From Denny: This was a fun category I discovered recently - genius quotes. Since I grew up in the intelligence community where they chased after geniuses, even tried to breed them, this has long been an area of interest for me. I even used to throw all my IQ tests just so my father's "blessed" colleagues would never know my level of ability.
They had already nailed my mother and older brother and the last thing I wanted to be labeled was as a genius. In my experience all it meant was you had to memorize useless trivia to prove how smart you were and act like a performing seal at a marina for your handlers. That translated as a lack of freedom to live your life as you chose.
Humor has always been my choice of how to best react to life, especially when other people who don't quite "get it" try to harass, bully or stress you. More than anything I found it amusing how people who are not defined as geniuses have decided they know how to define genius. Now does that practice make any sense to you? It sure didn't to me when I was growing up in the weird atmosphere.
It would have been pure heaven to have some of these cheeky quotes to whip out and use from time to time when my father's crowd got pushy about trying to control someone else's intelligence, like you were a willing robot to be used as they willed. Too bizarre. Some of these quotes are by people labeled as geniuses and they have a wonderful sense of the ironic and good humor!
Quotes
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others. - Mark Twain
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I think the world is run by C students. - Al McGuire
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one. - E.B. White
In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self Reliance," Essays, 1841
Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius. - George Bernard Shaw
If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If the Aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it. - Stanley Garn
The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius. - Rebecca Pepper Sinkler
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. - Albert Einstein
Character is higher than intellect. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. - Albert Einstein
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up. - Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun. - George Scialabra
A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence. - Barbara Walters
The invention of IQ does a great disservice to creativity in education. - Joel Hildebrand
If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't. - Emerson M. Pugh
I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde. - Dolly Parton, singer and actress
Clown Photo by I'm Fantastic! @ flickr
