Quotes About Genius

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

To do what others cannot do is talent.  To do what talent cannot do is genius.

— Will Henry

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

— E. B. White

A genius is a man who takes the lemons that fate hands him and starts a lemonade stand with them.

— Elbert Hubbard

There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare reason and generalize, using labor of the fact collectors as well as their own.  Three-story men idealize, imagine, and predict.  Their best illuminations come from above through the skylights.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The man of genius...does not steal, he conquers.

— Alexandre Dumas

If there is such a thing as genius, which is just what — what the f*** is it? — I am one, you know.  And if there isn’t, I don’t care.

— John Lennon

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.

— William Hazlitt

Name the greatest of all the inventors.  Accident.

— Mark Twain

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

— Aldous Huxley

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.

— Benjamin Disraeli

I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness.  To save oneself trouble.

— Agatha Christie

Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.

— John Ciardi

Since when was genius found respectable?

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

— Arthur Conan Doyle

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.  No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

— Elbert Hubbard

A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.

— Charles Caleb Colton

Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

— William James

Everyone is a genius at least once a year.  The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

There is no great genius without a touch of madness.

— Seneca the Younger

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

— Jonathon Swift

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

— Thomas Alva Edison

A genius? Perhaps, but before I was a genius, I was a drudge.

— Ignace Jan Paderewski