William Irwin Thompson Quotes

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

One should always be a little improbable.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path ... It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts for distinction.

I get a kick out of being an outsider constantly. It allows me to be creative.

I think being a little nuts is helpful.

Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.

I'm so proud to be on a Kate Bush record; she's always marched to the beat of her own drum.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.

I like to do something different that people don't expect. That's what I've always been about, in everything I do.

Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained.

Yes, I think I am a genius, but not a rebel.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Men of genius are not be analyzed by commonplace rules.

The American people ... have a stake in con-conformity, for they know that the American genius is non-conformist.

Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.

A genius is someone with the ability to come up with ideas that are new, surprising and valuable.

Both my fathers are unconventional. They are like unicorns or wizards. They are musicians through and through. The way they think is just different.

I don't get my ideas from reading other people.

I'm a little insane, and I'm going to be a little different. But hopefully, somewhere in there, in that creative arena, something will emerge that is new and different and unique.

We live in world that wants to burnish the rough edges and straighten the crooked line, but conformity doesn't beget greatness.

There is no well-trodden route to where I am, no formula to replicate.