Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce
1. "Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly."
Jose Ortega y Gasset, "Notes on the Novel"
Other categories: Various
2. "Having a talent is not enough: one must also have your permission to have it."
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"
3. "Genius differs from talent not by the amount of original thoughts, but by making the latter fertile and by positioning them properly, in other words, by integrating everything into a whole, whereas talent produces only fragments, no matter how beautiful."
Franz Grillparzer, "Notebooks and Diaries"
4. "Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun."
Franz Grillparzer, "Notebooks and Diaries"
Other categories: Wisdom and Stupidity
5. "Every man is a potential genius until he does something."
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree
6. "Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen."
Uta Hagen, "Respect for Acting"
Other categories: Art and Culture
7. "Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it."
Maya Angelou
8. "There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him."
Antonin Artaud, "Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society"
Other categories: Normality and Madness
9. "Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful tone is silenced."
Franz Grillparzer, "Notebooks and Diaries"
10. "Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem."
Brian W. Aldiss
Other categories: Question and Problem
11. "There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."
Oscar Levant
Other categories: Normality and Madness
12. "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
13. "The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima."
Pablo Picasso
14. "To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius."
Henri-Frederic Amiel, "Journal Intime"
15. "Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness."
Jean Rostand, "The Substance of Man"
Other categories: Various
16. "At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman."
Honoré De Balzac
Other categories: Beauty and Ugliness -:- Woman and Man
17. "The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others."
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Other categories: Truth and Falsity
18. "Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it."
Salvador Dalí
Other categories: Various
19. "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Other categories: Bravery and Fear -:- Work and Laziness
20. "Excellence is not a destination; it is a continuous journey that never ends."
Brian Tracy
Other categories: Power and Weakness
21. "The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection."
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Other categories: Art and Culture
22. "Talent is nothing if it's not controlled, harnessed and disciplined."
Navjot Singh Sidhu
23. "I find out what the world needs. Then, I go ahead and invent it."
Thomas Alva Edison
Other categories: Science and Technology
24. "Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is."
James Russell Lowell
25. "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."
Thomas Alva Edison
Other categories: Work and Laziness
26. "Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once."
Johann Kaspar Lavater
Other categories: Intellect, Judgement
27. "Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable."
Margot Fonteyn
28. "Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all."
Jose Rizal
29. "Einstein was a giant. His head was in the clouds, but his feet were on the ground. Those of us who are not so tall have to choose!"
Richard Feynman
30. "Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics."
Cesare Lombroso
Other categories: Intellect, Judgement
31. "Genius sees the answer before the question."
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Other categories: Question and Problem
32. "Genius is one of the many forms of insanity."
Cesare Lombroso
Other categories: Normality and Madness
33. "A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin."
Ayn Rand, "The Virtue of Selfishness"
34. "Passion is the genesis of genius."
Anthony Robbins
35. "Talent is only the starting point."
Irving Berlin
36. "Genius is the ability to look at things simply."
E. Lee Spence
37. "Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to dark place where it leads."
Erica Jong
38. "We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents."
Eric Hoffer
Other categories: Dreams and Desires
39. "It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent."
Joseph Roux, "Meditations of a Parish Priest"
Other categories: Success and Fame
40. "In Mozart and Salieri we see the contrast between the genius which does what it must and the talent which does what it can."
Maurice Baring
Other categories: Art and Culture
41. "The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on."
Walter Lippmann
Other categories: Authority, Government
42. "Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it."
Louis Leo Holtz
Other categories: Work and Laziness
43. "Common sense is genius dressed up in work clothes."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Other categories: Intellect, Judgement
44. "Don't tell a man how to do a thing. Tell him what you want done, and he'll surprise you with his ingenuity."
George S. Patton
45. "Genius [...] has been defined as a supreme capacity for taking trouble. [...] It might be more fitly described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds and keeping them therein so long as the genius remains."
Samuel Butler, "Notebooks"
46. "There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail."
Aldous Huxley
47. "Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes his biography."
Oscar Wilde
Other categories: Loyalty and Betrayal
48. "Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off."
Carl Gustav Jung
Other categories: Human
49. "No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history."
William Hazlitt
Other categories: History and Nations
50. "All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy."
Carl Gustav Jung
Other categories: Reality and Imagination
2007, collected and compiled by Kazimierz Matan
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