There has never been any great genius without a spice of madness. — Seneca
There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him. — Antonin Artaud
Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about. — B. F. Skinner
A genius is a mentally ill person with an audience — Tim Minchin
Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness. — Guy de Maupassant
No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness. — Aristotle
But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius. — Marston Morse
A genius always presents himself as a fool.
Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence. — Edgar Allan Poe
I'm left handed and I'm playing a right handed kit... That's why everyone thought, 'Wow, he's a genius,' but all I was doing was trying to play backwards... It's one of those mad accidents, you can't learn it. — Ringo Starr
To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius. — Alexander Herzen
What madness is it, to be expecting evil before it comes.
The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success and failure. — Masashi Kishimoto
Appalachia is still, for American musicians, a kind of fountain of youth we always go back to, the old home place to a group of artists who represent the quintessence of American independence, fortitude, genius, and madness. — Paul Burch
Obsessive devotion to creating can spark that which is called 'genius.' Smarter or more gifted? The 'madness' is the insatiable drive to discover, achieve and create. Monomania can develop into 'genius,' as the individual delves deeper into the process leaving normal parameters behind. — Paul Russo
The true genius shudders at incompleteness. — Edgar Allan Poe
Insanity And Genius Quotes
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. — Oscar Levant
As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some of their Proverbs. — William Blake
My mum is in a mental hospital. There's a fine line between genius and insanity. Winston Churchill, Mozart, John Lennon. These people all had a touch of crazy that fuelled their brilliance. They were not locked up for it like my mum. Pft. Then again, Winston Churchill never tried to kill my dad. — Christopher Titus
Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity, as we all know. — Mackenzie Phillips
Anyway, madness and genius. They're the disturbed pals of the human condition. The Bonnie and Clyde, the Thelma and Louise, the baking soda and vinegar. Insanity just walks alongside the brilliant like some creepy, insistent shadow. — Deb Caletti
The space involving insanity and genius is calculated only by good results. — Bruce Feirstein
An idiot with a plan can beat a genius without a plan.
If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. — Henry David Thoreau
The step between genius and insanity is very short. — Albert Einstein
Life is very narrow. Bring any club or company of intelligent men together again after ten years, and if the presence of some penetrating and calming genius could dispose them to frankness, what a confession of insanities would come up! — Ralph Waldo Emerson
What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. — Walter Scott
I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats. — Bram Stoker
When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity; since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree. — George Bernard Shaw
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has it limits.
Sanity is a handicap and liability if you're living in a mad world. — Anthony Burgess
I don't suffer from my insanity -- I enjoy every minute of it. — Sherrilyn Kenyon
When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? — Miguel de Cervantes
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climd a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Between madness and sanity, there is a shifting boundary. It is impossible to explain. Time slows down and you have to try to fill it. You don't have anything but solitude. — Jose Mujica
And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be. — Peter O'Toole
Sanity is very rare; every man almost and every woman has a dash of madness. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, "You are mad; you are not like us." — Anthony the Great
You will certainly grant me that neither antiquity nor whatever nation has devised a more repulsive and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating your God. This is the most disgusting dogma of Christian religion, the greatest insult to the Highest Being, the climax of madness and insanity. — Frederick the Great
Not everyone is capable of madness; and of those lucky enough to be capable, not many have the courage for it. — August Strindberg
What madness is it, to be expected evil before it comes.
Man is quite insane. He wouldn?t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen. — Michel de Montaigne
Men in particular think that they have achieved something if they can make a woman mad, particularly if she is calm and intellectual. — Martha C. Nussbaum
No amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life with its eyes shut is a kind of wild insanity. — Henry Van Dyke
Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.
To a worldly man, a God-intoxicated person will appear mad and he will laugh at him, But to the God-intoxicated man, the worldly appear insane, foolish, misled, blind. — Sathya Sai Baba
A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King. — Emily Dickinson
Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane. — Henry Miller
I’m very proud of Seungri. I worked over a year for my album, but one day YG told Seungri to make an album and he made one in just 2 weeks. Ah, maybe 3 weeks. He’s a true genius. I’m jealous of his propulsion. — G-Dragon
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. — Neville Goddard
True genius, in strategy or anywhere, lies in self-control, self-mastery, presence of mind, fluidity of thought. — Robert Greene
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. — Jonathan Swift
Atheism ... that bugbear of women and fools ... is the very top and perfection of free-thinking. It is the grand arcanum to which a true genius naturally riseth, by a certain climax or gradation of thought, and without which he can never possess his soul in absolute liberty and repose. — George Berkeley
Does it not appear to you versatility is the true and rare characteristic of that rare thing called genius-versatility and playfulness? In my mind they are both essential. — Mary Russell Mitford
Love your enemies. It makes them so damned mad.
