Genius Suppression Quotes

the possession of wealth, and especially the inheritance of wealth, seems almost invariably to sterilize genius.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.

If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Never, I beseech of you, encourage a certain “Christian party in politics,” which under moral and religious pretenses is officiously and continually interfering with the religious opinions of others, and endeavoring to effect by law and other means, equally exceptionable, a systematic course of measures evidently calculated to lead to a union of church and state. If a union of church and state should be effected, which may God avert, then will the doctrines of the prevailing sect become the creed of the country, to be enforced by fines, imprisonment, and doubtless death! Then will superstition and bigotry frown into silence everything which bears the appearance of liberality; the hand of genius will be palsied, and a check to all further improvements in our country will be the inevitable consequence. If we now permit the glorious light of liberty to be extinguished, it may never more shine to cheer a benighted world with the splendor of its rays.

f fear is too strong, the genius is suppressed

The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps drumming the genius part out. The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.

Universities are of course hostile to geniuses.

He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.

The universal social pressure upon women to be all alike, and do all the same things, and to be content with identical restrictions, has resulted not only in terrible suffering in the lives of exceptional women, but also in the loss of unmeasured feminine values in special gifts. The Drama of the Woman of Genius has too often been a tragedy of misshapen and perverted power.