This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him." - Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
"An idiot repeats his mistakes. A smart man learns from his mistakes. But a genius learns from the mistakes of others." - John W. Tukey
"The time and study, the genius, knowledge, and application requisite to qualify an eminent teacher of the sciences, are at least equal to what is necessary for the greatest practitioners in law and physic. But the usual reward of the eminent teacher bears no proportion to that of the lawyer or physician... The inequality is upon the whole, perhaps, rather advantageous than hurtful to the public. It may somewhat degrade the profession of a public teacher; but the cheapness of literary education is surely an advantage which greatly overbalances this trifling inconveniency." - Adam Smith
"There was never a genius without a tincture of insanity." - Aristotle NULL
"The emergence of a superman or a great mystic or a genius or a superior personality inevitably precipitates a social conflict. The conflict will be more or less acute, according to the degree in which the creative individual happens to rise above the average level of his former kin and kind. But some conflict is inevitable, since the social equilibrium which the genius has upset by the mere fact of his personal emergence has eventually to be restored either by his social triumph or by his social defeat." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
"Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. but when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters and musicians." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy... Indeed, without death man would scarcely philosophize." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. But when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"An idiot repeats his mistakes. A smart man learns from his mistakes. But a genius learns from the mistakes of others." - Author Unknown NULL
"Enthusiasm is the breath of genius." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as through the whole sensitive family of genius." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual beyond the grave; that all the laborers of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “Press On” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -
"To be a genius is to achieve complete possession of one's own experience, body, rhythm, and memories." - Cesare Pavese
"Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance." - Charles Caleb Colton
"To sentence a man of true genius to the drudgery of a school is put a racehorse in a mill." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Works of true merit are seldom very popular in their own day; for knowledge is on the march and men of genius are the videttes that are far in advance of their comrades. They are not with them, not in the camp, but beyond it." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Works of true merit are seldom very popular in their own day; for knowledge is on the march and men of genius are the videttes that are far in advance of their comrades. They are not with them, but before them; not in the camp, but beyond it." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The persecution of genius fosters its influence." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
"The author of genius does keep till his last breath the spontaneity, the ready sensitiveness, of a child, the "innocence of eye" that means so much to the painter, the ability to respond freshly and quickly to new scenes, and to old scenes as though they were new; to see traits and characteristics as though each were new-minted from the hand of God instead of sorting them quickly into dusty categories and pigeon-holing them without wonder or surprise; to feel situations so immediately and keenly that the word "trite" has hardly any meaning for him; and always to see "the correspondences between things" of which Aristotle spoke two thousand years ago." - Dorothea Brande
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms ins not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"Conversation enriches understanding, but solitude is the school of genius." - Edward Gibbon
"Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.... There is no failure except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones of genius." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"Genius lies in affection, not intellect." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
"When you have closed your doors, and darkened your room, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; God is within, and your genius is within - and what need have they of light to see what you are doing?" - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL
"What makes men of genius, or rather, what they make, is not new ideas, it is that idea - possessing them - that what has been said has still not been said enough." - Eugène Delacroix, fully Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix
"What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough." - Eugène Delacroix, fully Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix
"The genius wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs." - Francis Bacon
"This is the day of instant genius. Everybody starts at the top, and then has the problem of staying there. Lasting accomplishment, however, is still achieved through a long, slow climb and self-discipline." - Helen Hayes
"In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Genius is initiative on fire." - Holbrook Jackson, fully George Holbrook Jackson
"Genius may conceive, but patient labor must consummate." - Horace Mann
"[Paraphrase] The professional artist is morally suspect, even socially dangerous, conman, who from a deliberately chosen position of spiritual alienation, yet offers the ambiguous, self-serving products of his art, in expectation not only of support and remuneration, but also of social approval and even adoration as genius." - Horace Mann
"Poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and is least willing to be led by precepts or example) holds the first rank among all the arts. It expands the mind by giving freedom to the boundless multiplicity of possible forms accordant with the given concept, to whose bounds it is restricted, that one which couples with the presentation of the concept a wealth of thought to which no verbal expression is completely adequate, and by thus rises aesthetically to ideas." - Immanuel Kant
"High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it." - James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude
"Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance." - James Bryant Conant
"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery." - James Joyce
"Intelligence recognizes what happened. Genius recognizes what will happen." - John Ciardi, fully John Anthony Ciardi