Aleister Crowley Quotes

Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

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

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.

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

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

Ideas are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Madmen in authority who hear voices in the air are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribblers of a few years back. Sooner or later, it is ideas, rather than vested interests, which are dangerous for good or for evil.

… there is a correlation between the creative and the screwball. So we must suffer the screwball gladly.

I do have some very strange thoughts... Still, all geniuses are mad aren't they?

For me, 'rich' isn't having lots of money; rich is having loads of things in your head.

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

There is no doubt but men of genius and leisure may carry our method to greater perfection, but, having had long experience, we have found none equal to it for the commodiousness it affords in working with the Understanding.

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.

And what fun is it being a genius if no one appreciates you?

I was struck by - Einstein's a fascinating figure who didn't have any instruments that he used, he didn't use telescopes, he used his mind to try to understand the universe.

By tomorrow at this time, I think you're going to have a much better idea of what crazy is. -- Ev Hillman

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.

The three indispensable of genius are: understanding, feeling, and perseverance; the three things that enrich genius are: contentment of mind, the cherishing of good thoughts, and the exercise of memory

The man is either crazy or he is a poet.

The World requires at least ten years to understand a new idea, however important or simple it may be.

Reason and intellect are opening wedges in an understanding of reality.

The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.

Reading means borrowing.

You certainly can't tell anything from the microscopic structure of the brain whether the person was an idiot or a genius.

Madness is like intelligence, you know. You can't explain it. Just like intelligence. It comes on you, it fills you, and then you understand it. But when it goes away you can't understand it at all any longer.

[defines a madman as] a man who preferred to become mad,in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor.