William James Quotes

Genius declares itself to be a kind of higher masculinity.

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

Any complex activity, if it is to be carried on with any degree of virtuosity, calls for appropriate gifts of intellect and temperament. If they are outstanding and reveal themselves in exceptional achievements, their possessor is called a 'genius'.

That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show.

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

He was the smartest man I ever met.

Harold is a bastard, but he is a genius.

I'm a bordering genius.

People who are geniuses, once they get going, you really have to keep up.

The only term I won't accept is "genius."

Genius, apart from natural sensitiveness, is prone equally to unreasoning joy and to bitterest morbidness.

Talent is a tenant in the house owned by genius.

Very gifted people may be sociopathic in varying degrees.

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 of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power.

Faith is a kind of immune system filtering out fears that otherwise would paralyze all activity.

Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates.

At the end of our conversation she (Martha Stout) turned to address you, the reader. She said if you're beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some of those traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one.

Beerbohm was a genius of the purest kind. He stands at the summit of his art.

For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great.

Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.

Obstinacy is a fault of temperament. Stubbornness and intolerance of contradiction result from a special kind of egotism, which elevates above everything else the pleasure of its autonomous intellect, to which others must bow.

You're a psychopath." "I prefer creative.

Songs are like ropes that you can kind of hang on to or pull yourself up on.

When I was 18 I was an emotional wreck and I couldn't imagine having to deal with some kind of fame.