsky
"Weakness may be necessary to the man of genius as it is unnecessary to the normal man. Our biographers of genius are usually futile enough on all grounds, even in the record of the simplest biological data, a in my own work I have had sad occasion to experience. But at no point are they so futile as in toning down, glossing over, or altogether ignoring all those immoralities, weaknesses, defects, and failure which perhaps are the very Hallmark of Genius. They all want their Peters to look like real rocks, and on such rocks no churches are built."
Havelock Ellis
"The old saw that genius lies near to madness has some truth to it, although it might be more apt to say that genius lies next to high alarm. Creatively gifted individuals in general are about twice as likely to experience some form of mental distress as "otherwise, comparable, noncreative individuals," according to the research. Indeed, one study found that the more eminent the creator, the higher the rate and intensity of his or her symptoms. Simonton writes that "creativity requires the cognitive ability and the dispositional willingness to 'think outside the box'; to explore novel, unconventional, and even odd possibilities; to be open to serendipitous events and fortuitous results; and to imagine the implausible or consider the unlikely. From this requirement arises the need for creators to have such traits as defocused attention, divergent thinking, openness to experience, independence and nonconformity. Let us call this complex configuration of traits the creativity cluster.
And let us say, further, that a person who is headstrong enough to open their eyes and their heart to the full depth and weight of the world is inviting in everything out there-both evil and good, both dark and light-and the sheer bravery of that openness enables them to gain profound insight into the human condition. It also fucks them up. It may even make them more prone to stick their head in an oven that to engage in self-promotional chitchat on Jay Leno."
Patricia Pearson
A Brief History of Anxiety (Yours and Mine)
"But the idea of ‘genius’ is itself an ideological artifact of the age of the Renaissance when painters, sculptors, and architects were trying to raise their social status above that of craftsmen."
Lynn White Jr
"When a country produces a man of genius he never is what it wants or believes it wants: he is always unlike its idea of itself."
Yeats
"There are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all suffering, al-abstaining, all-inspiring, which has vowed to itself that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses-only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and they only compliment they can pay it is to own it."
Emerson
"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts they cam back to us with a certain alienated majesty."
Emerson
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end…"
Emerson
"Talent and genius! Sublime words with which mankind readily rewards the vanguard of its sons: but baleful words, too, words which have made made more slaves than the word liberty has made free men. Talent and genius-at their sound the human herd falls prostrate as if God had been invoked; will is extinguished in subjugated souls; and the halting mind is paralyzed by awe."
Pierre Joseph Proudhon
"Genius is sometimes only a form of inspiration which does not mature towards perfection. Most often though, genius is the art of combining ideas, and art which is constantly being perfected by observation and experience."
Napoleon
"Genius is more than a capacity for taking infinite pains; it is an ability to see clearly the realities around it and be guided by them. Few men have possessed that ability for long. Napoleon Bonaparte had it in his earlier years; by the time he led his ‘grand armee’ to Moscow he believed that he was following his own peculiar destiny. That, of course, proved to be true, but the destiny was not what Napoleon imagined it to be."
Harold Lamb
Hannibal
"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portal of discovery."
James Joyce
"The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius."
Rebecca Pepper Sinisler
"Genius is the talent of a man who is dead."
Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896)
"The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is spiritual greed."
U.S. Pritchett
"Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom."
John Stuart Mill
On Liberty (1859)
"Successful men of all the ages have learned to multiply themselves by gathering thought energy into a high potential and using it in the direction of the purpose intended. Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common. The most conspicuous of these is that they all produce a prodigious amount of work. The second is that they never know fatigue, and the third is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men's lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man's life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws. The geniuses have learned how to gather thought energy together to use for transforming their conceptions into material forms. The thinking of creative and successful men is never exerted in any direction other than that intended. That is why great men produce a prodigious amount of work, seemingly without effort and without fatigue. The amount of work such men leave to posterity is amazing. When one considers such men of our times as Edison, Henry Ford or Theodore Roosevelt, one will find the three characteristics I have mentioned common to every one of them."
