Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.
—Bernard Williams
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
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 in Broca's Brain
Talent works, genius creates.
—Robert Schumann
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
—Edith Sitwell
To know one's self is wisdom, but not to know one's neighbors is genius.
—Minna Antrim
Anyone who can live on welfare should be courted by Wall Street. He is a financial genius.
—Joanna Clark
Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.
—Edgard Varese
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
—E. B. White
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
—Henry David Thoreau
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
—Elbert Hubbard
Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.
—Lydia M. Child
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
—Oscar Levant
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
—Oscar Wilde