We’ve sourced some of the most interesting and thought-provoking Genius Quotes from Viv Albertine, Jane Gardam, William Barr, James Joyce, Stephen Vizinczey. Each of the following quotes is overflowing with creativity, and knowledge.
I think I am the Elizabeth Barrett of 2015. Not in terms of genius but in bed a lot.
Only a great genius like the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell can be mother, wife and novelist without solitude. I couldn’t write until my youngest child went to school, and then I began – the first morning – and I’ve never stopped.
The central genius of the American Constitution lies in its use of structure to protect individual liberty. It does not rely solely, or even primarily, on grants of substantive rights.
A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
The truth is that our race survived ignorance; it is our scientific genius that will do us in.
I do feel very strongly that this is one of the things which people need encouragement to sort out, because I have this very strong feeling that everybody is probably a genius at something, it’s just a question of finding this.
Genius is of no country.
The popular mythology of creative genius depends on beloved stereotypes of the artist in youth and old age: the misunderstood upstart who forces us to see the world afresh; and the revered sage who shows us depths of insight attainable only through a lifetime of hard-won experience.
Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.
Nothing is so envied as genius, nothing so hopeless of attainment by labor alone. Though labor always accompanies the greatest genius, without the intellectual gift labor alone will do little.
There are not many people that I respect more than rappers. I’m a huge fan of hip hop. It’s incredible, one of the most influential things to me. It takes real genius to be able to do well. It’s a very deep art form.
The three theater peeps I would love to dine with are Mel Brooks, because he is so funny; Stephen Sondheim, because he is a god-like genius; and Ethel Merman, to compare notes on fabulous belting.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
You don’t disrupt genius at work.
‘Wet Hot American Summer’ was sort of lowbrow genius, you know? But smart in its cultish silliness. It wasn’t considered something of great cultural caliber. But like many cult pieces, it sort of became something culturally relevant, which I think is what’s so wonderful about it.
I’ve done all the table reads for Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow for all the pirate movies, because he’s just been doing other stuff, and I just love the whole Jack Sparrow thing he’s got going on; it is just genius, and I just think he has so much fun with it.
Einstein was very attracted to Mozart. There’s a mathematical, classical structure to the music, and I think he identified with that very strongly. I think there also is a connection between being a genius and a polymath.
Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.
The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as ‘Soho’ poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.
You may think me crude, and probably I am crude, but I am not so crude as I was, for I am clever enough to see that the girl of nineteen who thought herself a genius was only an unusual girl writing her heart out.
Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.
Genius worship is the inevitable sign of an uncreative age.
Spare functional furniture, in my opinion, is the genius of 20th-century design.
A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.
John Lennon was a musical genius. All I have to do is think of some of his songs and even the titles make me feel good… and I’m not the only one. His music has crossed cultures and even generations.
Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.
I’m a musical genius.
Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.
Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.
I’m not a genius. I’m just a hard-working guy.
To copy Nature? A boy with a camera can do that. To get the spirit of Nature? A woodman or a shepherd can follow the trail of the whistling wind to hoarded sunshine in distant wolds. But to interpret Nature and inform it with a human personality that rises above it, invokes the divine in it, is the work of genius.
When I started out in the duck-call business, my college buddies would come in and say, ‘Robertson, you have a college degree. What are you doing?’ Then they drove away saying, ‘What an idiot!’ Thirty-five years later, they’re saying, ‘The sucker’s a genius!’
Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.
The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves – the creature of habits and infirmities.
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.
Charlie Parker was a genius, as was Lester Young.
Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one’s training.
Gene Roddenberry was a genius.
Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.
I became a genius on ‘Ed,’ though I’m not sure it was very convincing.
Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.
Jesse Eisenberg, this little nebbishy guy, as Lex Luthor? For me, that’s a genius move.
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
I’ve always been sensible with my money. I can’t say I’m a business genius.
Oh, ‘Step Brothers’ is genius. I could watch that film a thousand times.
The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.
What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one’s nose, taking shortcuts.
I wish I was a prolific writing wondrous boy genius – I wish I was Stevie Wonder – but I wasn’t. I was me. I wrote terrible songs about girls I was head-over-heels about. As soon as a pretty girl looks at me, that’s it – I’m in love, and I should probably write a song about it!
Today, I’d like to talk to Bob Marley. I’d just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don’t know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from ‘Redemption Song’ to ‘Is This Love?’ and ‘I Shot the Sheriff.’
My favorite thing to do with my iPod was to shuffle my entire music collection and marvel at what songs came next. Sometimes the segues would be so perfect that it seemed a genius deejay was behind the wheel.
The ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ have been favourites of mine since my childhood when I misread ‘Aslan’ as ‘Alsatian’ and was struck by the genius of naming a lion after a dog!
A possible link between ‘madness’ and genius is one of the oldest and most persistent of cultural notions.
The men who miss success have two general alibis: ‘I’m not a genius’ is one; the other, ‘There aren’t the opportunities today there used to be.’ Neither excuse holds. The first is beside the point; the second is altogether wrong.
The genius of America is that we are still a land of undiscovered shores, and we are at our best when we open our hearts and allow the night winds to bring renewed visions of great deeds.
There’s something very funny about giving a menial task to a genius and watching him find so much complexity and overanalyse it to such a degree that the waitress from Nebraska working at the Cheesecake Factory has passed them all by.
I’m playing an Amazon warrior princess in a new radio comedy series called ‘Elvenquest,’ and I’m playing a Russian genius in the comeback of ‘Red Dwarf.’
I think I always have Woody Allen in mind whenever I’m creating anything. He’s such a genius, and I think ‘Annie Hall’ is one of the greatest movies ever written.
Taste is the feminine of genius.
I think David Hewlett is a comedic genius. I think he’s great.
It is of no consequence whether a man of genius have learned either art or science before twenty-five: all that is necessary, or even desirable, is that his powers should be unfolded, his emulation roused, and his habits conducted into a right channel.
The definition of genius, really, should be that that person can do what the rest of us have to learn how to do.
I am so thankful for the genius of Phil Spector, for his recognition of my talent to be the main voice of his Wall of Sound.
Jesus of Nazareth was a poet, no less than a prophet, of pre-eminent genius.
The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.
If bearing a reputation as a weirdo is all it takes to be a genius, I’m a shoo-in. Come to think of it, half the people I know are geniuses – the other half, peculiarly enough, idiots.
The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away.
It’s easy to be a genius in your twenties. In your forties, it’s difficult.
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.
Genius is the talent for seeing things straight.
‘AVP’ is not trying to be ‘Alien’ or ‘Aliens,’ and it’s not trying to be ‘Predator.’ Those are genius movies.
Jon Chu is an absolute genius with his story-weaving.
Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.
Short of genius a rich man cannot even imagine poverty.
Clive Barker is just genius, and he’s incredibly gifted in so many different ways. He can write and direct and paint and do all these different things, and he can do them all extremely well.
It’s very important that when you have a designer like Marc Jacobs, who is a genius, you give him complete freedom.
With so many delicious varieties and flavors ranging from subtle to bold, Keebler and Carr’s crackers are an unexpectedly genius way to celebrate leftovers and serve up one-of-a-kind recipes.
But I just know from experience that accent wise, even if you’re an accent genius, crossing the Atlantic is the hardest thing in the world either way.
You go to college not only for the latest knowledge but also to meet people from different backgrounds. That’s the genius of the American higher-education system compared with the Europeans’. We don’t simply skim the elite.
I think it gets overused and tossed around in ways that aren’t true. Every impressive achievement is not genius.
One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire.
As an actor, I really like Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think he’s a genius.
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.
When I was younger, my dad taught me how to cook. He’s a genius in the kitchen. I went to Vietnam with my parents, and I went on a cooking course with him.
I think the first ‘Hellraiser’ is a work of genius.
Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands.
It requires genius to make a good pun – some men of bright parts can’t reach it.
George Saunders’s ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ is a hands-down masterpiece – the subject of Abraham Lincoln and the genius of this author is a perfect union.
The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.
More than other subjects, there’s a myth that you have to be an absolute genius to be good at maths and to enjoy it, so I think it’s less accessible for people. Even the word ‘maths’ makes people screw their face up. They do the maths face.