Walter Russell
The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe
by Glenn Clark
"It is a good thing to read what has been written about genius and geniuses; their lives, full of splendid but thwarted efforts, act upon our minds as the lives of the saints act upon our spiritual faculties. We feel a sort of pride in them which testifies to our common origin and adds fresh vitality to our nobler desires. The presence of superior men is also a unique tonic. But it is futile to hope for an explanation of their gift; they are superior because they are superior, that is all. If you ask them how they are that, the answer will only be the laughter of Rabelais, and you will feel smaller than ever.
It is also dangerous to place these men on a pedestal and to adore a depressing phantasm in their shape. Literary men, poets, dramatists and artists of all sorts have been overestimated since one of them, Diderot, turned the whole capacity of a powerful mind to the exaltation of their gift. It has not been good for a man like Victor Hugo, or, above all, for a man like Alexander Dumas, to be made the prophet of his generation. A phantasm, stronger even than they were, was created which compelled them to fall into attitudes.
Ernest DimnetThe Art of Thinking
"The great Arthur Eddington gave a lecture about his alleged deviation of the fine structure constant from fundamental theory. Goudsmit and Kramers were both in the audience. Goudsmit understood little but recognized it as far-fetched nonsense. After the discussion, Goudsmit went to his friend and mentor Kramers and asked him, "Do all physicists go off on crazy tangents when they grow old? I am afraid. Kramers answered, "No Sam, you don't have to be scared. A genius like Eddington may perhaps go nuts but a fellow like you just gets dumber and dumber."
-M. Dresden
"Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business sometimes, prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."
-Elbert Hubbard
In the 1990s Bell Labs found that its most valued and productive electrical engineers were not those endowed with genius but those who excelled in rapport, empathy, cooperation, persuasion, and the ability to build consensus
Being a genius is no guarantee of financial security. A recent study at the Ohio State University Center for Human Resource Research showed that baby boomers with average and low I.Q.s were just as good at saving money as those with high I.Q.s.
Albert Einstein is said to have lost most of his Nobel money in bad investments. Anyone can do that
from Rebecca Coffey
"Scholars can come to blows on how general is intelligence. Some-probably the majority-agree with Dr. Samuel Johnson that true genius is "a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction: (quoted in bate, 1975,p.252) In this view, if you are good at one thing, you could be good at almost anything. And if you are very good at one thing, so much the better! Others stress the fact that individuals who excel in school may be misfits outside of school, even as individuals who are indifferent scholars of ten prove very successful at business or in the arts. Certainly, the existence of populations that are notably good at one thing (like idiot savants) or notably poor at one thing (like children with selective learning disabilities) is difficult to square with a view that the intellect is a single entity, under the operation of a single machine, that functions wither well or poorly across the board."
-Howard Gardner
Extraordinary Minds
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Book: "Genius" by James Gleick
Book: "Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds" by Harold Bloom
Book: "Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie" by Barbara Goldsmith
Book: "DaVinci Decoded: Discovering the Spiritual Secrets of Leonardo's Seven Principles" by Michael J. Gelb
Book: "Leonardo Da Vinci: Flights of the Mind" by Charles Nicholl
Book: "Essays, by George Orwell" ed by John Carey
Book: "Newton: The Making of Genius" by Patricia Fara
Book: "The First Scientist: A Life of Roger Bacon" by Brian Clegg
Book: "The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte" by Robert B. Asprey
Book: "Genius" by Harold Bloom
Book: "Wandering In the Gardens Of The Mind: Peter Mitchell and the Making of Glynn" By J. Prebble & B. Weber
Book: "The Man Who Tapped The Secrets of the Universe" by Glenn Clark
Book: "The Voice of Genius: Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries" by Dennis Brian
Book: "The Essential Turing" Ed by B. Jack Copeland
Book: "I Seem to be a Verb" by Buckminister Fuller
Book: "Buckminister Fuller: Anthology for the New Millennium" Ed. by Thomas T.K. Zung
Book: "Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie" by Barbara Goldsmith
Book: "Nikola Tesla: The Man Who Held the Lightning in His Hands"
Book: "The Man Who Shocked The World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram" by Thomas Blass
Book: "Possessing Genius: The Bizarre Odyssey of Einstein's Brain" by Carolyn Abraham