True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success, the glorious inequality of talent, of genius. — Felix Schelling
Who knows? He [Elon Musk] is a weird guy… He is a true genius and look at the world fundamentally differently than most people do. — Charles Hoskinson
Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge. — Robert Greene
... it is not the color of the skin that makes the man or the woman, but the principle formed in the soul. Brilliant wit will shine, come from whence it will; and genius and talent will not hide the brightness of its lustre. — Maria W. Stewart
Conceit spoils the finest genius?and the great charm of all power is modesty. — Louisa May Alcott
There is nothing more common than unsuccessful men with talent. — Joe Strummer
Religion itself is without genius. There is no religious genius and no one would be permitted to distinguish between the talented and the untalented in religion. — Max Stirner
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity. — Thomas Huxley
I believe everybody in the world is born with genius-level talent. Apply yourself to whatever you’re genius at and you can do anything in the world. — Jay-Z
All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talent. — John F. Kennedy
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius. — William Blake
Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness. — Michel de Montaigne
Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. — Edith Sitwell
There is no genius free from some tincture of madness — Seneca
Madness and genius are two sides to the same coin. — John Hendy
I think you're all mad. But that's part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn't it? — Charles de Lint
Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring. When it comes down to it, I let them think what they want. If they care enough to bother with what I do, then I'm already better than them anyways. — Marilyn
From the union of power and money, from the union of power and secrecy, from the union of government and science, from the union of government and art, from the union of science and money, from the union of ambition and ignorance, from the union of genius and war, from the union of outer space and inner vacuity, the Mad Farmer walks quietly away. — Wendell Berry
Either I'm a genius or I'm mad, which is it? "No," I said, "I can't be mad because nobody's put me away; therefore I'm a genius." Genius is a form of madness and we're all that way. But I used to be coy about it, like me guitar playing. But if there's such a thing as genius - I am one. And if there isn't, I don't care. — John Lennon
Apophenia means finding pattern or meaning where others don’t. Feelings of revelation and ecstasies usually accompany it. It has some negative connotations in psychological terminology when it implies finding meaning or pattern where none exists; and some positive ones when it implies finding something important, useful or beautiful. It thus links creativity and psychosis, genius and madness. — Peter J. Carroll
Psychiatry's a young science. Yesterday's madman may be tomorrow's genius. Beethoven and Van Gogh were both a bit loopy. In my view, most madmen are remarkable. They're explorers, travelers beyond the rim of consciousness. Not surprising if they pick up a few bugs and get sick. That's all it is, madness. Mad just means sick. If you get fluid on the lungs it's pleurisy. If it's fluid on the brain, it's insanity. — Clare Boylan
Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy -- so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius. — Samuel Butler
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. — Dame Edith Sitwell
It is almost impossible to be a doctor and an honest man, but it is obscenely impossible to be a psychiatrist without at the same time bearing the stamp of the most incontestable madness: that of being unable to resist that old atavistic reflex of the mass of humanity, which makes any man of science who is absorbed by this mass a kind of natural and inborn enemy of all genius. — Antonin Artaud
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. — Jack Nance
Genius has to pass over madness and madness over genius — Salvador Dali
Often-times it's madness, not genius that moves the world forward. Who else but the mad would reach so far, stretching for the impossible and, in so doing, prove the impossible possible! — James Rollins
Now, I'm as appreciative as the next obsessive-compulsive recovering-academic of the vast riches of material becoming available online, thanks to all those Google scanners crouched in the basements of libraries around the world, madly feeding books through their machines. I download obscure tomes onto my iPad and give thanks to the dual gods Gates and Jobs, singing hymns to all the lesser pantheon of geniuses. But there's nothing like a book. — Laurie R. King
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of madness and genius quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about madness and genius to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of madness and genius quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
