“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see."
Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted in ”Social Studies" in Globe & Mail October 4, 2006
“That’s true enough, but we must go and work in the garden.”
Candide (when reminded by Pangloss that all is for the best) in Voltaire Candide
"In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that He did not also limit his stupidity."
Konrad Adenauer, quoted at www.brainyquote.com/quotes/konrad_adenauer_121389
"'People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.' – Charles K. Kettering (1876-1958) American Engineer, Inventor"
www.yuni.com/quotes/kettering.html
“we have lost a vision of man. We are not sure how different he actually is from animal or vegetable or rock or mineral. It is partly, I think, because we have ceased trying to relate ourselves to God: we no longer even cry that God is dead; instead, we have named him an hypothesis, a dream, and turned him over to the laboratory to ‘prove.’ And because we have stopped searching for God we have stopped searching for ultimate meaning, saying there is no purpose in human existence. Hence all is absurdity, all is nothing. The more honest among those who want God ‘proved’ tend to seek uneasy solace in neo-nihilism; or, putting heart above logic, in humanism - while the less honest settle for their own brand of idol worship, sacrificing all to success or skin color or capitalism or communism or their work or their pleasure, whispering, Let’s don’t think about it.”
Lillian Smith Killers of the Dream
"'I can’t do anything about the state of the world, but I can put my own life in order....’”
Tom Rath (the main character) in Sloan Wilson The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit
“No one is exempt from talking nonsense; the misfortune is to do it solemnly.”
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.”
Elliot Carver (the villain) in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies