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Quotes about genius

64 quotes from 50 people

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Genius is personality with two measures of talent.
Pablo Picasso1881–1973
It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one’s uncles.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.
IDIsaac D'Israeli1766–1848Curiosities of Literature, Poverty of the Learned
- Luck
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900
- Forgiveness
Genius is often only the power of making continuous efforts.
Elbert Hubbard1856–1915
Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Contarini Fleming (1832), Part 4, Chapter 5.
I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963Address at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners (29 April 1962), quoted in The White House Diary, at the JFK Library
- Knowledge
Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881The Idiot (1868–9), Part 3, Chapter 1 (tr. Constance Garnett, 1913)
- Technology
Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
IDIsaac D'Israeli1766–1848Curiosities of Literature (1791–1834), Solitude.
(Of Shakespeare) A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce1882–1941Ulysses (1922) (243)
- Failure
Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.
F. Scott Fitzgerald1896–1940Notebook E, edited by Edmund Wilson (1945)
Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
William Hazlitt1778–1830The Plain Speaker (1826)
The first and last thing demanded of genius is love of truth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 382, trans. Stopp
- Truth & Lies
Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.
Ezra Pound1885–1972Jefferson and/or Mussolini (1935), Ch. 23