Some people are better at maths than others: no one thinks you can be ‘taught’ to be a mathematical genius. And no one thinks of teaching, in that context, as a kind of forcing of the will. But there seems to be an idea of writing as an intuitive pastime which is being dishonestly subjected to counterintuitive methods.
There’s a line between being egotistical and being genius or great.
Genius is patience.
Martin Freeman is a genius, he really is. He gives you every color of the rainbow in every take and it’s wonderful just to play off of him and opposite him.
There’s a perceived inverse relation between looks and talent. Look at Charlize Theron – she made herself ugly for ‘Monster’ and suddenly everyone said ‘she’s a genius.’ It shouldn’t be like that.
Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.
The simplest of women are wonderful liars who can extricate themselves from the most difficult dilemmas with a skill bordering on genius.
The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius.
The media works in sound bites. They can make you look like a genius or stupid.
Airbnb’s genius was moving into cities and recognizing that millennials would want to go and maybe spend a vacation or visit some friends in an urban center.
In a sense, I am achieving what I set out to do – to devote myself to Stephen, to give him the chance of fulfilling his genius. But what have I become in the process? Who am I? What is there left of me? I am beginning to doubt my own identity.
Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.
I am the farthest thing from a computer genius.
To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill.
Genius must be born, and never can be taught.
The one who really captured me and became my absolute favorite was Nat King Cole. He was a genius at what he did. Most people don’t realize what a great pianist he was. After listening to him for years, I finally met him, and he was the nicest human being.
Upper berth, lower berth, that’s the difference between talent and genius.
Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
Genius is nothing but continued attention.
We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.
Rules and models destroy genius and art.
I don’t know what ‘genius’ even means. It’s just a matter of keeping your eye on the ball.
Since when was genius found respectable?
I do love the clothes on ‘Mad Men’ because my character has been so elegant and I would never have had access to these clothes. I think Janie Bryant is a costume designing genius. They’ll call and tell me, ‘It will only take an hour,’ and I’m like, ‘I will try on the whole truck!’
I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.
Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.
I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.
This paradox of vision – the genius of youthful ignorance – is nothing new. Had Bill Gates not been in diapers in the early days of computer software, he might have understood that there could never be a market for consumer software – but the 19-year-old Gates went ahead and cofounded Microsoft.
Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.
When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
It helps me to learn things in different languages, even if it’s just phonetically, and to make myself vulnerable to other audiences by trying to reflect back to them the genius of their own cultures, and to do that, oftentimes, in new jazz settings, new arrangements. It’s a way to show respect.
This homage has been rendered not to me – for the Polish soil is fertile and does not lack better writers than me – but to the Polish achievement, the Polish genius.
The Wonderstar collection is a fantastic fusion of Hollywood glamour and Wonderbra’s technical genius.
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.
The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.
Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.
When my nephew was 3 and 4, he would say the most genius things. He said, You’re hammer macho with FBI dogs. I thought it was just one of those great lines.
However old-fashioned and right-wing this may sound, the American genius for language lies in understatement, in saying things simply, pointedly and quickly, and in making new and clean and swift what otherwise might be ponderous, round and slow.
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.
‘Sweet Genius’ viewers will be on the edge of their seats as we continue to push the limits with inspirations and ingredients, while showcasing the talents of some of the best pastry chefs around. As a result, the desserts that the chefs create are truly outrageous.
Ronald Reagan knew audiences. It was a key element of his political genius. One of the things at which brilliant politicians are better than mediocre ones is smelling new public concerns over the horizon before they are picked up by polls – before the public even knows to call them ‘issues’ at all.
My father was a genius footballer, a natural, two-footed centre-forward who had played for Arsenal juniors, but he was sent out to work aged 14 and so lived out his life in a frustrated, rageful way.
If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard.
Is it not in the most absolute simplicity that real genius plies its pinions the most wonderfully?
Todd Rundgren is a genius, and I don’t use that word a lot.
I think ‘genius’ is an overused word.
Donna Tartt is a genius.
I admire Johann Strauss a lot. I believe he was a genius of his time.
We live in a world in which courage is in less supply than genius.
Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine.
Artists and scientists both think outside the box. They’ve got to come with genius experiments or ideas to expose the most interesting phenomena.
I have never been an innovator, a creative genius.
Homer, Vergil, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Proust – not exactly authors one expects to whiz through or take lightly, but like all works of genius, they are meant to be read out loud and loved.
But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched by the same madness and genius.
How could you look at CM Punk and not think that he has the ‘it’ factor? I don’t think I’m any great visionary or genius because I saw something in CM Punk; I think everyone else is a stupid schmuck for not seeing it in CM Punk.
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.
The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities.
Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.
Rising genius always shoots out its rays from among the clouds, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady luster.
Every one of you is a super genius if you just focus your common sense.
Sarah Corvus in ‘Bionic Woman’ was one of my favorite characters I’ve ever played, ever, for reasons that are very similar to Nikki in ‘Sexy Evil Genius.’ I felt that that show was taken away from me too soon, and I really wanted to dive back into that mind frame again.
My job is to pay attention to my children’s genius and allow those leanings to lead them to their future.
There is nothing that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable that human genius and skill do not aspire to realize.
The problem with Ireland is that it’s a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent.
Despite his dodgy politics, Yeats remains an inspiration for his genius and the simple fact that the older he got, the better he wrote.
The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category.
Remember when those CD-ROMs from AOL came in the mail almost every day? The company was considered ubiquitous, invincible. Former AOL CEO Steve Case was no less a genius than Mark Zuckerberg.
The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.
If you win a Super Bowl before you’re fired, you’re a genius, and everyone listens to you. But a coach is just a guy whose best class in grammar school was recess and whose best class in high school was P.E. I never thought I was anything but a guy whose best class was P.E.
My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing – I thought they were genius in knowing that’s as much as a listener can take.
It is easy to be seen as either a genius or a crank. If you have a Ph.D., at least you somewhat lower the chances that you will be seen as a crank.
The history of Rome presents various men of greater genius than Scipio Aemilianus, but none equalling him in moral purity, in the utter absence of political selfishness, in generous love of his country, and none, perhaps, to whom destiny has assigned a more tragic part.
Andy Warhol is the only genius I’ve ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
Loner heroes do appeal to that part of yourself that feels as though your genius hasn’t been recognised.
Every true genius is bound to be naive.
What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?
Trust in our economic system and the genius and hard work of our citizens beyond the mandate and control of government.
Talent does whatever it wants to do. Genius does only what it can.
I’ve started to think that maybe I wouldn’t mind passing my demented genius on to some small thing who can set fire and breathe profanity.
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.
I don’t think I’m a genius. Not yet.
Mike Myers as Austin Powers makes me laugh – that was genius – and Daffy Duck makes me laugh, but I like odd behavior. I don’t like hip dialogue and one-liners and all that sort of cool, sophomoric comedy. It’s just not for me.
Pain is definitely a genius in his own right. ‘Thr33 Ringz’ is definitely one of my top 10 albums. It’s one of those albums you listen to front-to-back.
I wish I was this dark genius artist – like Richard Pryor or something.
Most people only remember Maradona for the bad parts now. But he was a genius, someone who lifted us and himself up to the level of the gods.
I’ve always known I was a genius. But I never thought I was a star.
Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
If I had been brilliant or a genius, I wouldn’t have needed to break the law just to survive.
Great love, like great genius, can never be a duty: both are life’s gracious gifts to its elect.
The people who live lives that are the most dangerous don’t usually come in twirling a mustache rubbing their hands menacingly saying ‘I’m an evil genius.’ They’re people who are charismatic, charming and appealing, who speak to some part of us that makes us want to follow them, that makes us attracted to them.
When you’re young you believe it when people tell you how good you are. And that’s the danger, you inhale. Everyone will tell you you’re a genius, which you are not, and if you understand that, you win.
We can all be geniuses because one definition of genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains.
Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.
I was a ‘Glee’ fan before I joined the show! Since my background is musical theater, it was exciting to see a TV show that incorporated music so much and in such a genius way.
