Creative Quotes on Genius

Gold Placers of quotes about Genius are ordered by the present
explanatory matrix of the Theories of Genius:

1. Attribute theories of Genius.
2. Structural and functional theories.
3. Procedural and dynamic theories.
4. Essential theories.

Attribute theories of Genius

I. Attribute theories (from Lat. attributum – sign) identify the specific properties and distinctive features of genius and reveal the particularities of their relationships and manifestations.

1. Supremastic (from lat. supremus – supreme) theory argues that the genius is characterized by exceptional, ultimate high and extraordinary level of abilities.

A person who is a genius is denned as—A man endowed with superior faculties.
Francis Galton (16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), English polymath, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, author of «Hereditary Genius” (1869)

The genius is he who is conscious of most, and of that most acutely. And so without doubt his sensations must be most acute; but this must not be understood as implying, say, in the artist the keenest power of vision, in the composer the most acute hearing; the measure of genius is not to be taken from the acuteness of the sense organ but from that of the perceiving brain.
Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 – October 4, 1903), Austrian philosopher

              Table 1. Pentabasis of Cognitive Processes – primary sings of Genius 

1. Attention

Genius is nothing but continued attention.
Claude Adrien Helvetius (26 January 1715 – 26 December 1771), French philosopher

Genius is nothing but attention.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832), German poet, writer, and philosopher

Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
William James (11 January 1842 – 26 August 1910), American psychologist and philosopher

2. Intuition

The discovery of truth, by slow progressive meditation, is wisdom.–Intuition of truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius.
Johann Caspar Lavater (15 November 1741 – 2 January 1801), Swiss poet, writer, and philosopher

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 May 1803 – 27 April 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

My genius is in my nostrils.
Friedrich Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900), German philosopher

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), Irish playwright and critic

Genius is an intuition.
Ruben Dario (18 January 1867 – 6 February 1916), Nicaraguan poet

3. Imagination

The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.
Eugene Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863), French Romantic artist

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.
Samuel Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834), English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Therefore the man of genius requires imagination, in order to see in things not what nature has actually formed, but what she endeavoured to form, yet did not bring about, because of the conflict of her forms with one another.
Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860), German philosopher

Geniuses are an imagination, imaginative creative force.
Jacob Golosovker (4 September 1890 – 20 July 1967), Russian and Soviet philosopher, writer and translator

I would suggest that our imagination is a tiny shard of God’s infinite genius that we have within us simply because we were created in God’s image.
Craig D. Lounsbrough, American author, counselor and pastor

4. Thinking 

Some superior minds are unrecognized because there is no standard by which to weigh them.
Joseph Joubert (7 May 1754 – 4 May 1824), French moralist and essayist

Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have is this. When I have a subject in mind. I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it… the effort which I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.
Alexander Hamilton (11 January 1755 or 1757 – 12 July 1804), American statesman, a Founding Father of the United States

Talent is full of thoughts, Genius is thought. Talent is a cistern, Genius a fountain.
Edwin Percy Whipple (8 March 1819 – 16 June 1886), American essayist and critic

Talent jogs to conclusions to which Genius takes giant leaps.
Edwin Percy Whipple

The mainspring of genius is curiosity.
Charles Baudelaire (9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867), French poet

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Winston Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965), British statesman and the Prime Minister

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955), German-born theoretical physicist

So far as one understands a man, one is that man. The man of genius takes his place in the above argument as he who understands incomparably more other beings than the average man. Goethe is said to have said of himself that there was no vice or crime of which he could not trace the tendency in himself, and that at some period of his life he could not have understood fully.
Otto Weininger (3 April  1880 – 4 October 1903), Austrian philosopher

Geniuses look at problems in many different ways. Genius often comes from finding a new perspective that no one else has taken.
Michael Michalko, American creative thinking expert and the author of “’Thinkertoys”

Creative geniuses are geniuses because they know “how” to think, instead of “what” to think.
Michael Michalko

5. Memory

The genius is the experience and memory. Genius is rooted in the excellence and vitality of memories
Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860), German philosopher

Genius is a memory.
Ivan Lapshin (11 October 1870 – 17 November 1952), Russian philosopher

I’m a writer and the Muses are the daughters of Memory.
Aldous Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963), English writer, novelist, philosopher

…transactive memory is used by teams to benefit from a collective awareness of who knows what and therefore to both direct incoming knowledge to the appropriate group members and to retrieve vital information from within the group.
Rich Karlgaard, American journalist and author

2. Combination and Emergent Features Theory

Breadth of mind, power of imagination and activity of the soul – that is called a genius.
Denis Diderot (5 October 1713 – 31 July 1784), French philosopher, art critic, and writer

The mental powers … whose union (in a certain relation) constitutes genius, are a imagination and understanding.
Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804), German philosopher

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.
Carl von Clausewitz (1 June 1780 – 16 November 1831), Prussian general and military theorist

The genius, therefore, is a more complicated, more richly endowed, more varied man; and a man is the closer to being a genius the more men he has in his personality, and the more really and strongly he has these others within him.
Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 – October 4, 1903), Austrian philosopher

The creative genius may be at once naive and knowledgeable, being at home equally with primitive symbolism and rigorous logic.
Frank Barron (June 17, 1922 – October 6, 2002), American psychologist

The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.
Denis Dutton (9 February 1944 – 28 December 2010), American and New Zealander philosopher of art

Composing of combination of the given separate signs is the transition, bridge to the structural-functional theories of genius.

Structural and functional theories

II. Structural and functional theories (from Lat. structura-structure, procedure, from Lat. functio – design, performance) reveal the specific features of various integrated intrapersonal components and subsystems of a genius, their unique combination, as well as their role and contribution to the creative self-realization of genius.

1. Perfectionist theory (from Lat. perfectio – completion, the highest perfection, an ideal) – says that the starting point of a genius is a longing for improvement of existence and striving for the highest standards.

Genius is entitled to respect only when it promotes the peace and improves the happiness of mankind.
Robert Devereux Essex (19 November 1566 – 25 February 1601), English courtier and soldier, royal favourite in the court of Elizabeth I

However brilliant an action may be, it should not be accounted great when it is not the result of great purpose.
Duc de La Rochefoucauld (15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680), French author of maxims and memoirs

Genius always gives its best at first, prudence at last.
Johann Caspar Lavater (15 November 1741 – 2 January 1801), Swiss poet, writer and philosopher

What drives men of genius is their obsession with the idea that what has already been done is not good enough.
Eugene Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863), French Romantic artist

The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive … We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
Henry David Thoreau (12 July  1817 – 6 May 1862), American author, poet and philosopher

What is genius?—To will both a lofty goal and the means to achieving it.
Friedrich Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900), German philosopher

Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will in fifty years’ time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.
William Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965), British playwright, novelist and short story writer

2. Intellectual theory of a genius states that a genius is a person having extraordinary intellectual power, exceptional and extraordinary mental abilities.

