Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.

I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.

If you wish to succeed in life make perseverance your bosom friend experience your wise counselor caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

How are men to be secured in any rights without instruction how to be secured in the equal exercise of those rights without equality of instruction? By instruction understand me to mean knowledge - just knowledge not talent not genius not inventive mental powers.

From the naturalistic point of view all men are equal. There are only two exceptions to this rule of naturalistic equality: geniuses and idiots.

The difference in the education of men and women must give the former great advantages over the latter even where geniuses are equal.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Man is a genius when he is dreaming.

The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius mental vigor and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

Genius is talent set on fire by courage.

Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius mental vigor and courage which it contained.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.

I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.