It is the union of independence and dependence of these branches – legislative, executive and judicial – and of the governmental functions possessed by each of them, that constitutes the marvellous genius of this unrivalled document.
A photographic memory, to me, is kind of like brainiac, genius type. I don’t think I have that.
No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.
Taste is the common sense of genius.
To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius – the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.
Genius – to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.
I think Joss Whedon is a genius.
The lucky person passes for a genius.
Holy Joy were a cult ’80s band led by the wonderful songwriting genius that is Johny Brown.
Taste is the fundamental quality which sums up all the other qualities. It is the nec plus ultra of the intelligence. Through this alone is genius the supreme health and balance of all the faculties.
There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master’s master, the genius of the age.
I’ve never met Lena Dunham, but I’m such a huge fan – I think she’s a crazy genius.
A host is like a general: calamities often reveal his genius.
Mark Zuckerberg is a genius. Not in the Asperger’s, autistic way depicted in the very fictional movie ‘The Social’ Network, the cognitive genius of exceptional ability. That’s a modern definition that reduces the original meaning.
The genius of the American system is that through freedom we have created extraordinary results from plain old ordinary people.
I’m pretty handy in the kitchen. But my wife’s the real genius.
The manager believes soccer is a science and the field a laboratory, but the genius of Einstein and the subtlety of Freud is not enough for the owners and the fans. They want a miracle worker like Our Lady of Lourdes, with the stamina of Gandhi.
Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.
It should be quite clear that it is possible for unpleasant people who are small in various ways other than in their artistic genius to produce great art. Art and morality have no necessary connection.
Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation.
Genius is independent of situation.
It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.
Hellhammer is the best drummer ever, and Euronymous is a musical genius.
There’s a certain amount of screwball and genius in ‘Willy Wonka.’
But at the time when he wrote, Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, wrote only in French or Latin; and when they began to write in English, a man of genius, to interpret and improve on him, was not found for a long time.
One of my greatest inspirations for stand-up was Jonathan Winters. He was a genius. One thing about him, and also Lenny Bruce, is that they were in the tradition of the one-man show. That’s why Richard Pryor was so great, and George Carlin, too. They prowled the stage, they used voices, they were really talents.
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Since I came from another part of the world, I expected many differences in the way things worked, but at the end of the day, there actually were more similarities between the American and Indian entertainment industry: the same chaos, creativity, passion, and genius all around.
I love Stewart Lee’s ‘Comedy Vehicle’ on BBC2. The guy is a genius.
I love to get to the underbelly of why people are up in arms about anything. Really, what I see is a big shadow in the West, in America especially, and everyone’s afraid of looking stupid. But the truth is, I’m a genius and I’m stupid at the same time.
And I think it is the genius of actors to be able to escape whatever people are expecting of them. Otherwise you become like a factory worker.
Jared Kushner is Ivanka Trump husband. Jared was instrumental in being kind of an overlay in kind of bringing Trump’s genius down to the all the different parts of leadership.
‘Get Out’ was born out of the genius mind of Jordan Peele, to whom I will be forever grateful for believing in me and allowing me to help him tell a story so dear to him.
Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by friction.
The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement.
Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.
Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.
Mike Patton is a genius… It is definitely the hardest music I’ve ever played.
The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.
And we owe science to the combined energies of individual men of genius, rather than to any tendency to progress inherent in civilization.
Pun was just a natural-born genius with music, and he basically taught me so many tricks on how to make better music, even though I was the one that discovered him. He was so far advanced than me; he taught me a lot.
Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he’s also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes.
Music is like the genius of humankind, universal… People who have never really taken the time to get into music, their lives are a lot smaller. Kids deserve the richness and dimension of it in their lives.
Mike is a genius guitar player and keyboard player. I realized that, with this group, I just joined Mike Keneally’s band!
All genius is a conquering of chaos and mystery.
It’s called ‘A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius’ by Dave Eggers. It is absolutely everything the title implies. It’s the greatest book I’ve ever.
A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books.
There is no off position on the genius switch.
Mild autism can give you a genius like Einstein. If you have severe autism, you could remain nonverbal. You don’t want people to be on the severe end of the spectrum. But if you got rid of all the autism genetics, you wouldn’t have science or art. All you would have is a bunch of social ‘yak yaks.’
Genius must be born, and never can be taught.
We reserve the term ‘genius’ for people who are creative, who are innovators, who think in ways that are entirely new. In the Middle Ages, the term ‘genius’ was reserved for people with the best memories. That is telling.
I was, like, 12 or 13; the first hip hop song I tried to rapping to was Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop,’ and my English was so bad, but learning to rap to different songs really helped me with my pronunciation, and looking at the lyrics on Rap Genius and stuff like that.
I’m a huge Muppets fan. Gigantic. I think they’re genius. I think they’re some of the best work out there and completely underrated, just because of how genius they are. I love that kind of humor. It’s so innocent but brilliant.
Don’t forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius. Think of the capacity to learn! The freshness, the temperament, the will of a baby a few months old!
My dad is very down to earth, and I view him as a creative genius, and I am very proud of that.
All of a sudden, those few pages of script that he had shown me with the weird images I could visualize all of that in my brain, and I knew that there was this mad little genius at work here and I really wanted to do the film.
From every ancient source, we have testimony to Cleopatra’s irresistible charm, as Plutarch has it, to her ability to speak many languages including, as he puts it, the language of flattery and essentially, to be able to turn people to her will – really a great political genius, in that respect.
Biggie was a lyrical genius: he was a musical painter with words. As he rapped, you would see the picture come to life as you heard his story. You hear a lot of rappers rap; you hear a lot of singers sing, but you don’t see the movie in your head the way you do when you hear Biggie rap.
The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
In real estate, you make 10% of your money because you’re a genius and 90% because you catch a great wave.
Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun.
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.
Great innovators like Thomas Alva Edison, Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie didn’t rely on government. There was hardly any of it in those days. More recently, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison used genius to put brand-new ideas into production.
You see the genius that Whitney Houston has as an interpreter of material, and you realize why genius can be applied to only a few interpretive performers. She finds meaning and depth and soulfulness in a song that often the writer and composer never really knew was there.
When you step back and watch people, you realize that we use every single body part. Movement, dance – I find it genius because it’s ultimate expression, really.
I’m a big fan of ’30 Rock,’ which I think is the most genius show on television.
In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
I think the core of fans’ relationship is one that vacillates schizophrenically and mercurially from reverence to resentment. Fans fetishize the players’ athletic genius and both deify it and demonize it; witness the way awe turns into anger whenever a player holds out or flips off the offensive coordinator.
Sana Takeda is a genius. It’s really that simple. Her vision and sense of story and beauty is beyond compare. I loved working with her on ‘X-23.’ I knew, though, that she could do much more beyond the constraints of a traditional superhero story.
Art Tatum was a genius.
Nina Simone is a musical genius and a rich and precious treasure who paid a heavy price for her artistic freedom.
Karina Longworth, the genius behind ‘You Must Remember This’, has quite correctly spun off her series about the Sharon Tate murders as a separate podcast called ‘You Must Remember Manson’ to mark the passing of the man who unleashed hell because he couldn’t get a recording contract.
To see things in the seed, that is genius.
There were some great clinicians in the 20th century – great men. Freud was a genius; Jung was a genius, Carl Rogers was a genius – there’s a half-dozen psychologists of the 1950s and humanists of the 1960s.
I sometimes think that life is a circle. See, I cannot get away from genius. At Barca, I had Messi. At Juve, I have Paulo Dybala. Genius follows me everywhere, I swear.
Tracey Cunningham is my colorist, and she is genius! We match my color from when I was a kid.
Steve Jobs is considered an amazing genius and made billions of dollars. Sure, we overlook that he didn’t pay his share of taxes and didn’t believe in charity. But other than these occasional rumblings of dissent, he is pretty much held in high esteem.
Once you let go of the idea of waiting for a magical lightning bolt of genius to hit, you can really get to work.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work will be completed.
It has been said that a man of genius should select his ancestors with great care – and yet there does not seem to be as much in heredity as most people think. The children of the great are often small.
The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.
I know quite a few fellow members of the news analysis and commentary business, and I have it from the highest-placed sources, on the record, that each and every one of our children is a genius.
Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
I really love Hitchcock; I think he was a complete genius, to me one of the best directors. Such a sense of how to put things together.
Even though Da Vinci was a genius, it’s important to remember he was just a man.
To me, the real genius in making television for kids is making something that inadvertently – or perhaps intentionally – becomes something that can be enjoyed by people of all ages.
Everything I do, I feel is genius. Whether it is or it isn’t.
The difference between being able to understand something and inventing it in the first place… is called genius.
Genius is always accompanied by enthusiasm.
The only way you can get good, unless you’re a genius, is to copy. That’s the best thing. Just steal.
Foucault’s genius is to go down to the little dramas, dress them in facts hardly anyone else has noticed, and turn these stage settings into clues to a hitherto un-thought series of confrontations out of which, he contends, the orderly structure of society is composed.
Two actors who have different motivations and skill sets can work together and be magic. Charles Grodin and Robert DeNiro technically couldn’t work more differently, and yet they made ‘Midnight Run,’ which is a genius comedy.
I wouldn’t be where I am without my dad. He’s a genius.
The only good political movement I’ve seen lately was Occupy Wall Street. They had no leaders, which was genius. But unfortunately it always ends up with some hippy playing a flute.
The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science.
David Shire and I have been happily married for 21 years! We have a 12-year-old son. David is a genius. He writes the most magnificent music and he is a devoted and loving husband and father. I am so blessed!
I think Milly Shapiro is a genius. She’s just a fantastic person and a fantastic actress.
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.
Pete Docter’s a genius isn’t he?
People hate me because I am a multifaceted, talented, wealthy, internationally famous genius.
The cult of individuality and personality, which promotes painters and poets only to promote itself, is really a business. The greater the ‘genius’ of the personage, the greater the profit.
When you’re in a play, 50 percent is the genius of the actor, 50 percent is the genius of the author. When a mime is not perfect, you see nothing.
The sheer genius of talk radio and Townhall.com is that the environment is so interactive.
Genius of a kind has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality; an excellent, strong woman’s body and a pitiably starved soul.
You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.
One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.
Drake is a lyrical genius, and he’s great with melodies, and Pharrell is an amazing producer and songwriter.
The dread of criticism is the death of genius.
Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn.
David Fincher is a genius.
I think that all the Mel Brooks’ company of actors is just tremendous. It was a crazy group of genius people. All of them taught me what kind of actor I should be and what was funny.
If you’re a man and you ask questions, you’re a genius; if you’re a woman, you’re difficult.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.
This world has a way of trying to homogenize you. Trying to sanitize you. Trying to scrub you of your unique divine genius. This world wants to make you regular.
To be complex does not mean to be fragmented. This is the paradox and the genius of our Canadian civilization.
It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one’s own advantage and to that of one’s craft that a large part of genius consists.
Popular in our time, unpopular in his. So runs the stereotype of rejected genius.
I’m a devotee of Stephen Sondheim. I think he’s a genius.
It is Proust’s implacable honesty, his reluctance to cut corners or to articulate what might have been good enough or credible enough in any other writer that make him the introspective genius he is.
Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.
Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
Genius is one of the many forms of insanity.
The true genius of a great manager is his or her ability to individualize. A great manager is one who understands how to trip each person’s trigger.
UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.
If beauty isn’t genius it usually signals at least a high level of animal cunning.
Shakespeare was very political, but he was also a fabulous entertainer. That’s where his genius comes in as a playwright.
Andres is a genius, and it’s an honour to share the same dressing room. I hope to learn a lot from him. Of course, there is only one Iniesta. I have come here to try to create history of my own and learn from these great players.
We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later.
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.
Olivier was another case of a genius, who couldn’t understand why anybody would have any trouble doing this, because for him it came so easily.
This adoration of an artist as a lone genius is quite misled, I think, because they are very much part of their time and their community.
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.
Martin Lawrence is one of my comedic heroes, and he’s a genius.
Robert Burns enriched Scottish song with his genius and is mainly responsible for the rich treasure house of song that we enjoy today. He collected folk songs, retained the melodic line, kept what words were usable and rewrote the rest. He didn’t claim ownership.
Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.
Genius, when young, is divine.
It is high time we found out about this man Cummings. Let us give him every opportunity to show us at once whether he is a genius, a charlatan, or a congenital defective – and get him off our minds.
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
What most readers do not realize is that it takes a particular genius to write funny, to satirize.
I want to do ‘Chicago P.D.’ for as long as it’s on the air. I love the show; I love the Dick Wolf family. I think he’s created something genius with the crossovers and having everyone on these shows inhabit the same universe as far as ‘Chicago Med’ and ‘Chicago Fire’ and ‘Chicago P.D.’
The iPhone will forever be associated with the inventive genius of Steve Jobs and Silicon Valley. But the roots of innovation can be traced back – from one genius to another, at least – back to the genius who put the phone in iPhone: Alexander Graham Bell.
He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.
The H-1B visa is called the ‘genius visa’ for a reason.
Then I heard this genius teacher Stella Adler – I recommend you read anything you might find about her and if you have anyone interested in theatre, you get them one of her books.
The genius of Rachel Dolezal’s transracial achievement is that it has nearly limitless applications. Rachel is taking ‘the power of positive thinking’ to a whole new level.
I mean, Scorsese’s a genius, and that’s one way of shooting.
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.
The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.
Having a million-dollar net worth doesn’t make you a genius, and having less than a million-dollar net worth doesn’t make you a fool.
Creative genius is a divinely bestowed gift which is the coronation of the few.
Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.
Genius is never understood in its own time.
Yachty is a genius.
Glenn’s passing was so unexpected and has left me with a very heavy heart filled with sorrow. He was so young and still full of amazing genius. He was an extremely talented songwriter, arranger, leader, singer, guitarist – you name it – and Glenn could do it and create ‘Magic’ on the spot.
I’m just drawn to the odd guy, the man who is full of it, the guy who has limited talent but is pretending he’s a genius.
I talked a bunch of crap for years and then went out and worked hard. That’s the extent of it. There’s no magical genius to it, as much as I’d like to think there is. I’m just a guy who works hard – and I hope guys are challenged by that.
In this world no one rules by love; if you are but amiable, you are no hero; to be powerful, you must be strong, and to have dominion you must have a genius for organizing.
It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is.
Miyazaki is a genius. He is the legend.
JR was a 1-dimensional, evil character. JR was multi-dimensional, and Larry Hagman is probably one of the greatest actors that we have. Then, you go back and look at ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ – I mean, he’s a comic genius, as well. So, I think they should give him an honorary Emmy Award.
Making ‘Birdsong,’ on the one hand you have how prestigious it is and the reputation of the book, which is something that’s an extraordinary piece of work. Sebastian Faulkes is a genius. So you feel that responsibility when you’re portraying that character that he’s imagined and millions of readers have pictured.
The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.
I’m a huge fan of R. Kelly’s. He’s a musical genius and probably the most prolific artist of the generation before mine.
Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.
But I don’t think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don’t have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.
There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.
The genius of Kate Middleton is that she hasn’t gone too far. She’s still dressing in a way that people can relate to.
Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don’t think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
I had a poster of Iniesta. He seemed like a different player to me: elegant, special… a genius. I watched all the Barcelona games to see how they played and the geniuses, Iniesta and Messi. After, I tried to imitate them, but it was difficult.
I cherish the ballets made for myself by Mr. Balanchine. He never lost his temper. He was quiet, humble, the genius of the 20th century.
The one thing that Hendrix had that is unique among extraordinary guitar players is he had songs that were on the radio. His guitar genius was exposed to the masses by ‘Foxy Lady.’
In our own time it has been seen… that simple children, roughly brought up in the wilderness, have begun to draw by themselves, impelled by their own natural genius, instructed solely by the example of these beautiful paintings and sculptures of Nature.
Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
I think Mike Nichols is brilliant, but I think Jerry Robbins was a genius.
Can a woman become a genius of the first class? Nobody can know unless women in general shall have equal opportunity with men in education, in vocational choice, and in social welcome of their best intellectual work for a number of generations.
The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It’s our great contribution to the arts.
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.
Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
One good thing about being a woman is we haven’t too many examples yet of what a genius looks like.
I took a test once; they said I was a genius.
The free sharing and teaching of open source is incompatible with the notion of the solitary genius.
In Oakland, Al Davis was a genius. We had Ron Wolff there, too, and he was a genius. There was no room for me to be a genius.
Mike gets to play four roles this time, if we ever did it again, he will play my role as well. He is a comic genius, everyone wants to be in this movie, let’s hope that everyone will wish to see it as well.
God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.
Iniesta is a true football genius, and we should all give thanks not only for what he has done but what he’s continuing to do.
Professor Hawking is heralded as ‘the genius of Britain,’ yet he believes in the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything and that life sprang from non-life. Why should anyone believe Mr. Hawking’s writings if he cannot provide evidence for his unscientific belief that out of nothing, everything came?
Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.
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.
Charles Schultz is a really interesting case. He wrote that comic strip and drew it himself from beginning to end, and it’s a work of genius. It’s very simply drawn, but it has some really deep emotions that you don’t expect in a silly-looking comic strip.
I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.
I’m a bordering genius.
Many people think I am an idiot. I think I am a genius.
Our society is very, very good at developing certain types of skills and certain types of genius. We are fantastically good at identifying and developing athletic skills – better than we are, really, at almost anything else. We are quite good at developing and rewarding inventiveness.
I like the idea of taking a true classic written by a true genius and destroying it essentially! I like the idea of bringing it down to earth a bit – and even a bit lower than that.
The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.
My brother’s my best friend, without a doubt. Me and my big sister get along so well. She moved to East London, though, so points off, but she’s wicked. And then my little sister is a little genius. She’s super talented and such a great person, always been far more mature and cool than me.
I can’t tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.
As a bull market continues, almost anything you buy goes up. It makes you feel that investing in stocks is a very easy and safe and that you’re a financial genius.
Madonna is her own Hollywood studio – a popelike mogul and divine superstar in one. She has a laserlike instinct for publicity, aided by her visual genius for still photography (which none of her legion of imitators has). Unfortunately, her public life has dissolved into a series of staged photo ops.
Churchill was one of the few men I have met who even in the flesh give me the impression of genius. George Bernard Shaw is another. It is amusing to know that each thinks the other is overrated.
If you go back and look, a completely underrated film is ‘Quest for Fire.’ That was one of the most genius, simplistic but incredibly sophisticated notion of what it was. The evolution of that was just fantastic.
The extraordinary genius of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie 100 years ago was their recognition that the great wealth they had amassed could be put to public good and used to solve the complex problems for which there were no other sources of capital.
Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty.
I’m into the lyrical side of rap. I listen to some old Eminem songs and think, ‘Wow, he’s a genius.’ He’s one of the greatest poets of our time. Even when he’s out of control, like on ‘Cold Wind Blows,’ it’s incredible.
There’s a gap somehow between empathy and activism. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of ‘soul force’ – something that emanates from a deep truth inside of us and empowers us to act. Once you identify your inner genius, you will be able to take action, whether it’s writing a check or digging a well.
Jim Carrey, a comic genius, has a harder time overcoming the public’s desire for him to be funny simply because he’s so good at it.
It’s a very naive idea to think that the chef is cooking everything, and, on top of it, is irreplaceable. That would mean that basically he is the only genius, and there are idiots all around him, which doesn’t make sense.
Some of the best ideas come from sheer discovery, and not by some masterminded, preconceived genius.
I’m really into ‘Veep.’ I think that the showrunner Armando Iannucci is a genius.
The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.
There’s a band in the U.K. called Elbow. They’re not that big in the U.S., but I think they’re genius.
Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.
People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
Man is a genius when he is dreaming.
One of the big surprises for me about Einstein was… that he wasn’t this big introvert; he was more like a novelist or a painter. It’s amazing how close society came to not benefiting from Albert Einstein’s genius.
Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.
People think that I’m some kind of genius who’s got these statements to say, and… I’m not really.
I’m not exactly a maths genius – I’m really good at maths, maths was my favorite subject in school, but I wasn’t a genius.
Talent works, genius creates.
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.
I don’t think Ireland has ever had a genius for the novel. Of course, there were plenty of Irish novels, but I don’t think that was ever the natural means of expression for the Irish.
It is quite possible for the vulgar to be funny, but to succeed, it must rise to a certain genius.
My favorite types of movies definitely aren’t thrillers, but at the same time you can’t deny the genius of Hitchcock’s films.
It will work. I am a marketing genius.
I think you’re all mad. But that’s part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn’t it?
If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?
Genius is sorrow’s child.
Genius is that in which the soul of a race bums at its brightest, revealing and preserving its vision; works of art are great and significant in proportion to the clarity and fulness with which they incarnate this vision.
I believe ‘Sonchiriya’ is a film that will be recalled with much pride and respect for many years from now. We all worked very hard to make it a special work, and the director Abhishek Sir is a genius.
All this is rather pretentious and fey to even talk about, but Flannery O’Connor sat down to write stories. The rest of us, some of us, don’t have that kind of wit and genius. We don’t do that. We sit down and have some accidents.
They shaved my head, eyebrows. This is not a sci-fi picture. It’s not a fantasy picture. You’re dealing with something that’s supposed to be in reality. But we had a genius makeup artist.
He’s a tremendous guy. And what’s more, he’s virtually a genius in the field of management.
A man possesses talent; genius possesses the man.
It takes application, a fine sense of value, and a powerful community-spirit for a people to have serious leisure, and this has not been the genius of the Americans.
In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his thought.
Oh, I’m impressed with Lorraine Hansberry. She was a genius at whose feet I could sit.
The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be missing something.
When you deal with Alan Ball, you’re dealing with a person who is a genius in terms of how art imitates life.
Oh, I think Janie Bryant is a genius. I mean, I think she changed menswear almost single-handedly with what she did on ‘Mad Men.’
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.
My goal is to create friend machines. Friendly genius machines. Machines with genius capabilities.
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.
Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
I do not use the word ‘genius’ lightly, but if David Bowie is not a genius, then there is no such thing.
Rainer Maria Rilke was admittedly not a Dockers tagger, but a sort of European equivalent: a German poet – in many respects, a charlatan masquerading as a genius who turned out to be a genius.
Unless you are a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.
Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.
The last time I had to make a career decision, I was 17. I could have gone to Ballet Theatre or National Ballet of Canada. There were options. But as I became exposed to the Robbins repertoire, I realized that there was a living genius in the house.
Prior to ‘Tokyo Drift,’ the iconic perception of Asians in Hollywood films has been either the Kung Fu guy, the Yakuza guy or some technical genius. It used to be such a joke, to be laughed at rather than with.
To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.
A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.
As well as being a creative genius, Vidal Sassoon was a formative figure of the Sixties. Along with the Pill and the mini-skirt, his influence was truly liberating.
If you stick with a vision, it might not all work, but some of it will be absolute genius. To me, 15 minutes worth of absolute genius in a film is so much better than two hours of mediocrity. I would rather pay to see something different like that.
Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.
He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero.
What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.
The genius of vinyl is that it allows – commands! – us to put our fingerprints all over that history: to blend and chop and reconfigure it, mock and muse upon it, backspin and skip through it.
Genius is a grace. The true man of genius acts by movement or by impulsion.
I’ve learned any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.
I wouldn’t say jamie is an evil genius. I’m not sure he’s evil and I’m not sure he’s a genius.
Maybe you’ve decided you’re not a genius, that you’re not brilliant, that you’re not prosperous, that you’re not wonderful, that you’re not lovable. Well, you know what? You’re both: you’re unlovable and you are lovable. And they both need equal time.
When it comes to peaking at the right time, I have to thank my coach Mike Holmes: he is a genius.
I think there are ways to get so caught up in your career and being so heavy and dramatic, and everyone wants to be a tortured genius.
In some parts of life, like mathematics and science, yeah, I was a genius. I would top all the top scores you could ever measure it by.
Man who invented the hamburger was smart; man who invented the cheeseburger was a genius.
