Allen Ginsberg Quotes

When I think of the future, I think a lot of Quincy Jones and how he is an inspiration. Look at the quality of his work over so many years. He didn't even make his best record, 'Thriller,' until he was 50. That gives me something to look forward to. Nothing pulls you back into the studio more than the belief that your best record is still ahead.

In Holy Cross, I came to like school, to like studying in a way I had never done before.

Inspiration, hunger: these are the qualities that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is to create the most likely conditions for them to flourish, and then get out of their way.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart

Emulation, even in brutes, is sensitively "nervous." See the tremor of the thoroughbred racer before he starts. The dray-horse does not tremble, but he does not emulate. It is not his work to run a race. Says Marcus Antoninus, "It is all one to a stone whether it be thrown upward or downward." Yet the emulation of a man of genius is seldom with his contemporaries, that is, inwardly in his mind, although outwardly in his act it would seem so. The competitors with whom his secret ambition seems to vie are the dead.

If you gave your inner genius as much credence as your inner critic, you would be light years ahead of where you now stand.

The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.

A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them.

A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name

The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.

The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed

Necessity is the spur of genius.

It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring.

Necessity is often the spur to genius.

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.

I can honestly say that everything I've ever listened to has influenced me or motivated me in one way, form or fashion.

Hunger is the handmaid of genius.

Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius.

All of the great geniuses of the world were inspired and driven by their desire to enrich the lives of others.

Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as through the whole sensitive family of genius.

I'm interested in genius the way a hungry man is interested in Philadelphia cheesesteaks. I want something. I want a piece of it.

Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.

Without passion, there is no genius.

That adage about genius being 5 percent inspiration and 95 perspiration - it's true.

A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.