Quotes About Genius

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.

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.

My love of Green Day is on so many levels. It's their genius for songwriting, the fact that they write about very important subjects, both personal and political, and they're just a timeless band.

It is certain that at certain times talent entirely overcomes thought or poetry.

It's an extraordinary thing about Mozart is that you never tire of him... he never bores me, and he doesn't... not only bore me, that's too strong a word.

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.

I think there are very few people that I would give the title of genius to, really, but Beethoven unquestionably is one of them.

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.

I used to love Bach.

If I had been brilliant or a genius, I wouldn't have needed to break the law just to survive.

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.

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.

Geniuses come in many shapes and colors, and they often run in packs. If you can find one, it may lead you to others. Collaborate with geniuses. Send them your spells. Look carefully at theirs. What could you do together? Combination is creation.

There is nothing in the genius of America more precious today than the spirit of religious and political tolerance in its application to our own people.

Ah, he has too many ideas, that man da Vinci. His mind works faster than his hands.

It isn't so much that geniuses make it look easy; it's that they make it look it fast.

Great talents encourage great incapacities, but maintaining an inability to cook an egg or drive a car won't make you into a genius.

As she became more honest with herself, her writing matured, so that one could catch glimpses of what would emerge from its chrysalis as a poet's genius.

We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.

The idea of making the century's great crime look dull is not banal. Politically, psychologically, the Germans had an idea of genius. The banality was only camouflage. What better way to get the curse out of murder than to make it look ordinary, boring, or trite?… Banality is the adopted disguise of a very powerful will to abolish conscience.

The mother of the useful arts is necessity, that of the fine arts is luxury; for father the former have intellect, the latter, genius, which itself is a kind of luxury.

You've the presence of a mouse fart in a high wind. Stand aside, and try not to catch fire if I shed sparks of genius.

Chorus, you call yourself," he said. "You've the presence of a mouse fart in a high wind. Stand aside, and try not to catch fire if I shed sparks of genius.

I went to school with a kid who was so smart, the only time he got an answer wrong, they had to go back and change the question.