He is a man of capacity who possesses considerable intellectual riches: while he is a man of genius who finds out a vein of new ore. Originality is the seeing nature differently from others, and yet as it is in itself. It is not singularity or affectation, but the discovery of new and valuable truth.
William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830), English writer, painter and philosopher

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.
Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860), German philosopher

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument—a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself—in solitude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.
Arthur Schopenhauer

…genius, having the widest experience of the human intelligence, can best understand the ideas most directly in opposition to those which form the foundation of its own works.
Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922), French novelist and critic

The artist, the poet, the musician and the philosopher show in their gifts throughout their lives the heritage of the jinn. The words genius and jinn come from a Sanskrit word Jnana, which means knowledge. The jinns. Therefore, are the beings of knowledge; whose hunger is for knowledge, whose joy is in learning, in understanding, and whose work is in inspiring, and bring light and joy to others. In every kind of knowledge that exists, the favorite knowledge to a jinn is the knowledge of truth, in which is the fulfillment of its life’s purpose.
Inayat Khan (July 5, 1882 – February 5, 1927), Indian philosopher, musician, and teacher of Universal Sufism

The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
Victor Sawdon Pritchett (16 December 1900 – 20 March 1997), British writer and literary critic

Genius is a plodding intellect, incapable of dreaming up the obstacles that stop the rest of us.
Robert Brault, American writer

3. Passionary theory (from Lat. Passio – passion) argues that the basis of genius is boundless love to the world, to people, to one’s own designation in life, and a passionate desire to know the truth.

Passion is the genesis of genius.
Galileo Galilei (February 15, 1564 – January 8, 1642), Italian physicist 

True genius without heart is a thing of nought – for not great understanding alone, not intelligence alone, nor both together, make genius. Love! Love! Love! that is the soul of genius.
Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin (February 16, 1727 – October 26, 1817), Austrian scientist, botanist and chemist

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe  (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832), German poet, writer and philosopher

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (January 27, 1756 –December 5, 1791), Austrian composer

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834), English poet, literary critic and philosopher

The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water.
Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle ) (23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), French writer

What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.
Eugene Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863), French Romantic artist

Genius is the ability to renew one’s emotions in daily experience.
Paul Cezanne (19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906), French artist

It is not the strengths, but the durations of great sentiments that make great men.
Friedrich Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900), German philosopher

No one suffers so much as he [the genius] with the people, and, therefore, for the people, with whom he lives. For, in a certain sense, it is certainly only “by suffering” that a man knows. If compassion is not itself clear, abstractly conceivable or visibly symbolic knowledge, it is, at any rate, the strongest impulse for the acquisition of knowledge. It is only by suffering that the genius understands men. And the genius suffers most because he suffers with and in each and all; but he suffers most through his understanding. . . .
Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 – October 4, 1903), Austrian philosopher

A genius is simply one who has taken full possession of his own mind and directed it toward objectives of his own choosing, without permitting outside influences to discourage or mislead him. 
Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970), American author in the area of the new thought movement

4. Working-capacity theory (industriousness, performance, hard work) says that every genius is a result of tremendous work, extraordinary persistence and patience, ability to hard work, immense, total dedication and phenomenal strength of will.

Genius is fostered by industry.
Cicero (3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC), Roman philosopher, orator, politician, lawyer

Genius is eternal patience.
Michelangelo (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), Italian sculptor, painter and architect

If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.
Michelangelo

Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.
Lord Chesterfield (22 September 1694 – 24 March 1773), British statesman and wit

Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience.
George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788), French naturalist and encyclopedic author

People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to compositions as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (January 27, 1756 –December 5, 1791), Austrian composer

Genius is nothing but a greater aptitude for patience.
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790), scientist, inventor, polymath, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States

Genius can never despise labour.
Anne Louise Germaine de Stael (22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817), French woman

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.
William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830), English writer, painter and philosopher

Nothing is so envied as genius, nothing so hopeless of attainment by labor alone. Though labor always accompanies the greatest genius, without the intellectual gift labor alone will do little.
Benjamin Robert Haydon (26 January 1786 – 22 June 1846), English painter

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.
Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881), Scottish philosopher, essayist, and historian

So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the path of each man’s genius contracts itself to a very few hours. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve, but will to labor. I believe that labor judiciously and continuously applied becomes genius.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873), English novelist, poet, playwright

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
Benjamin Disraeli (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881), British politician and writer

The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.
George Henry Lewes (18 April 1817 – 30 November 1878), English philosopher and critic of literature and theatre

Genius is mainly an affair of energy.
Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888), English poet and cultural critic

Genius, that power which dazzles mortal eyes, Is oft but perseverance in disguise.
Henry Austin (18 January 1840 – 2 September 1921), English poet and essayist

There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest (inspiration) does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893), Russian composer

A genius! For thirty-seven years I’ve practiced fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius!
Pablo Sarasate (10 March 1844 – 20 September 1908), Spanish violinist and composer

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Thomas Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931), American inventor and businessman

Before I was a genius I was a drudge.
Ignace Paderewski (18 November 1860 – 29 June 1941), Polish pianist and composer, politician

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan, ‘Press on,’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Calvin Coolidge (July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933), the 30th President of the United States

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955), German-born theoretical physicist

No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent, work transforms talent into genius.
Anna Pavlova (12 февраля 1881 – 23 January 1931), Russian prima ballerina

One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.
Man Ray (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976), American visual artist

Genius is perseverance in disguise.
Mike Newlin (born January 2, 1949), retired American basketball player

Being a genius is hard work.
Tony Calderone (born 1960), American author

Combination of traits

The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.
Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850), American journalist, critic, and women’s rights advocate

Thus, when a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce…in the same individual, we have the best possible conditions for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries. Such men do not remain mere critics and understanders with their intellect. Their ideas posses them, they inflict them, for better or worse, upon their companions or their age.
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910), American psychologist and philosopher

Genius is when an idea and the execution of that idea are simultaneous.
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955), German-born theoretical physicist

Wholness I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
Vladimir Nabokov (22 April 1899 – 2 July 1977), Russian-American novelist

Procedural and dynamic theories

III. Procedural and dynamic theories (from Lat. Processus – the passage, progress, and from Greek Δύναμις, “dynamis” – force) reveal patterns of sequential change of life forming stages of becoming a genius, expose the conditions and factors of its origin, existence and development.

Genetic theories

1. Genetic theories  (from Lat. Genesis – creation, origin) identify the main conditions, factors and causes of genius development and with the basic determinants of his formation and development.

1. Hereditary theory is based on the idea of genetic cause of being a genius, its direct connection with the factors of heredity as well as with the assumption “that the ability to be a genius hereditarily passed to accumulate like some mysterious power from generation to generation.”

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe  (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832), German poet, writer and philosopher

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.
William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830), English writer, painter and philosopher

…man’s natural abilities are derived by inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world…
Francis Galton (16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), English polymath, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, author of «Hereditary Genius” (1869)

The Bachs were a musical family, comprising a vast number of individuals, and extending through eight generations… There are far more than twenty eminent musicians among the Bachs; the biographical collections of musicians give the lives of no less than fifty-seven of them (see Fetis’ “Dictionary of Musicians”). It was the custom of the family to meet in yearly reunions, at which the entertainments were purely musical. In or about A.D. 1750 as many as 120 Bachs attended one of these meetings.
Francis Galton

Among painters, as among musicians, I think no one doubts that artistic talent is, in some degree, hereditary.
Francis Galton

2. Sociogenic theory (from Lat. Socialitas – society and from Lat. Genero – produce, produce, create) states that genius is usually born by specific needs and values of the society, special family relations and the conditions of education, creative, professional atmosphere that is full of ideas and the ability to communication with great talented people.

