Otto Weininger Quotes About Genius

Quotes about: Genius

• In those rare individual cases where women approach genius they also approach masculinity.

  Otto Weininger

  Genius, Individual, Cases

• The great man of science, unless he is also a philosopher, ... deserves the title of genius as little as the man of action.

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Titles, Genius

  "Sex and Character" by Otto Weininger, (pp. 139-140), 1906.

• The man of genius is he whose ego has acquired consciousness. He is enabled by it to distinguish the fact that others are different, to perceive the "ego" of other men, even when it is not pronounced enough for them to be conscious of it themselves. But it is only he who feels that every other man is also an ego, a monad, an individual centre of the universe, with specific manner of feeling and thinking and a distinct past, he alone is in a position to avoid making use of his neighbours as means to an end.

  Otto Weininger

  Mean, Past, Men

  Otto Weininger (1907). “Sex & Character”

• The genius which runs to madness is no longer genius.

  Otto Weininger

  Running, Genius, Madness

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.184, Рипол Классик

• Genius declares itself to be a kind of higher masculinity.

  Otto Weininger

  Genius, Kind, Masculinity

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.111, Рипол Классик

• No one suffers so much as he [the genius] with the people, and, therefore, for the people, with whom he lives. For, in a certain sense, it is certainly only "by suffering" that a man knows. If compassion is not itself clear, abstractly conceivable or visibly symbolic knowledge, it is, at any rate, the strongest impulse for the acquisition of knowledge. It is only by suffering that the genius understands men. And the genius suffers most because he suffers with and in each and all; but he suffers most through his understanding. . . .

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Compassion, People

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.181, Рипол Классик

• But the higher a man mounts, the greater may be his fall; all genius is a conquering of chaos, mystery.

  Otto Weininger

  Genius, Chaos, Mystery

  "Sex & Character".

• Woman, in short, has an unconscious life, man a conscious life, and the genius the most conscious life.

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Genius, Conscious

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.113, Рипол Классик

• Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it.

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Special, Genius

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.112, Рипол Классик

• As the mental endowment of a man varies with the organisation of his accumulated experiences, the better endowed he is, the more readily will he be able to remember his whole past, everything that he has ever thought or heard, seen or done, perceived or felt, the more completely in fact will he be able to reproduce his whole life. Universal remembrance of all its experiences, therefore, is the surest, most general, and most easily proved mark of a genius.

  Otto Weininger

  Past, Men, Remembrance

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.114, Рипол Классик

• The man of genius possesses, like everything else, the complete female in himself; but woman herself is only a part of the Universe, and the part can never be the whole; femaleness can never include genius. This lack of genius on the part of woman is inevitable because woman is not a monad, and cannot reflect the Universe.

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Female, Genius

  Otto Weininger (1907). “Sex & Character”

• Talent is hereditary; it may be the common possession of a whole family (eg, the Bach family); genius is not transmitted; it is never diffused, but is strictly individual.

  Otto Weininger

  Genius, May, Common

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.103, Рипол Классик

• The psychical condition of men's minds may be compared with a set of bells close together, and so arranged that in the ordinary man a bell rings only when one beside it sounds, and the vibration lasts only a moment. In the genius, when a bell sounds it vibrates so strongly that it sets in action the whole series, and remains in action throughout life. The latter kind of movement often gives rise to extraordinary conditions and absurd impulses, that may last for weeks together and that form the basis of the supposed kinship of genius with insanity.

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Giving, Insanity

  "Sex and Character" by Otto Weininger, (pp. 122-123), 1906.

• There are probably very few people who have not at some time of their lives had some quality of genius. If they have not had such, it is probable that they have also been without great sorrow or great pain. They would have needed only to live sufficiently intently for a time for some quality to reveal itself. The poems of first love are a case in point, and certainly such love is a sufficient stimulus.

  Otto Weininger

  Pain, First Love, Love Is

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.121, Рипол Классик

• A genius has perhaps scarcely ever appeared amongst the negroes, and the standard of their morality is almost universally so low that it is beginning to be acknowledged in America that their emancipation was an act of imprudence.

  Otto Weininger

  America, Genius, Morality

  Otto Weininger (1907). “Sex & Character”

• With ordinary men the moments which are united in a close continuity out of the original discrete multiplicity are very few, and the course of their lives resembles a little brook, whereas with the genius it is more like a mighty river into which all the little rivulets flow from afar; that is to say, the universal comprehension of genius vibrates to no experience in which all the individual moments have not been gathered up and stored.

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Rivers, Ordinary

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.124, Рипол Классик

• A nation orients itself by its own geniuses, and derives from them its ideas of its own ideals, but the guiding star serves also as a light to other nations. As speech has been created by a few great men, the most extraordinary wisdom lies concealed in it, a wisdom which reveals itself to a few ardent explorers but which is usually overlooked by the stupid professional philologists.

  Otto Weininger

  Stars, Lying, Stupid

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.138, Рипол Классик

• Mankind occurs as male or female, as something or nothing. Woman has no share in ontological reality, no relation to the thing-in-itself, which, in the deepest interpretation, is the absolute, is God. Man in his highest form, the genius, has such a relation, and for him the absolute is either the conception of the highest worth of existence, in which case he is a philosopher; or it is the wonderful fairyland of dreams, the kingdom of absolute beauty, and then he is an artist.

  Otto Weininger

  Dream, Artist, Reality

  "Sex & Character".

• The great genius does not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman takes its direction and its termination. ... It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history.

  Otto Weininger

  Reality, Doe, Genius

  "Sex and Character" by Otto Weininger, (p. 139), 1906.

• It is certainly true that most men need some kind of a God. A few, and they are the men of genius, do not bow to an alien law. The rest try to justify their doings and misdoings, their thinking and existence (at least the menial side of it), to some one else, whether it be the personal God of the Jews, or a beloved, respected, and revered human being. It is only in this way that they can bring their lives under the social law. . . .

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Thinking, Law

• The number of different aspects that the face of a man has assumed may be taken almost as a physiognomical measure of his ... genius.

  Otto Weininger

  Taken, Men, Numbers

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.108, Рипол Классик

• I regret that I must so continually use the word genius, as if that should apply only to a caste as well defined from those below as income-tax payers are from the untaxed. The word genius was very probably invented by a man who had small claims on it himself; greater men would have understood better what to be a genius really was, and probably they would have come to see that the word could be applied to most people. Goethe said that perhaps only a genius is able to understand a genius.

  Otto Weininger

  Regret, Men, People

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