April > April's Quotes

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
― Aristotle

“I'm a misunderstood genius."
"What's misunderstood?"
"Nobody thinks I'm a genius.”
― Bill Watterson

“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.”
― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays

“There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”
― Oscar Levant

“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
― E.F. Schumacher

“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear

“When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

[Thoughts on Various Subjects]”
― Jonathan Swift , Abolishing Christianity and Other Essays

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that
without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”
― Pearl S. Buck

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
― Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.”
― Gertrude Stein

“Is a picture really worth a thousand words? What thousand words? A thousand words from a lunatic, or a thousand words from Nietzsche? Actually, Nietzsche was a lunatic, but you see my point. What about a thousand words from a rambler vs. 500 words from Mark Twain? He could say the same thing quicker and with more force than almost any other writer. One thousand words from Ginsberg are not even worth one from Wilde. It’s wild to declare the equivalency of any picture with any army of 1,000 words. Words from a writer like Wordsworth make you appreciate what words are worth.”
― Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks

“When you make a choice, you change the future.”
― Deepak Chopra

“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.”
― Claude Monet

“These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.”
― Abigail Adams

“Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”
― Arthur Rimbaud

“A genius. A criminal mastermind. A millionaire. And he is only twelve years old.”
― Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl

“The Genius Of The Crowd

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art”
― Charles Bukowski

“Madness is the acme of intelligence.”
― Naguib Mahfouz

“People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine. . . . I always wondered, ``Why has nobody discovered me?'' In school, didn't they see that I'm cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn't need? I got fuckin' lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie
``You throw my fuckin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous, '' and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin' genius or whatever I was, when I was a child. It was obvious to me. Why didn't they put me in art school? Why didn't they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin' cowboy like the rest of them? I was different
I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me? A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint - express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin' dentist or a teacher”
― John Lennon

“Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.”
― Woody Guthrie

“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.”
― Bruce Feirstein

“The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“A genius is someone who takes a complex thing and makes it look simple. An academic does the opposite.”
― Robert Fanney

“If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius. ”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“I don't want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man.”
― Albert Camus

“I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity.”
― William Blake

“E=mc2”
― Albert Einstein, The Theory of Relativity and Other Essays

“There's a thin line between genius and bottom-barrel stupidness. I hover delicately on a tightrope between the two, wondering where I'll land if I'll ever fall.”
― Suzanne Crowley, The Very Ordered Existence of Merilee Marvelous