Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes

There's a fine line between genius and insanity, as we all know.

Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Human beings have speculated about the relationship between inspiration and insanity for centuries.

I want to explore the borders between being a genius and being an idiot.

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius - the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.

There is only a very thin line which separates a genius from the eccentric.

Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realize how much it owes to them and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.

Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Taste is the common sense of genius.

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

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

I've got quite a good brain and all that, which I've never had to use in singing at all.

You have certain writing tools but generally creating something from nothing makes one quite mad and Cynthia and I are quite mad you know.

You can't hang around geniuses forever because they end up taking everything you've got. That's why they're the genius and you're not.

I don't know anybody who's any good who isn't nuts.

I would not dare to say that there is a direct relation between mathematics and madness, but there is no doubt that great mathematicians suffer from maniacal characteristics, delirium, and symptoms of schizophrenia.

I think every brilliant mind is a little bit crazy.