What exactly is genius? Psychologists and thinkers still spend many hours trying to pin down this elusive quality and where it comes from. Here are some quotes about genius that may help us get closer to the answers:
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Albert Einstein
There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
Aristotle
There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Oscar Levant
When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
Ernst. F. Schumacher
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Carl Sagan
It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.
Gertrude Stein
Genius is neither learned nor acquired.
It is knowing without experience.
It is risking without fear of failure.
It is perception without touch.
It is understanding without research.
It is certainty without proof.
It is ability without practice.
It is invention without limitations.
It is imagination without boundaries.
It is creativity without constraints.
It is…extraordinary intelligence!
Patricia Polacco
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg