A Quote by William James

Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none.

William James

Quote Topics

Capacity Genius Lesser Men None Relationships See Seeing

Quote Author

William James
American - Philosopher
January 11, 1842 - August 26, 1910

In science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it. ... In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius; in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.

Bertrand Russell

He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it.

Leo Tolstoy

Talent is able to achieve what is beyond other people's capacity to achieve, yet not what is beyond their capacity of apprehension; therefore it at once finds its appreciators. The achievement of genius, on the other hand, transcends not only others' capacity of achievement, but also their capacity of apprehension; therefore they do not become immediately aware of it. Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target, as far as which others cannot even see.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The modern mind always tends to reduce the greater to the lesser rather than seeing the lesser as reflecting the greater.

Peter Kreeft

Genius: The capacity to see and to express what is simple, simply!

Bruce Lee

Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.

William Saroyan

None of the male characters are as powerful or as interesting as the four central female characters. The men work best as representations of the current stage of a particular female’s psyche. The men function as catalysts, and are certainly important to the development of the story, but the relationships are not the goal. I do not see romance as being what’s central to the success of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS.

Norman Buckley

The history of Rome presents various men of greater genius than Scipio Aemilianus, but none equalling him in moral purity, in the utter absence of political selfishness, in generous love of his country, and none, perhaps, to whom destiny has assigned a more tragic part.

Theodor Mommsen

Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.

Ezra Pound

I regret that I must so continually use the word genius, as if that should apply only to a caste as well defined from those below as income-tax payers are from the untaxed. The word genius was very probably invented by a man who had small claims on it himself; greater men would have understood better what to be a genius really was, and probably they would have come to see that the word could be applied to most people. Goethe said that perhaps only a genius is able to understand a genius.

Otto Weininger

Be assured that, although men of eminent genius have been guilty of all other vices, none worthy of more than a secondary name has ever been a gamester. Either an excess of avarice or a deficiency of what, in physics, is called excitability, is the cause of it; neither of which can exist in the same bosom with genius, with patriotism, or with virtue.

Walter Savage Landor

Reason is the power or capacity whereby we see or detect logical relationships among propositions.

Alvin Plantinga

Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist.

Thomas M. Disch

Power in organizations is the capacity generated by relationships. It is an energy that comes into existence through relationships.

Margaret J. Wheatley

It could be argued that all leadership is appreciative leadership. It’s the capacity to see the best in the world around us, in our colleagues, and in the groups we are trying to lead. It’s the capacity to see the most creative and improbable opportunities in the marketplace. It’s the capacity to see with an appreciative eye the true and the good, the better and the possible.