William James Quotes About Genius

Quotes about: Genius

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

  William James

  Creativity, Mean, Science

  William James (2012). “Psychology: The Briefer Course”, p.195, Courier Corporation

• The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

  William James

  Philosophical, Essence, Genius

• A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.

  William James

  Family, Power, Men

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.67, Harvard University Press

• Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none.

  William James

  Men, Genius, Capacity

• Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.

  William James

  People, Democracy, Genius

  William James (2012). “Memories and Studies”, p.33, The Floating Press

• When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.

  William James

  Bipolar, Genius, Kind

  William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.29, Library of America

• Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.

  William James

  Men, Attention, Genius

  William James (2007). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.423, Cosimo, Inc.

• When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. ... His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast.

  William James

  Science, Order, Two

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