I don’t want anyone to fail, so if you can make money off music even though you can’t sing or dance, that’s genius.
He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.
A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books.
The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as ‘Soho’ poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.
Great innovators like Thomas Alva Edison, Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie didn’t rely on government. There was hardly any of it in those days. More recently, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison used genius to put brand-new ideas into production.
Ismail Merchant was just the most seductive, passionate, outrageous, driven, genius of a man.
The most genius thing about the way I create is to create with other geniuses.
In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his thought.
In real estate, you make 10% of your money because you’re a genius and 90% because you catch a great wave.
No woman has ever been an authentic genius of the stature of men, but that does not enrage me.
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.
Oh, ‘Step Brothers’ is genius. I could watch that film a thousand times.
What seems like a crazy idea today eventually grows. It’s a ‘with hindsight’ thing. One day, someone will turn around and say, ‘That was genius.’
Spare functional furniture, in my opinion, is the genius of 20th-century design.
Only a genius can play a fool.
There has been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous – and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
In this world no one rules by love; if you are but amiable, you are no hero; to be powerful, you must be strong, and to have dominion you must have a genius for organizing.
Rainer Maria Rilke was admittedly not a Dockers tagger, but a sort of European equivalent: a German poet – in many respects, a charlatan masquerading as a genius who turned out to be a genius.
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
Biggie was a lyrical genius: he was a musical painter with words. As he rapped, you would see the picture come to life as you heard his story. You hear a lot of rappers rap; you hear a lot of singers sing, but you don’t see the movie in your head the way you do when you hear Biggie rap.
I was fortunate to be able to do two movies with Harold Ramis. He was the kindest of any director with whom I worked. Harold was a genius. On top of his talent, he could do the ‘New York Times’ crossword puzzle faster than anyone! I am lucky to have known him as well as I did. I will miss him.
Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
I do not consider myself a literal genius.
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
David Ortiz is a genius. He’s incredible to watch. Over and over, he hits home runs that are simply transcendent.
I wish I was a prolific writing wondrous boy genius – I wish I was Stevie Wonder – but I wasn’t. I was me. I wrote terrible songs about girls I was head-over-heels about. As soon as a pretty girl looks at me, that’s it – I’m in love, and I should probably write a song about it!
I truly miss the genius of the music of John Lennon, as I’m sure everybody does.
The genius of the American system is that through freedom we have created extraordinary results from plain old ordinary people.
Charles Schultz is a really interesting case. He wrote that comic strip and drew it himself from beginning to end, and it’s a work of genius. It’s very simply drawn, but it has some really deep emotions that you don’t expect in a silly-looking comic strip.
The difference between being able to understand something and inventing it in the first place… is called genius.
Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.
Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.
Oh, I’m not a true genius. I’m a near genius. I would say I’m a short genius. I’d rather be tall and normal than a short genius.
My dad is very down to earth, and I view him as a creative genius, and I am very proud of that.
Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.
Airbnb’s genius was moving into cities and recognizing that millennials would want to go and maybe spend a vacation or visit some friends in an urban center.
Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.
This paradox of vision – the genius of youthful ignorance – is nothing new. Had Bill Gates not been in diapers in the early days of computer software, he might have understood that there could never be a market for consumer software – but the 19-year-old Gates went ahead and cofounded Microsoft.
Amy Poehler, Amy Sedaris – they’re both genius.
I really love Hitchcock; I think he was a complete genius, to me one of the best directors. Such a sense of how to put things together.
Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.
David Shire and I have been happily married for 21 years! We have a 12-year-old son. David is a genius. He writes the most magnificent music and he is a devoted and loving husband and father. I am so blessed!
The problem was Le Corbusier was a genius and an enormous artist, but he tried to resolve problems to which there is no solution. So the idea to demolish the centre of Paris in order to adapt it to the car – he drew it! – is something not even the most bloody dictators conceived.
Here’s Kanye, the great musical genius of his generation in hip hop, but, like, society really can’t even deal with him because he’s always saying something that people go, ‘Oh, I can’t believe Kanye said that. I can’t believe he did that.’
It’s a lucky child that knows that they’re a genius, unaimed and all that.
Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.
Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught.
A man possesses talent; genius possesses the man.
And indeed if you think you’re a genius at something, what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you’re no good, you’re not going to get anywhere.
Foucault’s genius is to go down to the little dramas, dress them in facts hardly anyone else has noticed, and turn these stage settings into clues to a hitherto un-thought series of confrontations out of which, he contends, the orderly structure of society is composed.
I feel genius in great works of art. I have seen medical cures that science can’t explain, some seemingly triggered by faith. The same is true of millions of other people.
I buy everything India Arie, just because she’s such a positive person, and I just love her music. Her music’s so soulful… I think Kanye West is a genius musically.
I was, like, 12 or 13; the first hip hop song I tried to rapping to was Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop,’ and my English was so bad, but learning to rap to different songs really helped me with my pronunciation, and looking at the lyrics on Rap Genius and stuff like that.
Alber Elbaz is just a genius. He’ll be in a dinner jacket and he doesn’t care what time of day it is: I love that about him. He just marches to the beat of his own drum.
Ian Curtis was a young genius.
The dread of criticism is the death of genius.
I had two brilliant children and one genius. Elon could figure out things when he was very young and was always advanced for his age. He could hold a conversation about something that was way beyond his years, and he read voraciously.
With so many delicious varieties and flavors ranging from subtle to bold, Keebler and Carr’s crackers are an unexpectedly genius way to celebrate leftovers and serve up one-of-a-kind recipes.
There’s something very funny about giving a menial task to a genius and watching him find so much complexity and overanalyse it to such a degree that the waitress from Nebraska working at the Cheesecake Factory has passed them all by.
Genius is always accompanied by enthusiasm.
During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been trying – half unconsciously, perhaps – to discover and to express the fundamental quality of his genius.
No company should depend on one person no matter how that person is smart or genius, whether it’s Apple or News Corp, or Citibank or any other company in the world.