I’m a sport fan. So, I have always watched everything, and I used to watch racing. Formula One was always on. The genius about it is that it’s on at lunchtime on a Sunday.
Many African people are smarter than me – kids who could have been better. I have no claim for genius.
Only a genius can play a fool.
Indians take great pleasure in celebrating a genius, and then go into mindless criticism once the celebrity starts doing well.
The element of truth in the concept of genius is to be sought in the object, in what is open, not confined by repetition.
I always thought what made ‘Beetlejuice’ look so great was because it looked like some genius kid made it in his basement.
The genius of our institutions is democratic – baseball is a democratic game.
Love can reach the same level of talent, and even genius, as the discovery of differential calculus.
Ronald Isley is a musical genius.
Nietzsche claimed that his genius was in his nostrils and I think that is a very excellent place for it to be.
Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.
Genius is immediate, but talent takes time.
Adlai Stevenson has a genius for saying the right thing, at the right time, to the wrong people.
You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty.
My grandfather was a church organist and would sing in choirs and was a musical genius to a certain extent.
Genius without religion is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace; it may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without, while the inhabitant sits in darkness.
The writer Richard Curtis is a genius.
The iambic pentameter owes its pre-eminence in English poetry to its genius for variation. Good blank verse does not sound like a series of identically measured lines. It sounds like a series of subtle variations on the same theme.
Whether Mike Fleiss knew it at the start or not, the genius behind the show is that it’s so simple. ‘The Bachelor’ is just about the one currency that transfers all around the world.
Richard Avedon is a true genius of photography and one of the greatest artists of our time.
To be called a genius at 17 or 18 years old can sometimes cause arrested development.
I would sing around the house, and I would always play on things just because instruments were always there, but I didn’t show any genius as a child. I wasn’t a prodigy or anything like that.
Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.
Whether you are a genius or an idiot, a thief or, like me, a Zen priest who has cultivated the mind for 30 years – the mind anyway is subject to conditions.
Ismail Merchant was just the most seductive, passionate, outrageous, driven, genius of a man.
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.
Genius is initiative on fire.
I sleep till one, and I’m always surprised when someone in blue rinse on a talk show says, ‘You’re a genius, Mr. Newley, you do so many things.’ Tony Newley never realized his potential, did the things he should have done.
As Fallingwater demonstrates, Wright’s genius was always specific, but also always lively, always daring.
The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
I can’t change overnight into a serious literary author. You can’t compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.
If there be anything that can be called genius, it consists chiefly in ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind, till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides.
The genius idea of industrialism was the concept of the Model T: In exchange for something cheap and well-made, we’d forgo unique, lovely design.
Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.
Genius is eternal patience.
I’d describe ‘Psych’ as ‘Real Genius’ meets ‘Django Unchained.’
No, I don’t believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.
Sometimes miraculous films come into being, made by people you’ve never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius.
Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
The so-called ‘materialistic conception of history,’ with the crude elements of genius of the early form which appeared, for instance, in the ‘Communist Manifesto,’ still prevails only in the minds of laymen and dilettantes.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
I look at bands like the Beach Boys, Hall & Oates and Blur, and those are the bands I want to be in company with because their songwriting is intelligent, and yet you don’t need to be a musical genius to pick it up.
If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn’t arrive.
People are like, ‘Wow you started your own record label,’ and treat me like I’m some sort of innovative genius, when I’m not at all. You’ve got the Internet and music – you put them together, and people hear your music.
Comedy, I’m still in awe of. I think you need a comic genius somewhere in the mix. It’s got to be the actor or someone. But the ‘comic genius’ actors are the darkest people on the planet – and that kind of scares me!
Now that I’m on Broadway, it’s like NASA engineering with the costumes. I was very grateful for the slightly more high-tech ones in my show, ‘Venus in Fur’; our costume designer Anita Yavich is kind of a genius.
The most common thing over the years is, ‘What’s it like to work with David Lynch?’ That’s absolutely the fascination, whether it’s people that are in the industry or it’s just diehard fans. Because he’s our modern-day master. We’re lucky enough to be alive at the time that an absolute master and genius is working.
The only folk I can judge are people like Woody Allen who I think is a genius, largely because I think he has beaten the system. He has his own company, and his films are all his own ideas. It’s his direction, and so it comes out the way he imagined it.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
I love David Fincher and I think he’s a genius.
I didn’t want to be a genius! That ain’t cool.
The poets’ scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death.
The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.
To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius; a vital appropriating exercise of mind closely allied to that which first created it.
Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.
I think eyebrow gel is genius.
No woman has ever been an authentic genius of the stature of men, but that does not enrage me.
Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear.
Charlie Parker and Art Tatum to me were genius, and I’m right below that. I did, in my own way, do something different on the instrument, and that’s the way I’d like to be remembered.
Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
The dead play a very prominent part in the experience of the wanderer abroad. The houses in which they were born, the tombs in which they lie, the localities they made famous by their good or evil deeds, and the works their genius left behind them are necessarily the chief shrines of his pilgrimage.
Governmental aid is a drawback rather than an assistance, as, although it may facilitate in the routine of artistic production, it is an impediment to the development of true artistic genius.
Everybody denies I am a genius – but nobody ever called me one!
All of us, who are members of the Germanic peoples, can be happy and thankful that once in thousands of years fate has given us, from among the Germanic peoples, such a genius, a leader, our Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, and you should be happy to be allowed to work with us.
I’m a huge, huge fan of Chris Morris. I think he’s a genius, and it is not a word I use very often. I think he’s fantastic.
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
There has been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous – and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone.
One of my top 10 favorite movies of all time was ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.’ ‘Team America’ is a work of genius to me.
There’s been so many different types of musicals, and it’s a funny genre because there’s a fine line between clever and stupid. It really takes a genius to know how to do it.
If we will maintain our hope and confidence in the genius of our people, they will work out this problem, and their ability and industry will bring us back to normal conditions.
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
I’m not going to say that I’m some musical genius, but I’ve always loved music.
Hollandaise, I would like to pour over my head and just rub all over myself. Eggs Benedict is genius. It’s eggs covered in eggs.
In Mozart and Salieri we see the contrast between the genius which does what it must and the talent which does what it can.
I feel genius in great works of art. I have seen medical cures that science can’t explain, some seemingly triggered by faith. The same is true of millions of other people.
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.
Character is greater than talent, genius, fame, money, friends – there is nothing to compare with it. A man may have all these and yet remain comparatively useless – be unhappy – and die a bankrupt in soul.
Undereye patches are genius. From traveling, I get really puffy under my eyes. Klorane Smoothing and Relaxing Patches are a great ten-minute trick to look refreshed. They’re perfect for moms running on no sleep.
Amy Poehler, Amy Sedaris – they’re both genius.
Creativity runs across many categories in life, from the arts-and-crafts project a mum or dad does with their kids, to the bestselling author’s manuscript, to the designs of the hairdresser, to the creations of the computer programming genius.
Honestly, I feel like I spent the last 10 years just trying to work, just get my hands on the best material I could. I’d like to say that it was quite calculated and genius, my ability to take one step forward and two steps back.
There are so many songs in me that haven’t been born yet. So I can’t call myself a genius, but I never turn away a compliment, and I feel like I’m on my way to that mountain.
I don’t want anyone to fail, so if you can make money off music even though you can’t sing or dance, that’s genius.
Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius.
Well, you cannot think of cinema now, and you cannot think of cinema in the UK and not place Chaplin in the most extraordinary elevated context, if there can be such a thing, in that he was a genius, he was unique.
I think some of my darkness comes from my dad. There is definitely convict history on that side of the family, a lot of dodginess. But with the darkness can also come entrepreneurialism, genius traits.
No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.
Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.
People say to me, ‘You’re a genius; you’re great.’ I don’t know if I’ll ever feel that way about myself. Some things, I feel like, are better left for other people to say, and I’m just not into, like, tooting my own horn or bragging or anything.
Joss Whedon who created ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer,’ ‘Angel,’ and all that… he is a genius.
In every age in which books have been produced, the governing class, the respectable, have been opposed to the works of real genius.
