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Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

— Herbert Beerbohm Tree Beerbohm Tree (1956)

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Intelligence

More quotes by Herbert Beerbohm Tree

A man never knows what a fool he is until he hears himself imitated by one.

People are too apt to treat God as if he were a minor royalty.

Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humour: he will always use it in evidence against you.

Beerbohm Tree (1956)

Ladies, just a little more virginity, if you don't mind.

Remembered by Alexander Woollcott in his Shouts and Murmurs (1922)

Sirs, I have tested your machine. It adds a new terror to life and makes death a long-felt want.

Beerbohm Tree (1956)

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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: Herbert Beerbohm Tree (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.