Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Quotations that resonate with gifted people

Along the light-hearted and entertaining lines of threads for collecting anecdotes on parenting gifted kids or
things gifted kids do ... this thread might collect a roundup of quotations that resonate with gifted people.

Several members have great quotes in their forum signatures.

Beyond those, the first quote I'll offer is inspired by the extensive Book Recommendations on the forum.

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
― Anne Tyler (author, The Accidental Tourist)

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

--Oscar Wilde

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.


Oops, sorry, wrong thread! It's very hot here today.

There's always the apocryphal - nothing to declare except my genius also, 'all of us are in the gutter but some of us are gazing at the stars'

“Never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.”

― Winston Churchill

(I saw it paraphrased as "I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.")

Life is better when I remember this sentiment.

Arthur Schopenhauer: “Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”

“I suppose flattery hurts no one, that is, if he doesn’t inhale.” — Adlai Stevenson

And like ConnectingDots, I have a mantra that helps me though many a moment: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." It's amazing how many problems disappear when people (including me) stop assuming it's all about them, and therefore the other guy did it on purpose.

"There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

- Tigerle

No, that was Rat! Or Mole? Sorry, I already said, it's just SO hot here today, my brain is barely turning over.

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck.”

-Robert Heinlein

Thanks for adding an attribution... without citation a "quote" may be considered plagiarism. However, this quotation is actually from the character Water Rat, in the often-recommended children's book The Wind in the Willows.