Jim Henson was an absolute genius.
Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.
The problem was Le Corbusier was a genius and an enormous artist, but he tried to resolve problems to which there is no solution. So the idea to demolish the centre of Paris in order to adapt it to the car – he drew it! – is something not even the most bloody dictators conceived.
It took me six years to get close to Picasso. I learnt a lot from him, and he was an absolute genius. He almost became my grandfather at the time. It was like he was a magician or something.
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.
My wife determined that my genius should prevail, and that my final success as an ornithologist should be triumphant.
Genius is the ability to renew one’s emotions in daily experience.
I’ve never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves – it’s just a question of finding the subject.
My first husband, John Barry, was a composer. I couldn’t believe that this sophisticated, talented genius chose me and not any of the other girls. I was so flattered, so excited, so in love with him. Of course, my parents were horrified, as he’d been married once and had a daughter with the au pair girl.
You begin to realize that the genius of our country is the constant push to be more inclusive and find new ways of engaging everyone.
In school, I was a genius of the year preceding the year I was in, every year.
Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius.
Nor ought a genius less than his that writ attempt translation.
While Napoleon believed his fortunes to be governed by destiny, his real genius lay in self-control and martial daring coupled with an indomitable will to power.
#TimesUp is you can’t hold it in anymore: Time’s up! The doors have to give way. It can’t be that every 27-year-old born into a male body is a designated genius. It can’t be that the language used to review male and female films is different.
If you set the attractiveness bar really low, people have to compliment you on your looks when they meet you in person. I’m pretty much a genius. I’m actually applying to work at the Genius Bar based on this trick.
When things don’t go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.
I think Berry Gordy is a genius, I really do, and it’s not a word I throw around lightly. But with all that comes the idiosyncratic behavior of a self-made, talented, creative person, and that’s not easy to come up against.
The grim reality is that most start-ups fail. Most new products are not successful. Yet the story of perseverance, creative genius, and hard work persists.
Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.
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!’
The most genius thing about the way I create is to create with other geniuses.
Genius… is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.
You have to be a little bit cautious when the market gets quite strong because there’s a tendency to anoint a genius artist every other day. That would be a word of advice for the collectors out there.
The greatest natural resource our country has is not oil. It’s not gas. It’s not coal. It’s the genius of our children.
To know one’s self is wisdom, but not to know one’s neighbors is genius.
The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
Surely, if knowledge is valuable, it can never be good policy in a country far wealthier than Tuscany, to allow a genius like Mr. Dalton’s, to be employed in the drudgery of elementary instruction.
Lars Von Trier is a genius. Every film he makes is so honest and powerful.
I’m a genius. I’m like Prince.
I consider myself to be a genius who happens to play chess.
Of course, I consider myself a feminist, but I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist genius or anything.
The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.
People bought bitcoin because they thought it would be worth more tomorrow. And a lot of people got lucky. But we’re not seeing real people use bitcoin. And we don’t know what problem it solves. Now, blockchain, I think, is a genius advancement in technology.
I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ is, to my mind, a work of perfect genius.
Bernard Herrmann was a genius, a great, great composer.
Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.
Thinking you’re a genius is death.
Hendrix was a natural genius who played many beautiful styles. Talent as great as his doesn’t come through life very frequently. Hendrix was one in a billion.
There’s a fine line between what would characterize you as a troglodyte and what would characterize you as a brilliant, avant-garde, forward-thinking genius. There’s some middle ground.
I met David Bowie when I was 14, and he became a hero to me – because he was an artist, and because he was a genius who had the time to be kind. I’d never met such an extraordinary artist before, and I haven’t since – the world will be a greyer place without him.
When ‘Watchmen’ was published in 1986, the vast majority of comics readers deemed it a watershed in comics history. The 12-part serial comic book was widely acclaimed as a genius subversion of the superhero genre, and it did much to popularize comics to adults.
David Chase is a genius.
The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.
Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.
I think ‘Game Of Thrones’ has been genius, and I really don’t want it to end. Every episode is huge. It’s totally immense, and the actors are all fantastic in it. It has totally drawn me in.
The guy that I worked on ‘Thriller ‘ was a genius and he was 20 years old, but it was like working with a gifted 10-year-old. The guy who I worked on with ‘Black Or White’ was crazy. Michael had gone mad.
I like songs to mean something as well as sound good, and Paul Simon is a maestro. While Art Garfunkel was a voice and moved on to other things Simon remained the genius lyricist and composer.
His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.
What’s genius about ‘Gravity’ is that you are close upon the actors, but 3D works best when you have foreground, middle ground and background.
I’m all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained.
Anybody can put things together that belong together. to put things together that don’t go together, and make it work, that takes genius like Mozart’s. Yet he is presented in the play Amadeus as a kind of silly boy whom the gods loved.
Common sense is genius in homespun.
I probably have genius. But no talent.
Tina Fey is a genius – I’ve seen it with my own eyes now. She’s a very observant person, and I’ve never seen somebody write such a high volume or as quickly as she does.
Whoopi Goldberg, Lily Tomlin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus – I put Issa Rae in that category of comic genius.
Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
I remembered watching the film from Alfred Hitchcock, ‘Dial M for Murder,’ and he shot almost all of that movie in one room. There was a genius in what Hitchcock did by manipulating things in that room so that you could see the distances between things like the tables and the vases because of how he used perspective.
Ian Curtis was a young genius.
It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
When I edit, I’m not from the school of Hello, I’m a genius, so everybody shut up. I’m from the school of Let’s play it once in front of an audience, and then I’ll tell you where it is going.
I think Stephen Sondheim is a – and I hardly ever use this word – but this is as close as it gets to a genius.
There’s a fine line between genius and insanity, as we all know.
I was in Milan, and somebody gave me a Trussardi diary, and I thought ‘Genius.’ Inside I put the Polaroids, how much film I shot, who I shot with. This way, for billing later on, I had all the information.
If I had an idea for a genius app, don’t you think I would be getting it made immediately?
An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark – that is critical genius.
I think that there are all these amazing figures in our history – the Bowies, the Tina Turners, the Chers, the people who are, in many ways, genderless or represent ‘the other’ – and I want pop music, and other queer artists – Kehlani, Perfume Genius – these people are bringing queer narratives into people’s minds.
I was fortunate to be able to do two movies with Harold Ramis. He was the kindest of any director with whom I worked. Harold was a genius. On top of his talent, he could do the ‘New York Times’ crossword puzzle faster than anyone! I am lucky to have known him as well as I did. I will miss him.
Affirmative action based on quotas is wrong – wrong because it is antithetical to the genius of the American idea: individual liberty.
There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.
Like many businessmen of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And so he simply set about achieving that efficient monopoly.
The launch of iPhone is very possibly bigger than the launch of the first Apple II or the first Mac. Steve Jobs’s genius is his ability to use technology to create products that define fundamental cultural shifts.
I’m no genius, sure, but I’m no dum-dum.
What seems like a crazy idea today eventually grows. It’s a ‘with hindsight’ thing. One day, someone will turn around and say, ‘That was genius.’
Sad to think that we won’t have any new stories from John Updike, one of the last century’s masters. But so many here in the two volumes of his collected stories, 186 by my count, stories to read, reread, savor over the course of a cold season. Updike’s genius in the short form spills out of these many, many pages.
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.
Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.
I love ‘Girls.’ The writing is so clever. I think Lena Dunham is a genius. I can’t believe she writes it, directs it and stars in it. It’s really exciting that a young woman has been able to achieve all of that.
The policeman must be a minister, a social worker, a diplomat, a tough guy, and a gentleman. And, of course, he’d have to be a genius… For he will have to feed a family on a policeman’s salary.
Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
A marvellous power of expression over language often distinguishes genius; but Shakespeare in his phrases seems independent of the bonds of language as of the bonds of metre.
You know, it doesn’t take a genius in the private sector to know that you can save literally hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending if you can make it more responsive. That’s the main job.
Passion is the genesis of genius.
Talent and effort, combined with our various backgrounds and life experiences, has always been the lifeblood of our singular American genius.
You’ve got to invest in the world, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go to art galleries, you’ve got to find out the names of plants. You’ve got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We’re amazing people.
