A Quote by Arthur Conan Doyle

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Quote Topics

Genius Higher Instantly Itself Knows Mediocrity Nothing Talent Than

Quote Author

Arthur Conan Doyle
British - Writer
May 22, 1859 - July 7, 1930

The best minds come from the most unexpected faces and places. There is no image for intelligence or genius. Genius is something that cannot be seen. It cannot be produced or manufactured. It is something that even the true genius thinks is unattainable. The genius recognizes he’s just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms. Knowledge is as infinite as the universe. The man who claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing.

Suzy Kassem

The Malayalam industry is down to earth and instantly recognizes talent.

Priyamani

Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.

W. Somerset Maugham

By and large, talent is in such short supply that mediocrity can be taken for brilliance rather more than genius can go undiscovered.

Charles Saatchi

A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.

Charles Horton Cooley

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Calvin Coolidge

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.

Soren Kierkegaard

Talent wears well, genius wears itself out; talent drives a snug brougham in fact; genius, a sun-chariot in fancy.

Ouida

One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Science is the only truth and it is the great lie. It knows nothing, and people think it knows everything. It is misrepresented. People think that science is electricity, automobilism, and dirigible balloons. It is something very different. It is life devouring itself. It is the sensibility transformed into intelligence. It is the need to know stifling the need to live. It is the genius of knowledge vivisecting the vital genius.

Remy de Gourmont

Genius is answerable only to itself; it is the sole judge of the means, since it alone knows the end; thus genius must consider itself as above the law, for it is the task of genius to remake the law; moreover the man who frees himself from his time and place may take everything, hazard everything, for everything is his by right.

Honore de Balzac

Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.

John Ciardi

Talent without genius isn't much, but genius without talent is nothing whatsoever.

Paul Valery

Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it.