Quotes About Genius

The Romans were distinguished for their genius for law-giving and government, the Greeks for philosophy, art, and mental culture generally.

There are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest calibre. -- Mark Kac

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.

Geniuses don't become geniuses until they find the right moron to compare themselves to.

I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

When society is unveiled, when we see that it is whatever we want it to be, that it is a species of culture with nothing necessary in it, by no means a phenomenon of nature or a manifestation of instinct, nature is no longer shaped and fitted into one or another set of societal goals. Unveiled, we stand before a nature whose only face is its hidden self-origination: its genius.

We see nature as genius when we see as genius.

For the infinite player, seeing as genius, nature is the absolutely unlike. The infinite player recognizes nothing on the face of nature. Nature displays not only its indifference to human existence but its difference as well.

We stand before genius in silence. We cannot speak it, we can only speak as it. Yet, though I speak as genius, I cannot speak for genius. I cannot give nature a voice in my script. I can not give others a voice in my script-without denying their own source, their originality. To do so is to cease responding to the other, to cease being responsible. No one and nothing belong in my script.

I am the genius of myself,the poietes who composes the sentences I speak and the actions I take. It is I, not the mind,that thinks. It is I, not the will, that acts. It is I, not the nervous system, that feels.

The homelessness of nature, its utter indifference to human existence, disclose to the infinite player that nature is the genius of the dramatic.

When I speak as the genius I am, I speak these words for the first time. To repeat words is to speak them as though another were saying them, in which case I am not saying them. To be the genius of my speech is to be the origin of my words, to say them for the first, and last, time. Even to repeat my own words is to say them as though I were another person in another time and place.

When I forsake my genius and speak to you as though I were another, I also speak to you as someone you are not and somewhere you are not. I address you as audience, and do not expect you to respond as the genius you are.

The paradox of genius exposes us directly to the dynamic of open reciprocity, for if you are the genius of what you say to me, I am the genius of what I hear you say. What you say originally I can hear only originally. As you surrender the sound on your lips, I surrender the sound in my ear. Each of us has relinquished to the other what has been relinquished to the other.

So also in culture. Infinite players understand that the vigor of a culture has to do with the variety of its sources, the differences within itself. The unique and the surprising are not suppressed in some persons for the strength of others. The genius in you stimulates the genius in me.

To speak, or act, or think originally is to erase the boundary of the self. It is to leave behind the territorial personality. A genius does not have a mind full of thoughts but is the thinker of thoughts, and is the center of a field of vision. It is a field of vision, however, that is recognized as a field of vision only when we see that it includes within itself the original centers of other fields of vision.

Infinite speech is that mode of discourse that consistently reminds us of the unspeakability of nature. It bears no claim to truth, originating from nothing but the genius of the speaker. Infinite speech is therefore no about anything; it is always to someone. It is not command, but address. It belongs entirely to the speakable.

AM THE GENIUS of myself, the poietes who composes the sentences I speak and the actions I take. It is I, not the mind, that thinks. It is I, not the will, that acts. It is I, not the nervous system, that feels.

If, however, the observers see the poiesis in the work they cease at once being observers. They find themselves in its time, aware that it remains unfinished, aware that their reading of the poetry is itself poetry. Infected then by the genius of the artist they recover their own genius, becoming beginners with nothing but possibility ahead of them.

Oftentimes, it is madness more than genius that moves the world forward. Who else but the mad would reach so far, stretching for the impossible? And in so doing, prove the impossible possible.

Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci, which both humanizes the man and offers insight into his genius (do read

Often-times it's madness, not genius that moves the world forward. Who else but the mad would reach so far, stretching for the impossible and, in so doing, prove the impossible possible!

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

There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge.