Artistic Genius Quotes

Realize that people are hypocrites. The sooner you accept this fact the better. I NEVER sensor my stories. I NEVER sacrifice historical accuracy for sake of political correctness. And I apologize for nothing because I've noticed a sense of hypocrisy in regard to writing. People will buy a Stephen King book and read 900 pages of gruesome murder, graphic sex, and sometimes even kid fu**ing. And they will praise his artistic genius and buy his next filthy book. Then the same people will want to sensor every line I put on the page. To hell with that. I'm an artist too. ~ Catalina DuBois

But his own mind was helpless against every moment's headline. He did nothing but leap into the mass of changes and explore them and all the tiny facets so eventually he was completely governed by fears of certainty. He distrusted it in anyone but Nora for there it went to the spine, and yet he attacked it again and again in her, cruelly, hating it, the sure lanes of the probable. Breaking chairs and window glass doors in fury at her certain answers. [15-16] ~ Michael Ondaatje

The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world ofits own creation in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited. ~ Walter Pater

Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth. ~ Denis Diderot

Like Richard Ellmann on James Joyce, Arnold Rampersad on Ralph Ellison is in a class of its own. His masterful and magisterial book is the most powerful and profound treatment of Ellison's undeniable artistic genius, deep personal flaws, and controversial political evolution. And he reveals an Ellison unbeknownst to all of us. From now on, all serious scholarship on Ellison must begin with Rampersad's instant and inimitable classic in literary biography. ~ Cornel West

The great moral teachers of humanity were in a way artistic geniuses in the art of living. ~ Albert Einstein

My mother was an artist, and I was fairly good at art as a child. I was always the best drawer in class, except in second grade when an artistic genius passed through our school! ~ Natalie Babbitt

Mandelstam was an artistic genius, the sort that any century produces only a handful of. ~ Christian Wiman

THE SUFFERING OF GENIUS AND ITS VALUE. The artistic genius desires to give pleasure, but if his mind is on a very high plane he does not easily find anyone to share his pleasure; he offers entertainment but nobody accepts it. That gives him, in certain circumstances, a comically touching pathos; for he has no right to force pleasure on men. He pipes, but none will dance: can that be tragic? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Both Erica and Liza Wind were morbidly concerned with heredity, and instead of delighting in Victor's artistic genius, they used to worry gloomily about its genetic cause. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The mathematician's best work is art, a high perfect art, as daring as the most secret dreams of imagination, clear and limpid. Mathematical genius and artistic genius touch one another. ~ Gosta Mittag-Leffler

He said he couldn't understand a world 'shameless and cruel enough to divide its people by color when color is in fact the sign of God's artistic genius. ~ Frances Mayes

Maybe it's an artistic genius thing. People who go so deep inside themselves, especially when they're working, that they seem like sleepwalkers when they emerge. Traces of unconsciousness seem to cling to them, lending them an otherworldly sheen. ~ Susan Juby

Science can now help us to understand ourselves in this way by giving factual information about brain structure and function, and how the mind works. Then there is an art of self knowledge, which each person has to develop for himself. This art must lead one to be sensitive to how his basically false approach to life is always tending to generate conflict and confusion. The role of art here is therefore not to provide a symbolism, but rather to teach the artistic spirit of sensitive perception of the individual and particular phenomena of one's own psyche. This spirit is needed if one is to understand the relevance of general scientific knowledge to his own special problems, as well as to give effect to the scientific spirit of seeing the fact about one's self as it is, whether on elikes it or not, and thus helping to end conflict.
Such an approach is not possible, however, unless one has the spirit that meets life wholly and totally. We still need the religious spirit, but today we no longer need the religious mythology, which is now introducing an irrelevant and confusing element into the whole question.
Itwould seem, then, that in some ways the modern person must manage to create a total approach to life which accomplishes what was done in earlier days by science, art and religion, but in a new way that is appropriate to the modern conditions of life. An important part of such an action is to see what the relationshipbetween science and art now actually is, and t ~ David Bohm

The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oprah Winfrey represents the most ingenious and creative expression of black spiritual genius in the public mainstream that we've had in quite a long time, if ever. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

