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Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered — either by themselves or by others. But for the Civil War, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman and Sheridan would not have been discovered, nor have risen into notice.

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Intelligence

More quotes by Mark Twain

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

Biographies are but clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

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Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.

Socrates

Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005)

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël De l’Allemagne [Germany (1813)

Like every 'intellectual', a philosophy teacher is a petty bourgeois. When he opens his mouth, it is petty-bourgeois ideology that speaks: its resources and ruses are infinite.

Louis Althusser Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mark Twain (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.