45 Quotes About Brilliance

Owing to the shape of a bell curve, the education system is geared to the mean. Unfortunately, that kind of education is virtually calculated to bore and alienate gifted minds. But instead of making exceptions where it would do the most good, the educational bureaucracy often prefers not to be bothered. In my case, for example, much of the schooling to which I was subjected was probably worse than nothing. It consisted not of real education, but of repetition and oppressive socialization (entirely superfluous given the dose of oppression I was getting away from school). Had I been left alone, preferably with access to a good library and a minimal amount of high-quality instruction, I would at least have been free to learn without useless distractions and gratuitous indoctrination. But alas, no such luck. Let’s try to break the problem down a bit. The education system […] is committed to a warm and fuzzy but scientifically counterfactual form of egalitarianism which attributes all intellectual differences to environmental factors rather than biology, implying that the so-called 'gifted' are just pampered brats who, unless their parents can afford private schooling, should atone for their undeserved good fortune by staying behind and enriching the classroom environments of less privileged students. This approach may appear admirable, but its effects on our educational and intellectual standards, and all that depends on them, have already proven to be overwhelmingly negative. This clearly betrays an ulterior motive, suggesting that it has more to do with social engineering than education. There is an obvious difference between saying that poor students have all of the human dignity and basic rights of better students, and saying that there are no inherent educationally and socially relevant differences among students. The first statement makes sense, while the second does not. The gifted population accounts for a very large part of the world’s intellectual resources. As such, they can obviously be put to better use than smoothing the ruffled feathers of average or below-average students and their parents by decorating classroom environments which prevent the gifted from learning at their natural pace. The higher we go on the scale of intellectual brilliance — and we’re not necessarily talking just about IQ — the less support is offered by the education system, yet the more likely are conceptual syntheses and grand intellectual achievements of the kind seldom produced by any group of markedly less intelligent people. In some cases, the education system is discouraging or blocking such achievements, and thus cheating humanity of their benefits. Christopher Langan

We live in a highly complex, technological world — and it's not entirely obvious what's right and what's wrong in any given situation, unless you can parse the situation, deconstruct it. People just don't have the insight to be able to do that very effectively. Christopher Langan

In my opinion, defining intelligence is much like defining beauty, and I don’t mean that it’s in the eye of the beholder. To illustrate, let’s say that you are the only beholder, and your word is final. Would you be able to choose the 1000 most beautiful women in the country? And if that sounds impossible, consider this: Say you’re now looking at your picks. Could you compare them to each other and say which one is more beautiful? For example, who is more beautiful– Katie Holmes or Angelina Jolie? How about Angelina Jolie or Catherine Zeta-Jones? I think intelligence is like this. So many factors are involved that attempts to measure it are useless. Not that IQ tests are useless. Far from it. Good tests work: They measure a variety of mental abilities, and the best tests do it well. But they don’t measure intelligence itself. Marilyn Vos Savant

Just one caress became a symphony of passion, insatiable longing, an unquenchable desire to possess.. Gasps.. The sparkling touch, embrace make hard to breathe.. A mere short burst of brilliance, explosive need..forbidden sweet.. Beneath the warmth of a dancing rainbow summer sunset, slowly tuning into the magic night with the stars flooding the sapphire skies..the sacred emerald island wildlife listens to our song, played with loving fingertips, reflected in diving deep into each other's ocean eyes.. Oksana Rus

Your need to feel significant will never be met, until you can conquer your fear and manage your focus. Shannon L. Alder

When you find your passion, turn a deaf ear to the naysayers and follow your dreams. Teresa R. Funke

Spend one more day in pursuit of art that only you can produce, and somewhere, someone is envying your courage to do just that. Teresa R. Funke

I've realized I don't need to keep looking for my path. I'm already on it. I just need to trust where it leads. Teresa R. Funke

As artists, it is our job to question the rules and ask if they are relevant or outdated, necessary or arbitrary, helpful or oppressive. Teresa R. Funke

If you build a wall to separate people, there will be those who find a way around the wall, or over it, or under it, or through it. We humans are not meant to be contained, and neither are our thoughts. Teresa R. Funke

If your art is calling to you, its doing so for a reason. You are feeling a pull toward something for which your soul is yearning. Teresa R. Funke

It's ever so fun and fulfilling to be clever, but more lasting and effective to be consistent. Teresa R. Funke

Never let your goals or convictions get in the way of living your life. It's not about who dies with more, it's about who lived the most. Teresa R. Funke

In times of trouble, people need artists. We create those spaces where their own pain and worry and sadness can rest, and where their broken hearts can hope again. Teresa R. Funke