Society is a republic. When an individual endeavors to lift himself above his fellows, he is dragged down by the mass, either by means of ridicule or of calumny. No one shall be more virtuous or more intellectually gifted than others. Whoever, by the irresistable force of genius, rises above the common herd is certain to be ostracized by society, which will pursue him with such merciless derision and detraction that at last he will be compelled to retreat into the solitude of his thoughts.
Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856), German poet and essayist

The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation’s effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius…
Victor Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885), French poet and novelist

…the Genius of my life being thus social, the same affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these men and women, wherever I may be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow.
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873), English philosopher, political economist

The ideal of an artistic genius is to live in all men, to lose himself in all men, to reveal himself in multitudes; and so also the aim of the philosopher is to discover all others in himself, to fuse them into a unit which is his own unit.
Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 – October 4, 1903), Austrian philosopher

A nation orients itself by its own geniuses, and derives from them its ideas of its own ideals, but the guiding star serves also as a light to other nations.
Otto Weininger

I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible.
Kenneth Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983), British author, museum director, broadcaster

a) The influence of the family. A huge influence on the development of genius has any early influence, family and parents. At the same time from the earliest stages of the development it is very important to enrich, diversify and immense the stimulus environment that gives young genius the opportunity to absorb useful information, assimilate new meanings and experiences.

Geniuses are just people who had good mothers.
R. Buckminster Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983), American architect, author, designer and inventor

b) Theory of education. According to this theory, the process of genius development greatly depends upon the content and quality of education and training, the system of special pedagogical influences aimed at awakening and development of creative abilities.

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
Plato ( circa 428 BC – 348 BC), Ancient Geek philosopher

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790), scientist, inventor, polymath, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States

3. Theory of Self-education. According to this theory a passion for self-education and self-improvement is the key of ability to become a genius. The basic source on the formation of genius are independently acquired knowledge formed as well as spiritual and cultural values, creativity, creative attitude and method of interaction with the world.

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727), English physicist and mathematician

Genius borrows nobly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

4. Culturogenic theory (from Lat. cultus – culture, lifestyle, from Lat. genero – produce, produce, create) says that genius birth is given by a spirit of place (germ. Ortgeist) and Zeitgeist (germ Zeitgeist), the peculiarity of the urgent needs and demands of certain historical stage of cultural development, specific cultural and creative atmosphere. 

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn. 
Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719), English essayist,poet, playwright, and politician

Genius always finds itself a century too early.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Genius is the accumulated wealth of our humanity–its most intense development concentrated at one point, and then with clearer expression and with mysterious power shot back to us across the galvanic lines of thought and feeling.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin (December 29, 1814 – 1880), American preacher

The genius is not a critic of language, but its creator, as he is the creator of all the mental achievements which are the material of culture and which make up the objective mind, the spirit of the peoples. The “timeless” men are those who make history, for history can be made only by those who are not floating with the stream. It is only those who are unconditioned by time who have real value, and whose productions have an enduring force. And the events that become forces of culture become so only because they have an enduring value. –
Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 – October 4, 1903), Austrian philosopher

It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history. The great man has a history, the emperor is only a part of history. The great man transcends time; time creates and time destroys the emperor.
Otto Weininger

A sense of timing is the mark of a genius.
Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950), American neo-conceptual artist

So also in culture. Infinite players understand that the vigor of a culture has to do with the variety of its sources, the differences within itself. The unique and the surprising are not suppressed in some persons for the strength of others. The genius in you stimulates the genius in me.
James P. Carse, American philosopher, author of “Finite and Infinite Games”

a) A special cultural and professional environment. The secret of the existence of entire constellation of geniuses who were born and were concentrated in Athens, Baghdad, Rome, Paris, St. Petersburg, took place just due to a special, creatogenic and stimulating environment made by the close relations of geniuses, common interests, the possibility of free debate and talents exchange.

Sporadic great men come everywhere. But for a community to get vibrating through and through with intensely active life, many geniuses coming together and in rapid succession are required. This is why great epochs are so rare, – why the sudden bloom of a Greece, an early Rome, a Renaissance, is such a mystery. Blow must follow blow so fast that no cooling can occur in the intervals. Then the mass of the nation glows incandescent, and may continue to glow by pure inertia long after the originators of its internal movement have passed away. We often hear surprise expressed that in these high tides of human affairs not only the people should be filled with stronger life, but that individual geniuses should seem so exceptionally abundant. This mystery is just about as deep as the time-honored conundrum as to why great rivers flow by great t owns. It is true that great public fermentations awaken and adopt many geniuses who in more torpid times would have had no chance to work. But over and above this there must be an exceptional concourse of genius about a time, to make the fermentation begin at all. The unlikeliness of the concourse is far greater than the unlikeliness of any particular genius; hence the rarity of these periods and the exceptional aspect which they always wear.
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910), American psychologist and philosopher

Evolutionary theories

2. Evolutionary theories (from Lat. evoulutio – deployment, unfolding) reveal the patterns and mechanisms of the formation of genius as a result of the objective process happening in nature and culture.

1. Nature Congruity theory of  genius –  claims that Genius is the highest level of  the development and expression of self-conscious of the Nature  and a person who able to merge into the Nature, and become the continuation of its creative power.

Persons of genius, and those who are most capable of art, are always most fond of nature: as such are chiefly sensible, that all art consists in the imitation and study of nature.
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744), English poet

Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.
Friedrich Schlegel (10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829), German poet, literary critic, philosopher

As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius – the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.
Samuel Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834), English poet, literary critic and philosopher

With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed: the throes are in the conception, the pleasure is the birth.
Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832), English cleric and writer

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

In happy hours, nature appears to us one with art; art perfected, — the work of genius.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862), American author, poet and philosopher

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
Henry David Thoreau

Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.
Josiah Gilbert Holland (July 24, 1819 – October 12, 1881), American novelist and poet

Genius learns from nature, its own nature. Talent learns from art.
Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900), Irish playwright, novelist, and poet

God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.
Marcus Garvey (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940), Jamaican political leader, publisher

2. Darwinian approach to the origin of Genius (D. Simonton). The theory is based on the classical model of D. Campbell which is founded on the classical concept of Charles Darwin.

Genius – the ability to produce fantastic amounts of equally fantastic bullshit that all makes perfect sense.
Jason Zebehazy, American author

3. Theory of coincidence and chance. According to this theory the world culture have been made not by the great people but those ones whose characters and abilities coincided with the real demands of the epoch.

The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), English writer, poet, literary critic

Chance created the situation; genius made use of it.
Leo Tolstoy (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910), Russian writer

Creative geniuses do not wait for the gifts of chance; instead, they actively seek the accidental discovery.
Michael Michalko, American creative thinking expert and the author of “’Thinkertoys”

Transnormality theories

3. Transnormality theories from Lat. trans – across, over; norma – norm, rule) see the causes of genius in a wide variety of deviations from the actual mental, personal and social norms, in anomaly from physical, mental and spiritual health, in extraordinary circumstances of life, in strangeness of lifestyle and behaviour and unusual way of interaction with the World.

1. Pathological theory of genius states that at the basis of geniality are all sorts of abnormalities, a variety of physical and mental health problems that are manifested in eccentric behaviour, nervousness and even mental illness and insanity.

Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish to the crowd.
I Chingn ( Classic of Changes), Chinese ancient divination text (1000–750 BC)

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.
Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), Greek philosopher

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65), Roman Stoic philosopher

It is strange that all great men should have some oddness, some little grain of folly mingled with whatever genius they possess.
Moliere (15 January 1622 – 17 February 1673), French playwright and actor

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.
Denis Diderot (5 October 1713 – 31 July 1784), French philosopher, art critic, and writer

Genius is sorrow’s child.
John Adams (October 30 1735 – July 4, 1826), American lawyer, author, statesman, and diplomat

I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity.”
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827), English poet, painter

Despair and Genius are too oft connected.
George Gordon Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), English poet

There is suffering in light; an excess burns. Flames is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius”
Victor Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885), French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Men have called me mad but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence–whether much that is glorious; whether all that is profound–does not spring from disease of thought, from moods of mind exalted at the expense of general intellect.
Edgar Allen Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849), American writer, editor, and literary critic

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
Robert Green Ingersoll ( (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899), American lawyer and political leader

Genius is one of the many forms of insanity. Cesare Lombroso (6 November 1835 –19 October 1909), Italian criminologist and physician
A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possesses at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.
Friedrich Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900), German philosopher

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900), Irish playwright, novelist, and poet

Genius is a form of the life force that is deeply versed in illness, that both draws creatively from it and creates through it.
Thomas Mann (6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955), German novelist, short story writer

Genius sits in a glass house—but in an unbreakable one—conceiving ideas. After giving birth, it falls into madness. Stretches out its hand through the window toward the first person happening by. The demon’s claw rips, the iron fist grips. Before, you were a model, mocks the ironic voice between serrated teeth, for me, you are raw material to work on. I throw you against the glass wall, so that you remain stuck there, projected and stuck….
Paul Klee (18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940), Swiss-German artist.

There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.
Antonin Artaud (4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), French dramatist, poet, essayist, actor

There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Oscar Levant (December 27, 1906 – August 14, 1972), American pianist, composer, author and actor

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
Ian Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964), English author, journalist

Madness in method, that’s genius.
Frank Herbert (October 8, 1920 – February 11, 1986), American science fiction writer

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
Marilyn Monroe (June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962), American actress and model

Crazy people who are productive are geniuses. Crazy people who are rich are eccentric. Crazy people who are neither productive nor rich are just plain crazy.
Michael J. Gelb (born 1952), author and public speaker specializing in creativity and innovation

Creation is messy. You want genius, you get madness; two sides of the same coin.
Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011), American information technology entrepreneur and inventor

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
Bruce Feirstein (born 1956), American screenwriter and humorist

2. Theory of sublimation (from lat. sublimo – exalt, elevate, lift up) says that the cause of geniality is the transformation of super strong desires for a fame, power and wealth into form of imagination as well as transforming of sexual energy into the sphere of science and art, converting it into a cultural -significant and social approved and productive activities.

It is through woman that ideality is born into the world and – what were man without her! There is many a man who has become a genius through a woman, many a one a hero, many a one a poet, many a one even a saint; but he did not become a genius through the woman he married, for through her he only became a privy councillor; he did not become a hero through the woman he married, for through her he only became a general; he did not become a poet through the woman he married, for through her he only became a father; he did not become a saint through the woman he married, for he did not marry, and would have married but one – the one whom he did not marry; just as the others became a genius, became a hero, became a poet through the help of the woman they did not marry.
Søren Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855), Danish philosopher, theologian, poet

Sublimation of instinct is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural evolution; this it is that makes it possible for the higher mental operations, scientific, artistic, ideological activities, to play such an important part in civilized life.
Sigmund Freud ( 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), Austrian psychologist, philosopher and the founder of psychoanalysis

Talent is perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage.
Theodor W. Adorno (September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969), German philosopher and sociologist

 3. Conflictogenic theory of genius argues that diverse external and intrapersonal conflicts happening under certain conditions stimulate creativity and lead to the formation and development of a creative personality.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.
Horace (December 8, 65 BC – November 27, 8 BC), Roman lyric poet

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745), Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist

Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by friction.
Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856), German poet and essayist

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius, the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
Benjamin Disraeli (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881), British politician and writer

As diamond cuts diamond, and one hone smooths a second, all of the parts of intellect are whetstones to each other; and genius, which is but the result of their mutual sharpening, is character too.
Cyrus Augustus Bartol (30April 1813- 16 December 1900), American pastor

With the stones we cast at them, geniuses build new roads for us.
Paul Eldridge (May 5, 1888 – July 26, 1982), American poet, novelist, short story writer

Genius is not a gift, but the way a person invents in desperate circumstances.
Jean-Paul Sartre (21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980), French philosopher, playwright, novelist

Difficulty is what wakes up the genius.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb ( born 1960), Lebanese-American essayist, scholar

4. Mystic theory (from Greek misticos-hidden, secret) says that the appearing of a genius is a result of the activity of higher and unknown forces and it is generated by the contact with inexhaustible depths of cosmos, by experiencing ecstatic and hypnotic states, mystical visions and fantastic hallucinations.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean. 
Socrates (470/469 – 399 BC), Greek (Athenian) philosopher

When human power becomes so great and original that we can account for it only as a kind of divine imagination, we call it genius.
William Crashaw (c. 1613 – 21 August 1649), English poet, teacher

My time I divide as follows: the one half I sleep; the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep; that would be a shame, because to sleep is the height of genius.
Søren Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855), Danish philosopher, theologian, poet

Sleeping is the height of genius.
Søren Kierkegaard

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.
George Henry Lewes (18 April 1817 – 30 November 1878), English philosopher and literature critic

A man who has the inventive genius can’t control it exactly as he wishes. Its working depends in great measure on inspiration–on a momentary suggestion–and it is almost impossible to tell beforehand at what moment it will come.
Henrik Ibsen (20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906), Norwegian playwright

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), Irish playwright and critic

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
José Ortega y Gasset (9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955), Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.
Margot Fonteyn (18 May 1919 – 21 February 1991), English ballerina

5. Infantistic theory (from Lat. infantia-childhood, innocence) states that a genius is a child having such features and advantages of childhood as fresh, pure, innocent perception of the world, the ability to see things in their primordial and innocent purity and treat them as they really are, as a tremendous interest to the world and the ability to be surprised and delighted with common things, as an unbridled imagination and passion for the game.

Genius is sorrow’s child.
John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826), American lawyer, author, statesman

Geniuses experience a second adolescence, whereas other people are only young once.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832), German poet, writer and philosopher

Genius has somewhat of the infantine; But of the childish not a touch or taint.
Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889), English poet and playwright

Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.”
Charles Baudelaire (April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867), French poet

Genius is childhood recovered at will.
Charles Baudelaire

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.
Arthur Rimbaud (20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891), French poet

What is genius? It is the power to be a boy again at will.
James Matthew Barrie (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937), Scottish novelist and playwright

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.
Aldous Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963), English writer, novelist, philosopher

True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genii.
Puzant Thomajan (born about 1903), American author

Genius is childhood recaptured.
Jean Baudrillard (27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007), French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist

Creative geniuses tend to return to the conceptual world of childhood and are able to wed the most advanced understandings of a field with the sensibilities of a wonder-filled child.
Michael Michalko, American creative thinking expert and the author of “’Thinkertoys”

 Essential Theories  of Genius

IV. Essential Theories  (from Lat. Essentia – the essence of) reveal the essence and core universal dimensions of genius as well as essential and deep principles of its manifestation.

1. Worldgenic  theories  of Genius

World-centered approach reveals the essential criteria of genius coming from qualitatively specific laws and features of its manifestation in relatively independent phenomenological worlds in unique, autonomous spheres of reality.