At thirteen, Noboru was convinced of his own genius (each of the others in the gang felt the same way) and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions; that death took root at the moment of birth and man's only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it; that propagation was a fiction; consequently, society was a fiction too: that fathers and teachers, by virtue of being fathers and teachers, were guilty of a grievous sin. Therefore, his own father's death, when he was eight, had been a happy incident, something to be proud of. ~ Yukio Mishima

Every person, genius or moron, has a right to reproduce himself. ~ Lee Kuan Yew

Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

So we show up on her porch out of the blue, kidnap her, feed her frozen fruit and ask her on a date. Genius ~ Aprilynne Pike

Even after the Super Bowl victory of the New Orleans Saints, I have noticed a large number of people implying, with bad jokes, that Cajuns aren't smart. I would like to state for the record that I disagree with that assessment. Anybody that would build a city
5 feet below sea level in a hurricane zone and fill it with Democrats who can't swim is a genius. ~ Larry The Cable Guy

Genius feels like an over extended Helium balloon about to burst, and everyone criticizes you for not having a conventional way of coping with it. ~ Solange Nicole

Robert had little patience with these introspective bouts of mine. He never seemed to question his artistic drives, and by his example, I understood that what matters is the work: the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution. From this state of mind comes a light, life-charged. ~ Patti Smith

Muse, We are servants of the Mystery. We were put here on earth to act as agents of the Infinite, to bring into existence that which is not yet, but which will be, through us. Every breath we take, every heartbeat, every evolution of every cell comes from God and is sustained by God every second, just as every creation, invention, every bar of music or line of verse, every thought, vision, fantasy, every dumb-ass flop and stroke of genius comes from that infinite intelligence that created us and the universe in all its dimensions, out of the Void, the field of infinite potential, primal chaos, the Muse. To acknowledge that reality, to efface all ego, to let the work come through us and give it back freely to its source, that, in my opinion, is as true to reality as it gets. ~ Steven Pressfield

Crumb was such an influence on me. He's such a visionary, such a great artist, that he so shaped my artistic sensibilities on a certain level that I do owe everything to him. The way I see the world is largely changed by him. ~ Terry Zwigoff

I'm making entertainment, but I'm making art. This is my art. Hopefully, it's profitable, hopefully it makes money, but at the end of the day I want it to be remembered for its artistic value as well as its entertainment value. ~ Morgan Spurlock

Thus the terrible insurrection was crushed. Tantia Topee, betrayed by his lieutenant Man-Singh, and condemned to death, was executed on the 15th of April, at Sipfee. This rebel, "this truly remarkable actor in the great drama of the Indian insurrection," says M. de Valbezen, "and one who gave proofs of a political genius full of resources and daring," died courageously on the scaffold. This ~ Jules Verne

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them. ~ Joseph Joubert

Education may work wonders as well in warping the genius of individuals as in seconding it. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

Originality and creativity are nothing but the result of the wise management of combinations. The creative genius combines more rapidly, and with a greater critical sense of what gets tossed out and what gets saved, the same material that the failed genius has to work with. ~ Umberto Eco

Where did the boy genius go? He had been, as a child, expected to be a neurosurgeon, or a great novelist. And now he's considering (or, okay, refusing to consider) law school. Was the burden of his potential too much for him? ~ Michael Cunningham

It was a destructive novel of acquired ideas. To finally wake up in a state of creative anguish, to lose oneself in order to find oneself again, to sleep in the arms of a beautiful student whose name one didn't know, to fall back to sleep over a love poem-that was called existence. The harmonics of artistic creation, of fertile sensibility, of anticipated events-history in movement-that was called a privilege. ~ Elie Wiesel

Do it, my fellow Americans! Do it for every adolescent
anomic skank genius cloistered in his room, getting cranked,
rabidly humping his sampler as he confects some heretical,
monstrous persona for himself and dreams of an orgiastic,
blood-soaked apocalypse. Yes, the /impudence!/ We have
/nothing/ in this life of suffocating obligation but our
own motherfucking impudence! For God's sake, give us this
day our motherfucking big-dick impudence!! ~ Mark Leyner