As with everything else, the more we separate ourselves from each other, the weaker we become. Teresa R. Funke

In those glorious moments when someone sees, really sees, your art and bothers to tell you so, relish it! Teresa R. Funke

Our art is never really ours. Each person who experiences it brings to it a piece of themselves and reacts to it in ways that stem from their personal struggles, beliefs, morals, and even hang-ups. Teresa R. Funke

There’s no logical connection between being smart and having money. Christopher Langan

So, how close are love and genius, really? We know that they are both mentioned far more than lived. Criss Jami

Mental illness is not a fraternity or a social club for like minds. It is its own religion to each person that has it. Their mind is their pastor, their feelings are their scriptures and their delusions are their own bible story. To break them free, is to break their faith in signs. That is why so many feel lost. Shannon L. Alder

When the Earth basks in the Sun's brilliance, you'll find me there with my arms spread wide and my face with a smile. Saim .A. Cheeda

My goal is not to upset the apple cart, but to make it more accessible. Tom Althouse

Ten thousand women marched through the streets shouting, 'We will not be dictated to, ' and went off and became stenographers. G.k. Chesterton

The miracle is that the brilliance of the miraculous can live in the blandness of the mundane. The greater miracle is that we have enough brilliance in our own blandness to see it. Craig D. Lounsbrough

The proliferation of creative power can transform the world for all of its inhabitants. Timothy Simpson

A deaf and dumb in the mist of morons is a renowed talkative among brains. Michael Bassey Johnson

Our talents are living things, we give birth to them, nourish them till they grow and become immortal. Michael Bassey Johnson

Uncommon success is found on the spiritual plane; you can't get there through common convention or following others. Hard work is not enough; many work slavishly-hard for little reward. Intelligence is insufficient; how many educated and brilliant people there are who fail utterly and completely. Goodness is not enough; how many meek and good souls are tilled into the earth like manure by demigods to fertilize their golden crops. There is something more – it is the unseen essential, and everyone has access to it. Bryant McGill

If God wants something from me, he would tell me. He wouldn't leave someone else to do this, as if an infinite being were short on time. And he would certainly not leave fallible, sinful humans to deliver an endless plethora of confused and contradictory messages. God would deliver the message himself, directly, to each and every one of us, and with such clarity as the most brilliant being in the universe could accomplish. We would all hear him out and shout "Eureka! " So obvious and well-demonstrated would his message be. It would be spoken to each of us in exactly those terms we would understand. And we would all agree on what that message was. . Richard C. Carrier

To write about him is to write about Greatness. To discuss him is todiscuss Intellectual Brilliance. To think of him is to think of Modesty, Simplicity and Lucidity. To remember him is to remember Nationalism atits finest hour. He was not one of those who merely achieved greatnessnor certainly one of those upon whom greatness was thrust-he was infact born great. Munindra Misra

Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about material substances instead of about ideas. The old civilisation talked about the sin of gluttony or excess. We talk about the Problem of Drink--as if drink could be a problem. When people have come to call the problem of human intemperance the Problem of Drink, and to talk about curing it by attacking the drink traffic, they have reached quite a dim stage of barbarism. The thing is an inverted form of fetish worship; it is no sillier to say that a bottle is a god than to say that a bottle is a devil. The people who talk about the curse of drink will probably progress down that dark hill. In a little while we shall have them calling the practice of wife-beating the Problem of Pokers; the habit of housebreaking will be called the Problem of the Skeleton-Key Trade; and for all I know they may try to prevent forgery by shutting up all the stationers' shops by Act of Parliament. . G.k. Chesterton

[He] was a brilliant man. People tend to become wary of individuals like him because their brilliance reminds them of their own mediocrity. Envy is a blind man who wants to pull out your eyes. Unknown

To observe is not to not feel–in fact, it is to put yourself at the mercy of feeling, like the child's warm skin meeting the cold air of midnight. My own children, too, have been roused from the unconsciousness of childhood; theirs too is the pain and the gift of awareness. 'I have two homes, ' my daughter said to me one evening, clearly and carefully, 'and I have no home.' To suffer and to know what it is that you suffer: how can that be measured against its much-prized opposite, the ability to be happy without knowing why? . Rachel Cusk

Some things are so silly they have a certain brilliance to them. Other things, set as standards for brilliance and therefore exalted by many who don't know why, become tarnished because of it. Criss Jami

Only a mind that is deeply stirred can utter something noble and beyond the power of others. Seneca

Oppenheimer’s theorizing was so startlingly original – so far in advance of the corroborating observations and so far off the beaten track of astrophysical research – that his colleagues’ ignorance cost him the recognition he deserved. Algis Valiunas

Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry. Michael Eric Dyson