James Lipton Quotes

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Humans are very imaginative animals.

There is no off position on the genius switch.

Most geniuses are weird.

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius - the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.

True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.

Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.

Imagination is but another name for super intelligence.

There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'

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

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

You can't hang around geniuses forever because they end up taking everything you've got. That's why they're the genius and you're not.

It's like that Simpsons joke - they're filming a cow in a movie and they go, 'OK, we'll tape a bunch of cats together to make a cow', and it's like, 'Why don't you just use a cow?'. For some reason that is novel - like, 'Oh, my guitar sounds like a piano and now if I can just get my piano to sound like my guitar'.

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

It is almost a rule that the more complex a man is, the simpler his billing. A person with a retrospective ability gone rampant often would be called an historian. Similarly, one to whom reality doesn't seem to make sense gets dubbed a philosopher.

I'm a genius.

Genius doesn't always come in neat packages.

Every one of you is a super genius if you just focus your common sense.