Quotes About Genius

Napoleon embodied a new way of fighting wars: a combination of individual genius and mass organization, and objectives far more ambitious than those of his predecessors.

If, as Napoleon put it, the moral was superior to the physical by three to one, the genius was more important than the normal by ten to one.

La cultura es la invisible fuerza de la que la innovación depende. Solemos atribuir las invenciones a los individuos, no a las circunstancias. Designamos héroes y contamos sus historias. Pero la innovación es una empresa colectiva, producto tanto de las circunstancias como del genio.

Teaching Ramanujan was like writing on a blackboard covered with excerpts from a more interesting lecture.

It is difficult to be funny and great at the same time. Aristophanes and Moliere and Mark Twain must sit below Aristotle and Bossuet and Emerson.

The businessman wants to create something for everyone, which leads to products that are middle of the road," said Brunner. "It becomes about consensus, and that's why you rarely see the spark of genius."37 Even if a great idea came along, it was impossible to get anything done. Norman described just such an occasion.

Genius: The capacity to see and to express what is simple, simply!

If Shakespeare and Michelangelo were alive today, and if they decided to collaborate on a comic, Shakespeare would write the script and Michelangelo would draw it. How could anybody say that this wouldn't be as worthwhile an artform as anything on earth?

every minute i spend talking to you is a mnute i could spend practicing the violin, and when you're a musical genius like me, every minute counts.

When I was about twelve, I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. Either I'm a genius or I'm mad, which is it? "No," I said, "I can't be mad because nobody's put me away; therefore I'm a genius." Genius is a form of madness and we're all that way. But I used to be coy about it, like me guitar playing. But if there's such a thing as genius -- I am one. And if there isn't, I don't care.

Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.

But if the genius campaign gave the other Beach Boys short shrift, the real damage was to Brian himself. It put even greater pressure on him. It made him even more driven and caused him to fear failure all the more. It was hard enough to match the Beatles, but now he had to keep up with Mozart?

Bowman, too, had been born in a great city, in the French Hospital in Manhattan, in the burning heat of August and very early in the morning when all geniuses are born, as Pearson once told him. There had been an unbreathing stillness, and near dawn faint, distant thunder. It grew slowly louder, then gusts of cooler air before a tremendous storm broke with lightning and sheets of rain, and when it was over

Genius may be a necessary precondition for creating a masterpiece but it's never a sufficient one.

Genius" means extraordinary intellectual ability, and people use the word in two different but related ways. In one sense, genius means high intellectual potential; in the other sense, genius means "creative ability of exceptionally high order as demonstrated by total achievement." This book uses both meanings.

We stand today united in a belief in beauty, genius, and courage, and that these can transform the world.

I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's genius, such an opening for wit to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually abusive without saying any thing just; but one cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

Expect a most agreeable letter, for not being overburdened with subject (having nothing at all to say), there shall be no check to my genius from beginning to end.

And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's genius, such an opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually abusive without saying anything just; but one cannot always be laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them. She had neither beauty, genius, accomplishment, nor manner.

And while the abilities of the nine–hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.

There seems a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labor of the novelist, and of slighting performances which have only genius, wit and taste to recommend them.

And is that all you can say for him?" cried Marianne, indignantly. "But what are his manners on more intimate acquaintance? What his pursuits, his talents, and genius?" Sir John was rather puzzled.

I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's genius, such an opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually abusive without saying anything just.