“Genius has no youth, but starts with the ripeness of age and old experience.”
Mark Twain
“Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered -- either by themselves or by others.”
“In each age men of genius undertake the ascent. From below, the world follows them with their eyes. These men go up the mountain, enter the clouds, disappear, reappear, People watch them, mark them. They walk by the side of precipices. They daringly pursue their road. See them aloft, see them in the distance; they are but black specks. On they go. The road is uneven, its difficulties constant. At each step a wall, at each step a trap. As they rise the cold increases. They must make their ladder, cut the ice and walk on it., hewing the steps in haste. A storm is raging. Nevertheless they go forward in their madness. The air becomes difficult to breath. The abyss yawns below them. Some fall. Others stop and retrace their steps; there is a sad weariness. The bold ones continue. They are eyed by the eagles; the lightning plays about them: the hurricane is furious. No matter, they persevere.”
Victor Hugo
“My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.”
Allen Ginsberg
“Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“There sit the sainted sage, the bard divine, / The few, whom genius gave to shine / Through every unborn age, and undiscovered clime.”
Thomas Gray
“Have all these countries found a genius like Greenspan? ... What the foreign experience suggests is, you don't need a genius. You just need someone willing to make fighting inflation his top priority.”
Milton Friedman
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