Table 2. Worldgenic theories of Genius

1. Personological theory (from Lat. Persona – personality, person) of genius defines a genius as the top of evolution and the crown of creation, as an original, unique identity, as self-sufficient personality having an extraordinary development, and specific combination of integrated components as intelligence, traits, motivation and productivity.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832), German poet, writer and philosopher

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.
Madame de Stael ( 22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817), French writer

Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed.”
P.T. Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891), American showman and businessman

Character is greater than talent, genius, fame, money, friends – there is nothing to compare with it. A man may have all these and yet remain comparatively useless – be unhappy – and die a bankrupt in soul.
George Matthew Adams (August 23, 1878 – October 29, 1962), American editor and columnist

Talent is hereditary; it may be the common possession of a whole family (eg, the Bach family); genius is not transmitted; it is never diffused, but is strictly individual.
Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 – October 4, 1903), Austrian philosopher

The divine egoism that is genius.
Mary Webb (25 March 1881 – 8 October 1927), English romantic novelist and poet

2. Charismatic theory (from the Greek charisma – charity, gift, and grace) states that the essential feature of a genius is his magical gift of influence, spiritual charm, hypnotic power of domination, the ability to inspire, to fascinate and to lead people.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart”
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744), English poet

… it is the characteristic of genius always to be stimulating other men’s genius.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832), German poet, writer and philosopher

Great men are meteors that burn so that the earth may be lighted.
Napoleon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), French military and political leader, Emperor of the French

Sometimes a single word, spoken by the voice of genius, goes far into the heart. A hint, a suggestion, an undefined delicacy of expression, teaches us more than we gather from volumes of less gifted men.
William Ellery Channing (April 7, 1780 – October 2, 1842), American Unitarian preacher

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great man adds to the sum of knowledge, extends the horizon of thought, releases souls from the Bastille of fear, crosses unknown and mysterious seas, gives new islands and new continents to the domain of thought, new constellations to the firmament of mind. A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains he gives to others.
Robert Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899), American lawyer and political leader

Next to possessing genius one’s self is the power of appreciating it in others.
Mark Twain (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), American author and humorist

One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire.
John W. Foster (March 2, 1836 – November 15, 1917), American diplomat and military officer

Genius is a sovereign power; it forms schools; it lays hold on the spirits of men, with irresistible might; and it exercises an immeasurable influence on the whole condition of human life. This sovereignty of genius is a gift of God, possessed only by his grace. It is subject to no one and is responsible to him alone who has granted it this ascendancy.”
Abraham Kuyper (29 October 1837 – 8 November 1920), Dutch journalist, statesman and Neo-Calvinist theologian

Books that teach us to dance: There are writers who, by portraying the impossible as possible, and by speaking of morality and genius as if both were high-spirited freedom, as if man were rising up on tiptoe and simply had to dance out of inner pleasure.
Friedrich Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900), German philosopher

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.
Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930), British writer and physician

The reason why a work of genius is not easily admired from the first is that the man who has created it is extraordinary, that few other men resemble him. It is his work itself that, by fertilising the rare minds capable of understanding it, will make them increase and multiply.
Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922), French novelist and critic

Leaders should create more leaders, plain and simple. Great leaders do not lead a bunch of followers; rather, they lead to enable more responsibility and trust within the group.
Don Wettrick, American Innovation Coordinator and Author

3. Shape-forming and transformative theory says that the essence of genius lies in formative power and in a form-creative power of a genius, in his ability to pacify chaos, to create new symbolic systems, artificial languages, art tools and techniques, and also to operate symbols, to shape raw material and transform the available content in a more perfect one.
Game theory of genius claims that a creative process of a genius is free from any everyday life bonds, a spontaneous and enjoying game with shapes, symbols and meanings. It is based on symbolic representation of reality, which opens up the possibility of a special, creative interaction with the world.

It is a great thing, indeed, to make a proper use of the poetical forms, as also of compounds and strange words. But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.
Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), Greek philosopher

The poets made all the words and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age…The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy,intellectual daring; I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colour of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder…I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.
Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900), Irish playwright, novelist, and poet

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.
Oscar Wilde

4. Activity theory considers the essence of genius from the point of view of a creative product is produced by a genius. It focuses on the importance of this product, its amount, and influence on his contemporaries and successors and on its contribution to the socio-cultural evolution of the mankind.

No one respects a talent that is concealed.
Desiderius Erasmus (Erasmus of Rotterdam )(28 October 1466 – 12 July 1536), Dutch Renaissance humanist, philosopher and Catholic priest

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade.
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790), scientist, inventor, polymath, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.
Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg) (May 2, 1772 – March 25, 1801), German poet, author, and philosopher

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.
Samuel Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834), English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Works of genius are the first things in the world.
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821), English Romantic poet

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Philosophy becomes poetry and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius.
Benjamin Disraeli (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881), British politician and writer

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940), American novelist and short story writer

Genius, unlike virtuosity, is judged by the greatness of results, not by the brilliance of performance.
Vincent Tomas (9 January 1916 – 25 November 1995), American philosopher

5. Cultural – creative theory directly links genius and creativity, which is a deep true nature of a genius, the substantial way of his existence and implementation. In its turn, creativity is the very essence of a genius, in which it reaches it’s the highest and perfect level of manifestation.
The poets’ scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death.
Edmund Spenser (1552/1553 – 13 January 1599), English poet

Who in the same given time can produce more than many others, has vigour; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.
Johann Caspar Lavater (15 November 1741 – 2 January 1801), Swiss poet, writer and philosopher

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
Joseph Joubert (7 May 1754– 4 May 1824), French moralist and essayist

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.
Madame de Staël (Anne Louise Germaine de Stael) (22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817), French writer

Man hopes, genius creates.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talent works, genius creates.
Robert Schumann (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856), German composer and music critic

Talent warms-up the given (as they say in cookery) and makes it apparent; genius brings something new. But our time lets talent pass for genius. They want to abolish the genius, deify the genius, and let talent forge ahead.
Søren Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855), Danish philosopher, theologian, poet

A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – circa 1914), American journalist, short story writer

Genius is the ability to act rightly without precedent – the power to do the right thing the first time.
Elbert Hubbard (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915), American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher

The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
Arthur Koestler (5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983), Hungarian-British author and journalist

Once you had to be a genius to make works of art. Now you have to be a genius to understand them.
Roy Emmins, English sculptor

The genius creates the mental world in which the next generation will live, including that generation’s genius. And that progression of genius is what constitutes history. History is a genealogy of geniuses.
Carl Pletsch, American author and historian

2. Universe theories of Genius

The universe approach to genius assumes that it is based on universal generating and sense formatting primal essences which are metatheoretical and supercultural explications of the Absolute.

  Table 3.  Universe Theories of Genius

1. Heroic theory of genius considers that a genius is a hero possessing a spiritual greatness, a magic talent, boundless courage, fearlessness of mind, demonic power and absolute and unlimited free will.
Demonic theory (from Greek diamond – demon, demigod) of genius considers genius to be a rebel and destroyer who overturn concepts, values and bases. Absolutization of ideas of total freedom, self-induced activity, struggle and force transform a genius-hero into a genius-rebel and great destroyer.

