Hermann Hesse Quotes

The human mind will not be confined to any limits.

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

We think about education as a stepping stone into a higher socio-economic class, into a better job. And it does do those things. But I don't think that's what it really is. I experienced it as getting access to different ideas and perspectives and using them to construct my own mind.

The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally accepted idea is worth a fortune to somebody.

A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.

Good wits will jump.

Some of the craziest people I've met, in my life, are some of the most brilliant people I've met.

It's actually amazing because you go so far into another side of your brain when you're studying something completely different, and I loved it.

Genius is independent of situation.

Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

Every true genius is bound to be naive.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.

I was never top of the class at school, but my classmates must have seen potential in me, because my nickname was 'Einstein.'

Some of the best ideas that we've invested in have made no sense to conventional sources.

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

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

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

Sobriety has opened my mind and unlocked parts of me that I didn't even realize existed.

Stuart was a very special person and he was miles ahead of everybody. You know as far as intelligent and artistic feelings are concerned, he was miles ahead. So I learned a lot from him and because in the '60s we had a very strange attitude towards being young, towards sex, towards everything.

A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.

The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on earth.

Almost all rich veins of original and striking speculation have been opened by systematic half-thinkers.

If you are a meditator, as your meditation goes on becoming more and more luminous, your intelligence will be growing to the last breath of your life. Not only that, even after the last breath your intelligence will continue to grow - because you are not going to die, only your body will be dying. And the body has nothing to do with intelligence, mind has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence is the quality of your awareness - more aware, more intelligent. And if you are totally aware, you are as intelligent as this whole existence is.