True Genius Quotes

• The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

  Samuel Johnson

  Determination, Luck, Mind

  'The Lives of the English Poets' (1779-81) 'Cowley'

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• True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

  Winston Churchill

  Decision, Genius, Information

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• True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genie

  Puzant Kevork Thomajan

  Children, Eye, Thinking

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• The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Communication, Thoughtful, Silence

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• To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men that is genius.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Wise, Believe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.14, Harvard University Press

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• First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Love, Truth, Genius

  "Maxims and Reflections". Book by by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Maxim 382, 1833.

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• The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Genius, Literature, May

  Charles Caleb Colton (1866). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.123

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

  Jonathan Swift

  Funny, Education, Truth

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The true genius shudders at incompleteness.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Genius, Tension, Incompleteness

  Edgar Allan Poe (1849). “The Works of Edgar Allan Poe”, p.509

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• Every true genius is bound to be naive.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Intelligence, Genius, Literature

  "Schiller's Poems‎". Book by Friedrich Schiller, p. 200, 1905.

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• I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

  Beck

  Thinking, Artist, Hair

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• A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Kids

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• Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Lying, Science, Night

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• Genius, without work, is certainly a dumb oracle, and it is unquestionably true that the men of the highest genius have invariably been found to be amongst the most plodding, hard-working, and intent men -- their chief characteristic apparently consisting simply in their power of laboring more intensely and effectively than others.

  Samuel Smiles

  Hard Work, Men, Dumb

  Samuel Smiles (1861). “Self-help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct”, p.319

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• These are 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.

  Abigail Adams

  Character, Wish, Endurance

  Letter to John Quincy Adams, 19 Jan. 1780

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• There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.

  Dante Alighieri

  Inspirational, Happiness, Sad

  Dante Alighieri, Stanley Lombardo (2009). “Inferno”, p.26, Hackett Publishing

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• All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly.

  Alexander H. Stephens

  Lying, Hands, Genius

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• Lenny Breau is one of the true geniuses of the guitar. I suppose he is a musician's musician. His knowledge of the instrument and the music is so vast, and I think that's what knocks people out about him. But he's such a tasty player too. I think if Chopin had played guitar, he would have sounded like Lenny Breau.

  Chet Atkins

  Music, Player, Thinking

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• The spark of a genius exists in the brain of the truly creative man from the hour of his birth. True genius is always inborn and never cultivated, let alone learned.

  Adolf Hitler

  Creativity, Science, Men

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The true genius of a great manager is his or her ability to individualize. A great manager is one who understands how to trip each person's trigger.

  Marcus Buckingham

  Genius, Great Men, Triggers

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• In matters of healing the body or the mind, vacation is a true genius!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Healing, Vacation, Mind

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• People who observe no limits in attempting to get work done aren't nearly as smart as they think. Hard work can be done by any fool. But to be highly productive, and still have plenty of time to rest and play, this is where true genius resides.

  Ernie J Zelinski

  Inspirational, Smart, Hard Work

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• Atheism ... that bugbear of women and fools ... is the very top and perfection of free-thinking. It is the grand arcanum to which a true genius naturally riseth, by a certain climax or gradation of thought, and without which he can never possess his soul in absolute liberty and repose.

  George Berkeley

  Thinking, Perfection, Soul

  George Berkeley (1901). “The Works of George Berkeley ...: Philosophical works, 1732-33: Alciphron. The theory of vision”

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• True genius repeats itself forever, and never repeats itself--one ever varied sense beams novelty and unity on all.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Forever, Unity, Genius

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• There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary.

  William Hazlitt

  Art, Moving, Men

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.35

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