A collection of quotes on genius, talent and creativity

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I came across this years ago, and found it fascinating. It took me a while to find it again, in the MSN Search cache. It starts with some discussion of the science we can count on, which is not necessary to enjoy the massive collection of quotes which follow.

Genius, Talent and Creativity

"Thus Plutarch describes Archimedes, a man who 'possessed so lofty a spirit, so profound a soul, and such a wealth of scientific inquiry that....he had acquired through his inventions a name and reputation for divine rather than human intelligence'.....
"....there is no need to disbelieve the stories told about him-how, continually bewitched by some familiar siren dwelling with him, he forgot his food and neglected the care of his body, and how, when he was dragged by force, as often happened, to the place for bathing and anointing, he would draw geometrical figures in the hearths, and draw lines with his finger in the oil with which his body was anointed, being overcome by great pleasure and in truth inspired of the Muses."
{Plutarch mentions} all the major aspects of genius later emphasized by other writers: natural endowment (intelligence), hard work, divine inspiration (creativity) and a personality which indulges in behaviour which is distinctly unusual, to use a rather neutral term. In anyone lacking in the achievements of Archimedes, we might be tempted to call him mad."
H.J.EYSENCK

Me and a buddy have a shared document where we put up quotes we like (Google Documents rules), and this kind of stuff is mucho aprecciated Thanks!

Not a quote, a story.

One of my heroes is J Robert Oppenheimer, the man who directed the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bombs that ended WWII. Dr Oppenheimer was a physicist but as director of the project he also had to play at being a politician, this included giving guided tours around Los Alamos to people who had sufficient security clearance.

One day Dr Oppenheimer was showing a group of people around the project. He walked down a corridor past an open door where, inside, a man sat on a desk staring at a blackboard covered in formulae. Suddenly Dr Oppenheimer stopped in his tracks and turned around on his heels, walking into the room he had just passed. Without saying a word he rubbed out a single symbol on the blackboard and replaced it with a new one, he then walked out of the room and continued his tour.

Back in the room Dr Albert Einstein sat there softly cursing in German. He had been staring at that blackboard for three weeks trying to find his error.

Ed Almos

I have a semi-quote of my own: Don't rely on people too much for help, you've got to be as independent as you can. This applies when asking for help from anyone, even God.

Basically, I dislike it when people use God as an excuse to help with their problems.

"Footprints" is the most perverted, soul-destroying piece of crap I have ever read.

Saying that the times that you relied on yourself and pulled through are the result of some divine third party intervention is just dehumanizing. Sickening. Exploitative.

It teaches people to mistrust themselves, to question their ability to take care of themselves to the point that they are reliant on an exploiter for the rest of their lives.

Sure, Jesus helps you find your car keys, then takes a smokebreak as soon as hurricane season hits. Absolute crap.

Pass the collection plate.

@Kurtz: so true, it's one of the main causes that this country (mexico) is the way it is. No progress...

More of the same, only this time with sex differences

"All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable.....wherefore for the sake of their lusts [women] consort with devils."
Malleus Maleficarum, 1486.

"Thou goest to woman?-Do not forget thy whip!"
NIETZSCHE, Thus Spake Zarathustra.

"The woman's egg, several hundred times bigger than the sperm that fertilizes it, carries all the genetic messages the child will ever receive. Women, therefore, are the original, the first sex, the biological norm from which males are only a deviation."
Rosalind MILES (Head of the Centre for Women's Studies,
Coventry Polytechnic)

"[In our study of dyadic interaction between male and female psychology sophomores] as physical attractiveness of the women increased, the men reported an increasing percentage of metaperspective thoughts and feelings that reflected the symbolic adoption of their female partner's perspective."
Stella GARCIA et al., 1991,
Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 61.

"The female principle (which is not, of course, confined to women) does see deeper, feel more widely."
P.J.KAVANAGH, 1983, The Spectator.

"It is commonly thought that women are the romantics; their lives are said to be organized more around love, while men are more concerned with work, money, and other activities. But here the data contradict that common assumption. Hobart (1958) asked hundreds of men and women questions about romance and found that men are much more likely to be romantics than women are. Men fall in love faster and have a more romantic view of love relationships than women do. In another study of the course of love in dating, 20 per cent of men fell in love before the fourth date, while 15 per cent of women did. It is usually the woman who ends the affair, and the men who suffer more (Walster, Walster & Traupman, 1978, J.Person. & Soc. Psychol.)."
R.ORNSTEIN, 1985, Psychology.
San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

"....toughness....is a female characteristic."
Anita BROOKNER, 1993, The Spectator, 24 vii.

"In every society, human and animal, males do the fighting. This is not only because of their greater physical strength, but it is due also to the most basic requirement of a species: survival of the next generation. In a population of ten males and ten females, if nine females died in battle, only two or three children could possibly be born to the group the next year.... So males are more expendable."
R.E.ORNSTEIN, 1985, Psychology: the Study of Human
Experience. San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

"I am suggesting that the girl's experience with the unfocused, open, penetrable nature of her genitalia creates difficulties in forming mental representations of her body that have clear boundaries and sharp definition. Further, I suggest that this unfocused representation of the genitals complicates the formation of ego boundaries and a firm sense of self, and contributes to both the mental and body issues of which women complain: they describe mental 'fuzziness' in trying to think, and complain of fluid body images (see H.Lerner, 1976, J.Am.Psychoanal.Assn 24)."
Doris BERNSTEIN, 1990, 'Female genital anxieties'.
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 71.

"There can be no mating between the spiritually developed women of this new day and men who, in thought and conduct with regard to sex matters, are their inferiors."
Christabel PANKHURST, 1913. Quoted in S.Jeffreys,
1982 Women's Studies International Forum 5.

"Among contemporary Anglican ordinands....established gender differences are radically disturbed. [On Eysenck's Psychoticism, Extraversion and Neuroticism scales] female ordinands record a characteristically masculine profile.... [and] a striking feature of the personality profile of the male ordinands concerns their low scores on the Extraversion scale.... They are not the people who would naturally choose to lead the dance, to knock on the door, to stand on the soap box, to rally the crowds, or to draw attention to themselves."
L.J.FRANCIS, 1991, Personality & Individual Differences 12.

"Some men believe that women are irrational, illogical, incompetent, emotion-driven and unreliable. Women's Lib sets out to disprove it by the spectacle of sloppy, bedraggled, unfocused females stomping down the streets and chanting brief slogans, over and over again, with the stuporous monotony of a jungle ritual and the sulkiness of a badly spoiled child. Denouncing masculine oppression, Women's Lib screams protests against the policy of regarding women as "sex objects" - through speakers who, too obviously, are in no such danger....Proclaiming woman's independence from and equality with men, Women's Lib demands liberation from the consequences of whatever sex life a woman might choose, such consequences to be borne by others: it demands free abortions and free day nurseries. To be paid for by whom? - By men!"
Ayn RAND, 1971, The New Left. New York : Signet.


"Twenty-eight per cent of women read romantic fiction, often with the same compulsion that men show towards pornography (though Barbara Cartland has a chocolate box gentility which is very far from the illicit thrills of blue movies).... One reason for this [female] lack of enthusiasm [for explicit visual pornography] might be that women's sexuality is more diffuse than men's.... Particularly disturbing for feminists is the fact that many women undoubtedly do have masochistic fantasies of rape and submission which they would repudiate utterly in their daily lives."
Kirsty MILNE, 1987, 'Porn: what do women want?'
New Society 82, 23 x.