I want people to think I’m a creative genius.
Kevin Gates is probably the smartest person I’ve ever worked with. He’s cool, he’s crazy, but he’s genius.
Kings had their clowns, the people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a servant. It is thus that successful stupidity has always treated genius.
Graham Yost is a genius, and I know that very well because we worked together on ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘Boomtown.’
Some people think architecture is about the genius sketch; I don’t. Great architecture is a collaboration among a lot of people over a long period of time.
If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
You have plausible deniability, as they say in politics, as an author with movies. Because if the movie is terrible, you simply say they failed to catch the genius of the book.
There is great work to be done, and the women will lead us. So I say, Astonish us with your genius. Inspire us with your creation. Work with one another. Endure the tribulations.
I think that we see Steve Jobs as the genius speaker in the mock black turtleneck with the round glasses, sort of beautifully delivering his new product, and I think that for people to understand that he started in a garage.
My father believed, like Pericles, that a man’s genius could be easily judged by the number of unenlightened fools set in phalanx against his ideas.
Rogers and Hammerstein were such a genius pair. They were able to touch on subject matter so far ahead of its time.
I mean, you’re gonna be left behind if you don’t appreciate the genius that is Meredith Vieira.
Much as my Boomer friends will hate me for saying this, Kanye West is the New Dylan. Not only do Kanye’s best lyrics match Dylan’s prescience, highly inventive word-play and genius for storytelling, his indefatigable cockiness eerily channels Muhammad Ali.
How do you rate works of genius? Partly by personal inclination, partly by accepted wisdom, partly by popularity.
I’d love to work with David Lynch. I’m such a big fan. He’s a genius.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.
Here’s Kanye, the great musical genius of his generation in hip hop, but, like, society really can’t even deal with him because he’s always saying something that people go, ‘Oh, I can’t believe Kanye said that. I can’t believe he did that.’
Before ‘Giant,’ I had only ever worked with Michael Greif, Michael John LaChiusa and Kate Baldwin in readings. It’s really exciting to be blessed with the opportunity to work with so many I would put in the ‘genius’ book.
This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.
There is no hierarchy of values any more. Real progress is due mainly to human genius, and that’s rare, and usually stems from a real elite, from a hierarchy.
I had two brilliant children and one genius. Elon could figure out things when he was very young and was always advanced for his age. He could hold a conversation about something that was way beyond his years, and he read voraciously.
Every decade of my life I attempted to write a novel. But I had nothing to say. I was far too self-absorbed, and now I realize I was writing for others, so that they’d applaud me, see my genius, tell me how wonderful I am, or be jealous of my success.
President Obama’s view of a free economy is to send your money to his friends. My vision for a free enterprise economy is to return entrepreneurship and genius and creativity to the American people!
Lincoln is a genius of language and a brilliant writer who deserves to be seen as part of the canon of great writers in American literature.
Isn’t it lovely to know that even the great Sherlock Holmes, the quirky and genius Sherlock Holmes, is vulnerable to love as we all are?
I did buy ‘The Sun’ a few times, but I just don’t read the tabloids. Sometimes they can have genius witty headlines, but that’s all. There’s nothing to read.
When I was in grade five or six, I just remember quite a lot of people were always talking about me like I was some kind of math genius. And there were just so many moments when I realized, like, okay, why can’t I just be like some normal person and go have a 75% average like everyone else.
Genius, scholar, and war hero though he is, you have to admit – or maybe you should think about admitting – that George Bush might have rushed things a little in invading Iraq.
Thirty, 40 years ago, more than that now, even, the cook was certainly at the bottom of the social scale. And any mother would’ve wanted their child to marry a doctor, a lawyer, an architect, not a cook. Now, we are genius, it’s different.
My encouragement: delete the energy vampires from your life, clean out all complexity, build a team around you that frees you to fly, remove anything toxic, and cherish simplicity. Because that’s where genius lives.
The genius of a folk melody or story is not the feeling that it’s original but quite the opposite – the feeling that it has existed all along.
I figured if the plane goes down, I’ll go with a great genius and will always have my name connected with his.
I don’t want to compare myself to him – I don’t want people to see me as this great genius – but when I see Charlie Chaplin’s movies there is a combination of drama, naivety and social meaning that I can see in myself, at a different level.
I think I have had so much blessing – I’ve had my brother, who was brilliant – I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother – Bailey was just all of that. He loved me.
Doorman – a genius who can open the door of your car with one hand, help you in with the other, and still have one left for the tip.
I never paid attention to many of the Nicholas Sparks films. ‘The Notebook,’ which my wife liked, I felt that Ryan Gosling was a genius in it and Rachel McAdams has this thing about her that you just want to take care of her. I remember that chemistry between them.
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
There is in the DNA of the Italians a bit of madness, which in the overwhelming majority of cases is positive. It is genius. It is talent. It’s the masterpieces of art. It’s the food, fashion, everything that makes Italy great in the world.
My husband wrote me love letters while I was on location in Canada and pregnant. They turned into being about food, and it turned it into a cookbook. He called it ‘The Tuscan Cookbook for the Pregnant Male.’ It was kind of genius. When I took it a book agent, he was like, ‘Men don’t buy cookbooks.’
Dandyism is a variety of genius.
The first Matrix genius, the second one, what’s up with the dancing? I haven’t even seen the third one.
Sometimes the hardest thing about committing the perfect crime can be keeping your genius to yourself.
Carbon has this genius of making a chemically stable, two-dimensional, one-atom-thick membrane in a three-dimensional world. And that, I believe, is going to be very important in the future of chemistry and technology in general.
The genius which runs to madness is no longer genius.
There are so many remarkable playwrights working right now, that I see everything I can. Annie Baker is a genius, I’ll see anything she writes. The same for Lynn Nottage, Cynthia Hopkins, and Lisa D’Amour. Anything they’ve got going on, I’ll go see.
No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.
Talent is a faculty that is highly developed, but genius commands all the faculties.
I am no genius; I just worked hard like my other teammates, and I believe all my teammates can win the title as they work hard, too.
Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.
The genius of the American Founders was to create an intricate system of balanced powers both within the state and between state and society – a system that has fostered unprecedented political, social, and intellectual freedom.
My mother was an artist, and I was fairly good at art as a child. I was always the best drawer in class, except in second grade when an artistic genius passed through our school!
First have being in your mind. Make real in your mind then bring that being into reality. The genius is he who sees what is not yet and causes it to come to be.
Almost no one wants to admit the genius of Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Apparently, many have failed to see that Amazon has become the world’s biggest retail company.
Ricky Gervais is a genius.
I can’t say I’m not grateful to have journalists writing about me as a genius. But I know it’s not true. I’m not confused. I understand that success comes through a lot of failure and a lot of very embarrassing failure. People want to create the next Facebook, but they are too afraid to create the next Facemash.
Should you be so unfortunate as to suppose you are a genius, and that ‘things will come to you,’ it would be well to undeceive yourself as soon as possible. Make up your mind that industry must be the price of all you obtain, and at once begin to pay down.
Someday a political genius will come along and make the Senate work.
Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
If you are delusional, sometimes the reality catches up with your delusion, and then all of a sudden you are a genius.
Oh, I’m not a true genius. I’m a near genius. I would say I’m a short genius. I’d rather be tall and normal than a short genius.
There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Genius is the talent of a person who is dead.
That’s the great thing about being a teenager. You think you’re a genius.
Genius: the superhuman in man.
I have to hold a meeting with the rising generation every evening, and that takes time. Henry can say, ‘Twinkle, twinkle,’ all himself, and Edward can repeat it after his father! Giants of genius! Paragons of erudition!
When you hear the party that glorified Occupy Wall Street blast success; when you hear them minimize the genius of the men and women who make jobs out of nothing, is that what you teach your children about work?
Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
The ordinary man casts a shadow in a way we do not quite understand. The man of genius casts light.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Which is why, in my lieder concerts, I always strove, when possible, to sing only the works of a single composer, so that the audience could be gradually drawn into a particular creative genius’ way of thinking, and could follow him.
Every positive value has its price in negative terms… the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
