Can a woman become a genius of the first class? Nobody can know unless women in general shall have equal opportunity with men in education, in vocational choice, and in social welcome of their best intellectual work for a number of generations.

- Anna Garlin Spencer

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

- Jonathan Swift

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

- Madame de Stael

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.

- Madame de Stael

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

- Benjamin Franklin

The exercise of an extraordinary gift is the supremest pleasure in life.

- Mark Twain

The exercise of an extraordinary gift is the supremest pleasure in life.

- Mark Twain

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

- Arthur Conan Doyle

Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.

- Madame de Stael

Eveyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together.

- Georg C. Lichtenberg

Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.

- Fulton J. Sheen

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

- Seneca

Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds.

- Albert Einstein

In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous.

- Robert G. Ingersoll

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.

- Bruce Feirstein



Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

- Albert Einstein



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



Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

- Thomas Alva Edison



Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.

- Albert Einstein



The kind of intelligence a genius has is a different sort of intelligence. The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically. It leaps with great ellipses. It pulls knowledge from God knows where.

- Dorothy Thompson



Since when was genius found respectable?

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning



Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.

- Albert Einstein



The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement in a manner that would be amusingly absurd were it not so monstrously unjust and socially harmful.

Woman's Share in Social Culture, 1912

- Anna Garlin Spencer



Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

- Elbert Hubbard



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



The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.

NFL football quarterback and sports analyst

- Joe Theisman



We are the leaves of one branch, the drops of one sea, the flowers of one garden.

- Jean Baptiste Henry Lacordaire



There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

- Oscar Levant



Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

- William James