Skill gives you the sky,
talent gives you the stars,
and genius gives you the universe. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The art of land warfare is an art of genius, of inspiration. On the sea nothing is genius or inspiration; everything is positive or empiric. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I think it would be great to make a $2 million or $3 million art movie where nobody would really have to go to it. I thought that would be a good project to work on ... do something really artistic. ~ Andy Warhol

Bruce Miller, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, studies elderly patients with a relatively common form of brain disease called frontotemporal dementia, or FTD. He's found that in some cases where the FTD is localized on the left side of the brain, people who had never picked up a paintbrush or an instrument can develop extraordinary artistic and musical abilities at the very end of their lives. As their other cognitive skills fade away, they become narrow savants. ~ Joshua Foer

Neither black/red/yellow nor woman but poet or writer. For many of us, the question of priorities remains a crucial issue. Being merely "a writer" without a doubt ensures one a status of far greater weight than being "a woman of color who writes" ever does. Imputing race or sex to the creative act has long been a means by which the literary establishment cheapens and discredits the achievements of non-mainstream women writers. She who "happens to be" a (non-white) Third World member, a woman, and a writer is bound to go through the ordeal of exposing her work to the abuse and praises and criticisms that either ignore, dispense with, or overemphasize her racial and sexual attributes. Yet the time has passed when she can confidently identify herself with a profession or artistic vocation without questioning and relating it to her color-woman condition. ~ Trinh T. Minh-ha

A person of genius should marry a person of character. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Destroy knowledge?" I said. "The only point of existence, if there is one at all, is in the accumulation of the collective intelligence of the sentient beings of the universe."
"Even dangerous intelligence?"
"Intelligence is neutral. Application is everything."
She sighed. "Says the evil genius."
"Evil is a relative term. ~ A. Lee Martinez

The technical brilliance of Lang Lang and the musical genius to create a masterpiece on the spot. ~ Ian Brown

A possible link between 'madness' and genius is one of the oldest and most persistent of cultural notions. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic. ~ Miles Davis

Do be stupid,it's genius. ~ Jtjt Vzktrhlah

Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A genius who does not know that he is a genius is no genius. ~ Mary MacLane

The key piece of leverage was this promise: follow these instructions and you don't have to think. Do your job and you don't have to be responsible for decisions. Most of all, you don't have to bring your genius to work. ~ Seth Godin

It is not in the outward and visible world of material life that the Celtic genius of Wales or Ireland can at this day hope to count for much; it is in the inward world of thought and science.What it has been, what is has done, what it will be or will do, as a matter of modern politics. ~ Matthew Arnold

There is no more dreary or more repulsive creature than the man who has evaded his genius. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Necessity is often the spur to genius. ~ Honore De Balzac

When you are ahead of your time, it is inevitable you will anger some people for leaving them behind. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Every subject is much easier than the people who wish to make money teaching it would have you know. So, for every single subject that can be systematized, there is a systematization that allows you to get 80% percent of the power with probably 5 or 10% of the effort. So the key question is that you have to prove that you have the superpower to rearrange the subject, to disintermediate the people who get paid for teaching it – which will always push you towards mastery, which is a question of getting the last 2 or 3% out of the system. And so the good news is that you can rearrange any subject to learn most of it very, very quickly. The bad news is that it will feel terrible because you will be told that you are doing the wrong thing and dooming yourself to a life of mediocrity as a jack of many trades, master of none – but in fact, the problem is that the jack of one trade is the connector of none. Good luck! ~ Eric R. Weinstein

I was on the improv team in high school, and after I graduated, I joined an improv company that had been established 10 years prior to me getting there. They did longform improv, and I fell in love with it. It's acting, character creation, collaborative, artistic expression and comedy - and it's scary. It was a big rush. ~ Tatiana Maslany

The path of genius is free, and its own ~ William Hazlitt

There are 2 kinds of artists, essentially: those who want to make something popular, and those who want to make something dignified. But then there is still that rare hybrid case, and perhaps by that unintentional stroke of genius, in which one's work uncontrollably becomes both popular and dignified yet beyond its time. ~ Criss Jami

Increasingly, to dismiss any popular artistic style is seen as the worst kind of snobbery. And snobbery, it goes without saying, is unacceptable in a diverse and democratic world. ~ Russell Smith

Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty. ~ Jack Vance