It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.
Louisa May Alcott

Those who have wrought great changes in the world never succeeded by gaining over chiefs; but always by exciting the multitude. The first is the resource of intrigue and produces only secondary results, the second is the resort of genius and transforms the universe.
Martin Van Buren

Genius is talent set on fire by courage.
Henry Van Dyke

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
E. B. White

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

Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained.
John Stuart Mill

The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
John Stuart Mill

Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
Simone Weil

In some parts of life, like mathematics and science, yeah, I was a genius. I would top all the top scores you could ever measure it by.
Steve Wozniak

Surely, if knowledge is valuable, it can never be good policy in a country far wealthier than Tuscany, to allow a genius like Mr. Dalton's, to be employed in the drudgery of elementary instruction.
Charles Babbage

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.
Gustave Flaubert

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
Robert Green Ingersoll

A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.
Ezra Pound

Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.
Ezra Pound

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work will be completed.
Jean Anouilh

A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.
Jean Anouilh

The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.
Honore De Balzac

Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.
George Sand

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
Samuel Johnson

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
Terry Pratchett