However smothered under former negligence, or scattered through the dull, dark mass of common thoughts – let thy genius rise as the sun from chaos.
Edward Young (3 July 1683 – 5 April 1765), English poet

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decisions, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe(28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832), German poet, writer and philosopher

Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827), English poet, painter

…talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.
Carl von Clausewitz (1 June 1780 – 16 November 1831), Prussian general and military theorist

Society is a republic. When an individual endeavors to lift himself above his fellows, he is dragged down by the mass, either by means of ridicule or of calumny. No one shall be more virtuous or more intellectually gifted than others. Whoever, by the irresistable force of genius, rises above the common herd is certain to be ostracized by society, which will pursue him with such merciless derision and detraction that at last he will be compelled to retreat into the solitude of his thoughts.
Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856), German poet and essayist

The man of genius does not steal, he conquers.
Alexandre Dumas (24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), French writer

It is easy to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Towering genius disdains a beaten path… It sees no distinction in adding story to story… It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it…
Abraham Lincoln ( February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865), the 16th President of the United State

Geniuses are like thunderstorms. They go against the wind, terrify people, cleanse the air.
Søren Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855), Danish philosopher, theologian, poet

The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed is commonly, an Artist, but the two are not to be confounded. The Man of Genius, referred to mankind, is an originator, an inspired or demonic man, who produces a perfect work in obedience to laws yet unexplored. The artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected. There has been no man of pure Genius, as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862), American author, poet and philosopher

Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself–and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.”
Henry David Thoreau

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
James Russell Lowell ( February 22, 1819 – August 12, 1891), American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the madness with which you should be cleansed? Behold, I show you the Superman. He is this lightning, he is this madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900), German philosopher 

Genius is talent set on fire by courage.
Henry van Dyke (November 10, 1852 – April 10, 1933), American author, educator

Genius moves to creation, not to destruction. Only a very few have combined both.
Edith Hamilton (August 12, 1867 – May 31, 1963), American educator and author

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
Bertrand Russell (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), British philosopher, logician, mathematician

All genius is a conquering of chaos and mystery.
Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 – October 4, 1903), Austrian philosopher

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.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990), American psychologist, behaviorist

The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music; but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet’s greatness is contained in his words; yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in creation; but scrutinize creation as minutely as you wish, you will not find God, any more than you will find the soul through careful examination of your body.
Anthony de Mello (4 September 1931 – 2 June 1987), Indian spiritual teacher, Jesuit priest and psychotherapist

Some of Shakespeare’s fellow playwrights, like Christopher Marlowe, did have university degrees, but the fact is that many of the greatest authors in history never set foot in college. Geniuses are geniuses precisely because they do not play by the ordinary rules.
Paul A. Cantor (born 1945), American literary and media critic

True genius does not understand the word fear – instead, the sails are set by hope of unseen shores.
Todd Plough (born 1965), American artist

Courage is seeking a rainbow within a storm.
Genius is finding it.
Manoj Vaz, Indian author

2. Metapotention theory (from Greek meta – through, from Lat. potentia – force, posibility) sees the essence of genius in his aspiration , talent and ability to expand the horizons and to gain new substantial spaces, to construct new worlds and integrities, to create new concepts, paradigms and directions in art, to open new semantic dimensions and widen the borders of possibilities.

 There may be two or three or four steps, according to the genius of each, but for every seeing soul there are two absorbing facts, –I and the abyss.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel (September 27, 1821– May 11, 1881), Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic

A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955), German-born theoretical physicist

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the varieties of rhythm offer me the opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.
Igor Stravinsky (17 June 1882 – 6 April 1971) Russian (French and American) composer, pianist and conductor

The task of genius
is to keep the miracle alive,
to live always in the miracle,
to make the miracle more and more miraculous,
to swear allegiance to nothing,
but live only miraculously,
think only miraculously,
die miraculously.
Henry Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980), American writer

In every idea of genius or in every new human idea, or, more simply still, in every serious human idea born in anyone’s brain, there is something that cannot possibly be conveyed to others.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881), Russian writer, essayist, and philosopher

This is the nature of genius, to be able to grasp the knowable even when no one else recognizes that it is present.
Deepak Chopra (born October 22, 1947), Indian American author, public speaker

Genius is the true mystery, and at its edge – the abyss.
Guillermo del Toro (born October 9, 1964), Mexican film director, screenwriter, producer, and novelist

3. Theory of Universality (from Lat. universalis – universal, global, referring to the universe) states that a genius has a unique blend of creative talents, a special psychic organization which reflects the invariant structure of the universe. At this the essential feature of a genius is his universality which includes broad-mindedness, versatility of talent, diversity of interests, extraordinary erudition and ability to achieve outstanding results in various branches of human activity.

No man’s genius, however shining, can raise him from obscurity, unless he has industry, opportunity, and also a patron to recommend him.
Pliny the Younger (61 – c. 113), Ancient Roman lawyer, author

It is obvious that the efforts of the best poets and aesthetic writers of all nations have now for some time been directed towards what is universal in humanity. In each special field, whether in history, mythology, or fiction, more or less arbitrarily conceived, one sees the traits which are universal always more clearly revealed and illumining what is merely national and personal . . . . we cannot indeed hope that universal peace is being ushered in thereby, but only that inevitable strife will be gradually more restrained, war will become less cruel, and victory less insolent . . . . A genuine, universal tolerance is most surely attained, if we do not quarrel with the peculiar characteristics of individual men and races, but only hold fast the conviction, that what is truly excellent is distinguished by its belonging to all mankind. (Letter to Thomas Carlyle, 20 July 1837).
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832), German poet, writer and philosopher

Genius differs from talent not by the amount of original thoughts, but by making the latter fertile and by positioning them properly, in other words, by integrating everything into a whole, whereas talent produces only fragments, no matter how beautiful.
Franz Grillparzer (15 January 1791 – 21 January 1872), Austrian writer

I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Palestine, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, – the Genius and creative Principle of each and of all eras, in my own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Genius holds its universal dominion because it touches the deepest suggestions and utters the multiform experiences of a common nature.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin (December 29, 1814 – December 26, 1880), American preacher and editor

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age…The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring; I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colour of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder…I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.
Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900), Irish playwright, novelist, and poet

I have put my genius into my life; all I’ve put into my work is my talent.
Oscar Wilde

Put your talent into your work, but your genius into your life.
Oscar Wilde

Talent without genius isn’t much, but genius without talent is nothing whatever.
Paul Valery (30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945), French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it.
Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 – October 4, 1903), Austrian philosopher

The genius, therefore, is a more complicated, more richly endowed, more varied man; and a man is the closer to being a genius the more men he has in his personality, and the more really and strongly he has these others within him. If comprehension of those about him only flickers in him like a poor candle, then he is unable, like the great poet, to kindle a mighty flame in his heroes, to give distinction and character to his creations. The ideal of an artistic genius is to live in all men, to lose himself in all men, to reveal himself in multitudes; and so also the aim of the philosopher is to discover all others in himself, to fuse them into a unit which is his own unit.
Otto Weininger

4. Congregative theory (from Lat. congregatio – integration) of genius suggests that the essence of the nature of a genius is manifested in his willingness and ability to unite various layers and spheres of reality, in binding, converging and collecting the worlds, in a productive combination of different directions, forms and genres of art .

Genius . . . that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates.
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), English writer, poet, literary critic

Genius is finding the invisible link between things.
Vladimir Nabokov (22 April 1899 – 2 July 1977), Russian-American novelist

A great scientist once said that genius consists not in making great discoveries but in seeing the connection between small discoveries.
Walker Percy (May 28, 1916 – May 10, 1990), American author

Art is the supreme communicator of diverse cultures and ideas in a common frame of understanding, a virtual bridge across time. It is also the universal link into genius.
Edward J. Fraughton (born March 22, 1939), American artist, sculptor and inventor

Like the highly playful child with a pailful of Legos, a genius is constantly combining and recombining ideas, images and thoughts into different combinations in their conscious and subconscious minds.
Michael Michalko, American creative thinking expert and the author of “’Thinkertoys”

5. Universe-personalistic theory(from Lat. universum – a single Universe, Latin unio – unity, versum – towards … or verso-twist, rotate, and from lat. persona – person, separate entity) of genius maintains that a genius has a universal gift to capture , expierence, transmit and embody in his work the spirit of the Universe and Eternity, to fill his works with the highest human values and ultimate meaning as well as the ability to reach the state of creative consciousness, to acquire a vision of reality from the standpoint of the Absolute, to translate this vision into reality and transmit it to other people.

