Best 145 quotes in «brilliance quotes» category

Don’t just see brilliance… Feel it.

Dream the impossible. See the impossible. Pursue the impossible. Achieve the impossible.

Devote yourself to living completely and sharing your unique brilliance.

Dream what others do not. Imagine what others have not. Do what others will not. Achieve what others could not.

Flawed genius is better than flawless talent.

For a world full of universities, brilliant people and clever corporations it sure is a pit of hell and sorrow for billions. What's missing?

Excellence has a loud mouth; let it speak on your behalf.

Excellence in obscurity is better than mediocrity in the spotlight.

[France] may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant.

Geniuses’ steps take you higher than talent’s leaps.

Genius is talent set on fire.

Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.

For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualised; it will never earn us bountiful sums of money or beget exemplary objects or organisations.... Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or a bicycle.

How terrible it is to recognize that one’s brilliance rests solely upon the small-mindedness of others.

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.

If we only live through the eyes of the others and don’t try to capture the vibration of our own individual experience, we may miss out the beam and brilliance of authenticity that is essential to move forward in life

If you are a musician, sing to one as if you were singing to a million. If you are a dancer, dance to one as if you were dancing to a million. If you are a performer, perform to one as if you were performing to a million.

He invented ordinary things, and I stress, ordinary. Not brilliant, just ordinary, and that's exactly what humanity needs. Brilliant inventions might be good for brilliant people, but how many brilliant people are there? On the other hand, ordinary inventions are good for everyone.

If you have a spark of genius, kindle it until it becomes a flame.

If records refuse to be broken, shatter them.

In a world full of daisies dare to be a rose.

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.

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.

Intelligence will take you to the mountaintop; wisdom will take you to the stars.

In my view, ideas and other intellectual productions are more interesting, more indicative of intelligence, and more productively debated than IQ alone.

It is at the edge of excellence that genius awaits.

It is impossible for a star to shine and not get noticed, even in the dark.

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.

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

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.

... I should take off this ridiculous hood so they can see my face and catch a glimpse at real perfection." (Vincent) "Then you'd just be an enormous man with a hump and a beautiful face," Breccan said. Vincent hissed. "And the fact remains... you do think I'm beautiful," he said as he started to leave.

It is in the darkest hour, when we are faced with our deepest most wrenching fears, that we are given the greatest strength. The choice is whether we succumb to the fear or rise with courage to face our truth and shine our brilliance as our sword of valor.

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.

Light the candle of success with the flame of excellence.

Let your work speak for itself: If poor, it will remain silent. If average, it will whisper. If good, it will talk. If great, it will shout. If genius, it will sing.

Make your mark now. Make your mark today. Make your mark forever.

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

Live so fully and so brilliantly that your pain diminishes in your aliveness.

May your smile brighten the days ahead of you May your cheer lighten up the moods of everyone around you May your face glow with joy and happiness May your laughter sparkle with a lot more frequentness May your brilliance in some way dazzle all humanity And may your presence enlighten the whole world ultimately.

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

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.

Now more than ever the world needs your brilliance, your voice, your unique imagination, and your particular genius.

One who thinks for himself is a threat to his enemies, a refuge to his acquaintances, a prize to his friends, and a gift to the world.

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

Marketing is so powerful that it can make even an extremely untalented musician a one-hundred-hits wonder.

Most of brilliant minds have impractical lives. And they still want others to follow their intellect.

No institution of learning of Ingersoll's day had courage enough to confer upon him an honorary degree; not only for his own intellectual accomplishments, but also for his influence upon the minds of the learned men and women of his time and generation. Robert G. Ingersoll never received a prize for literature. The same prejudice and bigotry which prevented his getting an honorary college degree, militated against his being recognized as 'the greatest writer of the English language on the face of the earth,' as Henry Ward Beecher characterized him. Aye, in all the history of literature, Robert G. Ingersoll has never been excelled -- except by only one man, and that man was -- William Shakespeare. And yet there are times when Ingersoll even surpassed the immortal Bard. Yes, there are times when Ingersoll excelled even Shakespeare, in expressing human emotions, and in the use of language to express a thought, or to paint a picture. I say this fully conscious of my own admiration for that 'intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought.' Ingersoll was perfection himself. Every word was properly used. Every sentence was perfectly formed. Every noun, every verb and every object was in its proper place. Every punctuation mark, every comma, every semicolon, and every period was expertly placed to separate and balance each sentence. To read Ingersoll, it seems that every idea came properly clothed from his brain. Something rare indeed in the history of man's use of language in the expression of his thoughts. Every thought came from his brain with all the beauty and perfection of the full blown rose, with the velvety petals delicately touching each other. Thoughts of diamonds and pearls, rubies and sapphires rolled off his tongue as if from an inexhaustible mine of precious stones. Just as the cut of the diamond reveals the splendor of its brilliance, so the words and construction of the sentences gave a charm and beauty and eloquence to Ingersoll's thoughts. Ingersoll had everything: The song of the skylark; the tenderness of the dove; the hiss of the snake; the bite of the tiger; the strength of the lion; and perhaps more significant was the fact that he used each of these qualities and attributes, in their proper place, and at their proper time. He knew when to embrace with the tenderness of affection, and to resist and denounce wickedness and tyranny with that power of denunciation which he, and he alone, knew how to express.

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.

Passion takes you to the mountain foot; talent takes you to the mountaintop; brilliance takes you to the sky; genius takes you to the stars.

Renounce poor work. Shun trivial work. Entertain respectable work. Welcome superior work. Honor transcendent work.