Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Woody Allen is a genius. His films are wonderful. He's poetic, but he's also a critic. He artfully steps back from a social setting and criticizes it without - I suspect - without letting himself be vulnerable to it.
Many studies of research scientists have shown that achievement (at least below the genius level of an Einstein, Bohr, or a Planck) depends less on ability in doing research than on the courage to go after opportunity.
Anyone who can do the splits and come back up on the backbeat, as James Brown and Prince can, has my eternal respect. Prince, who is a genius of the highest order, can come back up while singing and playing the guitar.
The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.
I am shocked and deeply saddened by McQueen's death. He was a genius, and his talent was second to none. Like many others, I always cited him as a hugely inspirational leader of world fashion. He will be greatly missed.
I'm into the lyrical side of rap. I listen to some old Eminem songs and think, 'Wow, he's a genius.' He's one of the greatest poets of our time. Even when he's out of control, like on 'Cold Wind Blows,' it's incredible.
I say that the genius of the marketing strategy that we've had in every company that I've ever been in, is that if you ask your customers what they want and you give it to them, you shouldn't be shocked if they love it.
Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him.
What terrible harm Wagner did by interspersing his pages of genius with harmonic and modulatory outrages to which both young and old are gradually becoming accustomed and which have procreated d'Indy and Richard Strauss.
The so-called materialistic conception of history, with the crude elements of genius of the early form which appeared, for instance, in the Communist Manifesto, still prevails only in the minds of laymen and dilettantes.
In Goodfellas they have this one scene where the camera goes down some steps and walks through a kitchen into a restaurant and the critics were all over this as evidence of the genius of Scorsese and Scorsese is a genius.
Truly, the bench is a boon to idlers. Whoever first came up with the idea is a genius: free public resting places where you can take time out from the bustle and brouhaha of the city, and simply sit and watch and reflect.
It's a very naive idea to think that the chef is cooking everything, and, on top of it, is irreplaceable. That would mean that basically he is the only genius, and there are idiots all around him, which doesn't make sense.
There is such a thing as genius, and these are people who do not have a formal disability, DSM-IV-type. They may have liberal eccentricities or quirks in their personality, but they don't rise to the level of a disability.
Health, wealth, beauty, and genius are not created; they are only manifested by the arrangement of your mind-that is, by your concept of yourself, and your concept of yourself is all that you accept and consent to as true.
...in my lieder concerts, I always strove, when possible, to sing only the works of a single composer, so that the audience could be gradually drawn into a particular creative genius' way of thinking, and could follow him.
The productions of a great genius, with many lapses and inadvertences, are infinitely preferable to the works of an inferior kind of author which are scrupulously exact, and conformable to all the rules of correct writing.
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.
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each Seene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.
The meetings of the legislature at Springfield then first brought together that splendid group of young men of genius whose phenomenal careers and distinguished services have given Illinois fame in the history of the nation.
Fame often rests at first upon something accidental, and often, too, is swept away, or for a time removed; but neither genius nor glory, is conferred at once, nor do they glimmer and fall, like drops in a grotto, at a shout.
Could we know by what strange circumstances a man's genius became prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills which his father paid for.
Two actors who have different motivations and skill sets can work together and be magic. Charles Grodin and Robert DeNiro technically couldn't work more differently, and yet they made 'Midnight Run,' which is a genius comedy.
It's very unlikely you're a genius, but, if you're ready to work at it hard and you want to listen to music all the time and you want to learn about it and you want to be around the people who do it, you'll find your own way.
Chess may be the deepest, least exhaustible of pastimes, but it is nothing more. As for a chess genius, he is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.
All of a sudden, those few pages of script that he had shown me with the weird images I could visualize all of that in my brain, and I knew that there was this mad little genius at work here and I really wanted to do the film.
Mike Myers as Austin Powers makes me laugh - that was genius - and Daffy Duck makes me laugh, but I like odd behavior. I don't like hip dialogue and one-liners and all that sort of cool, sophomoric comedy. It's just not for me.
As she walked along she dramatized the night. There was about it a wild, lawless charm that appealed to a certain wild, lawless strain hidden deep in Emily’s nature—the strain of the gypsy and the poet, the genius and the fool.
I've run into certain geniuses of individualism - they are very few and far between - who live their lives completely on their own terms; they are very powerful and have a great amount of happiness. We all should aspire to that.
When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes.
A genius has perhaps scarcely ever appeared amongst the negroes, and the standard of their morality is almost universally so low that it is beginning to be acknowledged in America that their emancipation was an act of imprudence.
There's a really brilliant photographer who's deceased who in my sort of fashion and modelling days, I was fortunate enough to get to work with before he passed away, but Richard Avedon was utterly genius and creatively brilliant.
The genius of reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous electricity. One is concentrative in sparks and shocks: the other is diffuse strength; so that each disqualifies its workman for the other's duties.
For a few days I tweeted with a certain Pippa Middleton, and I really thought it was the Pippa Middleton. Then I discovered it was a fake. But the person who had thought up the concept was nice. It was kind of genius in its own way.
James Watt was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and chemist; his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius - the union of them for practical application.
What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing.
Then instead of introducing Dre as the guy from N.W.A., Jerry Heller would say Dre was my producer! Dre would come to my interviews with me - he'd come to all these places that would never have had the guy from N.W.A. Wasn't it genius?
Does research get in the way of the story? It certainly can. Anything can, given that as writers we're all geniuses at procrastination. But mostly research teaches me about the world. Which often shows me the way, in terms of the story.
The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity of the dissimilar.
The difference between talent and genius is this: while the former usually develops some special branch of our faculties, the latter commands them all. When the former is combined with tact, it is often more than a match for the latter.
Every writer, big or small, needs to say or write that the genius is always hissed at by his contemporaries. Naturally, this is not true, it happens only occasionally and often by chance. But this need within the writer is enlightening.
I used to say to my auntie, 'You throw my fu*kin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous,' and she threw the bast*rd stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fu*kin' genius or whatever I was when I was a child.
[Addressed to Berlusconi who wanted to impose himself on the editorial style of "Il Giornale"] In the art of entrepeneurship, you are certainly a genius, and I an asshole. But in the art of argument the genius is me, and you the asshole.
The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.
One will abide, and will confess that another is nobler than he, that another is richer, more handsome, and even that he is more learned, but that another is richer in reason scarcely any will confess: Rare is he who will concede genius.
Since adolescence I've had a passion for Romantic Fantastique literature, which continued with Expressionism and culminated with the genius of Kafka. It's that German thread of the metaphysic - they were looking for the beyond in dreams.
All these words we use, anybody can be a genius now. It used to be you had to have a thought no one ever had before or you had to invent a number. Now, it’s like, “Hey, I’ve got a cup in case we need another cup.” “Dude, you’re a genius!”
Don't forget that Mozart worked on commission. He almost always would write something if he knew exactly who was paying for it and where it would be performed. So you can't really separate the creation of genius from the appreciation of it.
Every day that we allow ourselves to take things for granted, every day that we allow some little physical infirmity or worldly worry to come between us and our obstinate, indignant, defiant exultation, we are weakening our genius for life.
If there ever was a misnomer, it is "exact science." Science has always been full of mistakes. The present day is no exception. And our mistakes are good mistakes; they require a genius to correct. Of course, we do not see our own mistakes.