The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe(28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832), German poet, writer and philosopher

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.
Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860), German philosopher

What makes men of genius, or rather, what they make, is not new ideas, it is that idea – possessing them – that what has been said has still not been said enough.
Eugene Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863), French Romantic artist

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885), French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Genius is a promontory jutting out of the infinite.
Victor Hugo

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Genius is religious.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talent is that which is in a man’s power; genius is that in whose power man is.
James Russell Lowell ( February 22, 1819 – August 12, 1891), American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Of the three prerequisites of genius; the first is soul; the second is soul; and third is soul.
Edwin Percy Whipple (March 8, 1819 – June 16, 1886), American essayist and critic

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
Henri Frédéric Amiel (September 27, 1821 – May 11, 1881), Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic

Talent isn’t genius and no amount of energy can make it so
Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888), American novelist and poet

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age…The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring; I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colour of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder…I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.
Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900), Irish playwright, novelist, and poet

I understood that what I needed to become the first poet of this century is to experience everything in my body. It’s no longer enough for me to be one person, I decided to be everyone. I decided to be a genius. I decided to originate the future.
Arthur Rimbaud (20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891), French poet

God thinks within geniuses, dreams within poets, and sleeps within the rest of us.
Peter Altenberg (9 March 1859 – 8 January 1919), Austrian writer and poet

No, I don’t admire the genius. But I admire and love the result of the genius’s activity in the world, of which the great man is only the poor necessary tool, only, so to speak, the paltry awl to bore with.
Knut Hamsun (August 4, 1859 – February 19, 1952), Norwegian author

The ego of the genius accordingly is simply itself universal comprehension, the centre of infinite space; the great man contains the whole universe within himself; genius is the living microcosm. He is not an intricate mosaic, a chemical combination of an infinite number of elements; the argument in chap. iv. as to his relation to other men and things must not be taken in that sense; he is everything. In him and through him all psychical manifestations cohere and are real experiences, not an elaborate piece-work, a whole put together from parts in the fashion of science. For the genius the ego is the all, lives as the all; the genius sees nature and all existences as whole; the relations of things flash on him intuitively; he has not to build bridges of stones between them.
Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 – October 4, 1903), Austrian philosopher

I’ve often observed that God can use anyone in the furtherance of teleology, exploiting the good through their strengths and the bad through their weaknesses. His true servants, on the other hand, need not be exploited at all, but voluntarily adopt His will as their own. Doing that properly, as opposed to deluding oneself in a spirit of blind egoism, naturally requires and confers a measure of genius.
Christopher Michael Langan (born c. 1952) is an American whose IQ was reported to be between 195 and 210

5.1 Imperative-Substantial theory (from Lat. imperatum – order, command , prescription; from Lat. substantialis-essential, which has an independent existence, ) of genius says that a genius is determined by universe-and-personality determinants which represent a stable resonant interaction of awakening creative structures with isomorphic creative plans of the Universe, fusion and solidification of the energy of a creative instinct and internalized socio-cultural creative imperative. At this case deploying of internal and universal creative structures which is a realization of a creative impulse, brings a deep inner satisfaction and a genuine supreme joy.

Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, / Genius must be born, and never can be taught.
John Dryden (19 August 1631 – 12 May 1700), English poet, literary critic, and playwright

Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.
Joshua Reynolds (16 July 1723 – 23 February 1792), English painter

The painter of genius will not waste a moment upon those smaller objects which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the heart.
Joshua Reynolds

Genius is a talent for producing something for which no determinate rule can be given, not a predisposition consisting of a skill for something that can be learned by following some rule or other.
Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804), German philosopher

Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it.
Friedrich Schlegel (10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829), German poet, literary critic, philosopher

Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry; it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.
William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830), English writer , painter and philosopher

Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine. It isn’t money, for genius seldom gets any. It isn’t fame: fame is too uncertain and, more closely considered, of too little worth. Nor is it strictly for its own pleasure, for the great exertion involved almost outweighs the pleasure. It is rather an instinct of a unique sort by virtue of which the individual possessed of genius is impelled to express what he has seen and felt in enduring works without being conscious of any further motivation. It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish.
Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860), German philosopher

Genius is its own reward; for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself… Further, genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Genius does what it must and talent does what it can.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873), English novelist, poet, playwright

In following the strong bent of his genius, he was self assured that he should ‘create the taste by which he is to be enjoyed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Genius is a steed too fiery for the plow or the cart.
Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887), American clergyman, social reformer, and speaker

Talent is that which is in man’s power. Genius is that whose power a man is.
James Russell Lowell ( February 22, 1819 – August 12, 1891), American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.
Josiah Gilbert Holland (July 24, 1819 – October 12, 1881), American novelist and poet

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel (September 27, 1821– May 11, 1881), Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic

Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
Owen Meredith (8 November 1831 – 24 November 1891), English statesman and poet

Greatness is not the gift of majorities; it cannot be thrust upon any man; men cannot give it to another; they can give place and power, but not greatness. The place does not make the man, nor the scepter the king. Greatness is from within.
Robert Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899), American lawyer, political leader

God’s revelation does not need the light of human genius, the polish and strength of human culture, the brilliancy of human thought, the force of human brains to adorn or enforce it; but it does demand the simplicity, the docility, humility, and faith of a child’s heart.
E.M. Bounds (August 15, 1835 – August 24, 1913), American author, attorney

Genius is born, not paid.
Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900), Irish playwright, novelist, and poet

I have nothing to declare except my genius.
Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900), Irish playwright, novelist, and poet’s

Mediocrity is self-inflicted. Genius is self-bestowed.
Walter Bowman Russell (May 19, 1871 – May 19, 1963), American painter

…genius knows no country, genius sprouts anywhere, genius is like light, air. the patrimony of everybody, cosmopolitan like space, like life, like God.
José Rizal (June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896), Filipino writer, artist and polymath

When touched by genius, when led by chance, the most superior truth can come into being from even the most foolish error.
Stefan Zweig (November 28, 1881 – February 22, 1942), Austrian novelist, playwright, and biographer

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941), Irish novelist and poet

Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (8 February 1883 – 8 January 1950), Austrian-born American economist and political scientist
Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.
Malcolm Cowley (August 24, 1898 – March 27, 1989), American novelist, poet, literary critic

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973), English poet

To do what others cannot do is talent. To do what talent cannot do is genius.
Henry Wilson Allen (September 12, 1912 – October 26, 1991), American author and screenwriter

Genius doesn’t specialize; genius is reason in itself.
Haruki Murakami (born January 12, 1949), Japanese writer

Genius defines itself.
Quinn Tyler Jackson, Canadian author

5.2. Transpersonal experience theory (from Lat. trans – through, over and persona – person) states that the condition of genius is the experience of identity with the “Cosmic Mind” and “World Soul”, the ability to achieve and maintain the state of superpersonal, transpersonal consciousness, creative illumination and ecstasy, Samadhi , Satori or their psychological correlate – the highest creative inspiration.
Genius is considered as the ability to enter into a new supreme and creative state of consciousness, to obtain hypersensitivity to the effects of information and semantic fields, to awake in himself dormant creative abilities and to use internal and external opportunities in a highly efficient way.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.”
Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930), British writer and physician

