Savants Quotes

• I object to being called a chess genius because I consider myself to be an all around genius who just happens to play chess, which is rather different. A piece of garbage like Kasparov might be called a chess genius, but he's like an idiot savant. Outside of chess he knows nothing.

  Bobby Fischer

  Play, Different, Genius

  Radio Interview, www.geocities.jp. July, 6 2001.

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• A savant, by definition, is somebody who has a disability and, along with that disability, has some remarkable ability. Prodigies and geniuses have the remarkable abilities that the savant shows, but they do not have a disability. So, by definition, a savant includes someone with a disability, and a prodigy or genius are people who have these remarkable skills but they do not have a disability.

  Darold Treffert

  Skills, People, Genius

  "Conversations on Creativity with Darold Treffert, Part I: De". Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman, www.psychologytoday.com. April 11, 2011.

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• The savants will write excellent volumes. There will be laureates. But wars will continue just the same until the forces of the circumstances render them impossible.

  Alfred Nobel

  War, Writing, Impossible

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• We have preachers and savants who dilate endlessly on the sanctity of family and childhood but who tolerate a system in which a casual observer can correlate a child's social origin with its physical well-being.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Children, Childhood, Social

  Christopher Hitchens (2014). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.117, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Animals are like autistic savants. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that animals might actually be autistic savants. Animals have special talents normal people don't, the same way autistic people have special talents normal people don't; and at least some animals have special forms of genius normal people don't, the same way some autistic savants have special forms of genius. I think most of the time animal genius probably happens for the same reason autistic genius does: a difference in the brain autistic people share with animals.

  Temple Grandin

  Animal, Thinking, Differences

  Temple Grandin, Catherine Johnson (2009). “Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior”, p.8, SUNY Press

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• Savant syndrome is not a disorder in the same way as autism is a disorder or dementia is a disorder. Savant syndrome are some conditions that are superimposed and grafted on to some underlying disability. So savant syndrome is not a disease or disorder in and of itself. It is a collection of characteristics, or symptoms, or behaviors that have grafted on to the underlying disability.

  Darold Treffert

  Autism, Disease, Way

  "Conversations on Creativity with Darold Treffert, Part I: De". Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman, www.psychologytoday.com. April 11, 2011.

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• I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Happiness, Gratitude

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• There are estimated to be fewer that 50 prodigious savants worldwide. If we were brought together, it would be disappointing in the sense of us having different abilities. One thing that would make me feel united with them would be the sense of us having grown up in isolation.

  Daniel Tammet

  Together, Different, Would Be

  "This much I know" by John Hind, www.theguardian.com. January 31, 2009.

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• There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant — sail for Asia and stumble on America — and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along.

  Jess Walter

  Men, Two, America

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• Not everyone who has a savant skill I would equate with a genius.

  Darold Treffert

  Skills, Genius

  "Conversations on Creativity with Darold Treffert, Part I: De". Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman, www.psychologytoday.com. April 11, 2011.

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• Your modest savant smiles as he says to his admirers: What have I done? Nothing. Man does not invent a force, he directs it.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Doe, Done

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• Monsieur Franqulin, inventor of electricity. This
  illustrious savant, after having made several voyages around the
  world, died on the Sandwich Islands and was devoured by savages,
  of whom not a single fragment was ever recovered.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Islands, Savages, Sandwiches

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.64, University of Georgia Press

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• Some people seem to have extreme natural wiring - a talent that seems to come out of nowhere. Like a music savant or prodigy. The uplifting news, though, is that many talented people don't have such natural wiring - but they forge a talent through thousands of hours of what's known as deliberate practice or deliberate performance.

  Kevin Maney

  Uplifting, Practice, People

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• Some autistic people have savant skills. All autistic people do not have savant skills. Autism is a very variable disorder varying all the way from Einstein, emollient scientist, just a little bit of the trait, many scientist and engineers, down to somebody that's going to remain nonverbal.

  Temple Grandin

  Skills, People, Autism

  "Talk of the Nation" with Ira Flatow, www.npr.org. January 20, 2006.

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• Savant syndrome, characteristically, consists of left hemisphere dysfunction coupled with right hemisphere emergence, and what you see in the savant are basically right brain skills.

  Darold Treffert

  Skills, Dysfunction, Brain

  "Conversations on Creativity with Darold Treffert, Part III:". Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman, www.psychologytoday.com. April 15, 2011.

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• There are some cases that have come to my attention where there's been a head injury, or getting struck by lightning and surviving, with really no disability or residual. So there are cases that I'm aware of where there's been some incident which triggered the acquired savant ability, but is not associated with long term disability, so that can occur. But I think that's probably the exception rather than the rule in that I think many of the acquired savants do end up with some residual disability.

  Darold Treffert

  Thinking, Long, Lightning

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• When I met my first savant in 1962, I was impressed by the abilities in these youngsters who had severe disabilities. They appeared to me to be islands of genius in the sea of disability. So I've maintained that word picture since that time, of these islands of genius that are so striking and so jarring when you see them, especially in people who have severe disability.

  Darold Treffert

  Islands, Sea, People

  "Conversations on Creativity with Darold Treffert, Part I: De". Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman, www.psychologytoday.com. April 11, 2011.

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• I'm not sure I'm the only savant with high IQ or with an above average IQ. Again, it may just be that we don't know very many of the others.

  Daniel Tammet

  Average, May, Not Sure

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• The term syndrome generally appears to be a constellation, or collection, of similar traits or behaviors within an individual. So, savants do have sort of a constellation of symptoms, which is characterized by some spectacular skill, or skills, coupled with this massive memory which is grafted on to some underlying disability. So those three conditions quantify, in my mind, the term syndrome.

  Darold Treffert

  Memories, Skills, Mind

  "Conversations on Creativity with Darold Treffert, Part I: De". Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman, www.psychologytoday.com. April 11, 2011.

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• Science in England is not a profession: its cultivators are scarcely recognised even as a class. Our language itself contains no single term by which their occupation can be expressed. We borrow a foreign word [Savant] from another country whose high ambition it is to advance science, and whose deeper policy, in accord with more generous feelings, gives to the intellectual labourer reward and honour, in return for services which crown the nation with imperishable renown, and ultimately enrich the human race.

  Charles Babbage

  Country, Ambition, Science

  Charles Babbage (1851). “The Exposition of 1851; or, Views of the industry, the science, and the government of England”, p.189

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• Babies have not yet chunked anything. They aren't doing any high level thinking. All they're doing is sucking in all the data they experience in the world around them, and remembering it, raw. It's basically what extreme savants have happen in their brains.

  Kevin Maney

  Baby, Thinking, Data

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• I met with amnesiacs and savants, educators and scientists, to try to understand what memory is, why it works, why it sometimes doesn't, and what its potential might be.

  Joshua Foer

  Memories, Trying, Might

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• The globe has been circumnavigated, but no man ever yet has; you may survey a kingdom and note the result in maps, but all the savants in the world could not produce a reliable map of the poorest human personality.

  Alexander Smith

  Men, Personality, World

  Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.170

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• Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday's.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Memories, Book, Yesterday

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays”, p.109, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Savant syndrome and autism, I think, are not disorders of brain structure, but they're disorders of brain function.

  Darold Treffert

  Thinking, Autism, Brain

  "Conversations on Creativity with Darold Treffert, Part III:". Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman, www.psychologytoday.com. April 15, 2011.

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