Genius is not that you are smarter than everyone else. It is that you are ready to receive the inspiration.”
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955), German-born theoretical physicist

5.3. Visionary theory (from Lat. visio –vision, seeing, idea) claims that the basis of genius is the aptitude for universe, holistic, planetary and creative vision of the world, ability to perceive reality in all its newness, freshness, topicality and inexhaustibility, and also ability to mental manipulation with its forms, entities and time, and art to generate from within, by means of the gift of inner vision and foresight, a self-sufficient, self-sustaining, unconditional novelty, independent of the old.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.
Laozi (circa 6th century BC), Chinese philosopher and the founder of philosophical Taoism

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Michelangelo (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), Italian sculptor, painter and architect

Genius always looks forward, and not only sees what is, but what necessarily will be.
Fulke Greville (3 October 1554 – 30 September 1628), English poet, dramatist, and statesman

In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
Baruch Spinoza (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677), Dutch philosopher

The only difference between a genius and one of common capacity is that the former anticipates and explores what the latter accidentally hits upon; but even the man of genius himself more frequently employs the advantages that chance presents him; it is the lapidary who gives value to the diamond which the peasant has dug up without knowing its value.
Abbe Guillaume Raynal (12 April 1713 – 6 March 1796), French writer and historian

He is a man of capacity who possesses considerable intellectual riches: while he is a man of genius who finds out a vein of new ore. Originality is the seeing nature differently from others, and yet as it is in itself. It is not singularity or affectation, but the discovery of new and valuable truth. All the world do not see the whole meaning of any object they have been looking at. Habit blinds them to some things: shortsightedness to others. Every mind is not a gauge and measure of truth. Nature has her surface and her dark recesses. She is deep, obscure, and infinite. It is only minds on whom she makes her fullest impressions that can penetrate her shrine or unveil her Holy of Holies. It is only those whom she has filled with her spirit that have the boldness or the power to reveal her mysteries to others.
William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830), English writer , painter and philosopher

This is the test and triumph of originality, not to show us what has never been, and what we may therefore very easily never have dreamt of, but to point out to us what is before our eyes and under our feet, though we have had no suspicion of its existence, for want of sufficient strength of intuition, of determined grasp of mind to seize and retain it.
William Hazlitt

Talent is like a marksman who hits a target that others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target . . . others cannot even see.
Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860), German philosopher

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see. 
Arthur Schopenhauer

Genius is the ability to leave entirely out of sight our own interest, our willing, and our aims, and consequently to discard entirely our own personality for a time, in order to remain pure knowing subject, the clear eye of the world; and this not merely for moments, but with the necessary continuity and conscious thought to enable us to repeat by deliberate art what has been apprehended and “what in wavering apparition gleams fix in its place with thoughts that stand for ever!
Arthur Schopenhauer

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.
Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881), Scottish philosopher, essayist, and historian

Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873), English novelist, poet, playwright

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900), English writer art critic

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), English novelist, poet, journalist and translator

It takes immense genius to represent, simply and sincerely, what we see in front of us.
Louis Edmond Duranty (6 June 1833 – 9 April 1880), French novelist and art critic

Genius only comes to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence.
Auguste Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917), French sculptor.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910), American psychologist and philosopher

The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
William James

The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passions are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.
Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900), Irish playwright, novelist, and poet

A man of genius is not a man who sees more than other men do. On the contrary, it is very often found that he is absentminded and observes much less than other people…. Why is it that the public have such an exaggerated respect for him—after he is dead? The reason is that the man of genius understands the importance of the few things he sees.
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), Irish playwright and critic

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.
Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939), English physician, psychologist and writer

To a great mind, nothing is little.
Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930), British writer and physician

Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.
Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922), French novelist and critic

Talent without genius isn’t much, but genius without talent is nothing whatsoever.
Paul Valery (30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945), French poet, essayist, and philosopher

To complicate things in new ways, that is really very easy; but to see things in new ways, that is difficult and that is why genius is so rare.
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946), American novelist, poet

…the highest, the only reality, is ever at hand, but for the most part invisible. Genius makes it visible…
Egon Friedell (21 January 1878 – 16 March 1938), Austrian philosopher, historian

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955), German-born theoretical physicist

The man of genius is he whose ego has acquired consciousness. He is enabled by it to distinguish the fact that others are different, to perceive the “ego” of other men, even when it is not pronounced enough for them to be conscious of it themselves. But it is only he who feels that every other man is also an ego, a monad, an individual centre of the universe, with specific manner of feeling and thinking and a distinct past, he alone is in a position to avoid making use of his neighbours as means to an end.
Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 – October 4, 1903), Austrian philosopher

Genius … is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and where the man of talent sees two or three, plus the ability to register that multiple perception in the material of his art.
Ezra Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972), American poet and critic

We mustn’t forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
Saul Bellow (10 June 1915 – 5 April 2005), Canadian-American writer

Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.
John Ciardi (June 24, 1916 – March 30, 1986), American poet, translator

The ability of someone to choose and arrange the details of their creative field guided by a vision is a major hallmark of a genius.
John Briggs (born March 8, 1930), American politician

What makes a genius? The ability to see. To see what? The butterfly in a caterpillar, the eagle in an egg, the saint in a selfish person, life in death, unity in separation, God in the human and human in God and suffering as the form in which the incomprehensibility of God himself appears.
Brennan Manning (April 27, 1934 – April 12, 2013), American author, priest, and public speaker 

To speak, or act, or think originally is to erase the boundary of the self. It is to leave behind the territorial personality. A genius does not have a mind full of thoughts but is the thinker of thoughts, and is the center of a field of vision. It is a field of vision, however, that is recognized as a field of vision only when we see that it includes within itself the original centers of other fields of vision.
James P. Carse, American philosopher

As the geniuses we are, we do not look but see. To look at something is to look at it within its limitations. I look at what is marked off, at what stands apart from other things. But things do not have their own limitations. Nothing limits itself. The sea gulls circling on the invisible currents, the cat on my desk, the siren of a distant ambulance are not somehow distinct from the environment; they are the environment. To look at them I must look for what I take them to be. I was not looking at the sea gulls as though it was the sea gulls who happened to be there-I was looking for something to make this example. I might have seen them as a sign that land is not far, or that the sea is not far; I could have been looking for a form to reproduce on a canvas or in a poem. To look at is to look for. It is to bring the limitations with us.
James P. Carse, American philosopher

When we pass from looking to seeing, we do not therefore lose our sight of the objects observed. Seeing, in fact, does not disturb our looking at all. It rather places us in that territory as its genius, aware that our imagination does not create within its outlines but creates the outlines themselves. The physicist who sees speaks physics with us, inviting us to see that the things we thought were there are not things at all. By learning new limitations from such a a person, we learn not only what to look for with them but also how to see the way we use limitations. A physics so taught becomes poiesis.
James P. Carse, American philosopher

Much of creative genius hinges on the willingness to creatively observe the seemingly irrelevant and find the latent potential.
Michael Michalko, American creative thinking expert and the author of “’Thinkertoys”

Genius is measured not by static volume but by kinetic vision.
Rich DiSilvio (born on 1957), American artist, author, new media developer