With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities.
Churchill was one of the few men I have met who even in the flesh give me the impression of genius. George Bernard Shaw is another. It is amusing to know that each thinks the other is overrated.
Since when was genius found respectable?
No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.
The Beatles were great, but Beethoven and Mozart were phenomenal. Both will be remembered for centuries, but it will always be clear which were most in touch with the soul of humanity.
The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.
Ideologists of all kinds find a strange sort of comfort in the madness of the crowd; it confirms them in their suspicion that history, far from being made by the great mass of individuals - as Marx averred - is rather unmade by a single massive individual, a collective Other, who stands in stark contrast to you and he.
As a writer, I tend to be drawn to marginal people - writers, poet-prophets, seers, eccentrics - who embody the deeper ambivalences of their societies and bear deeper witness to their world than the famous figures we are used to celebrating, or demonizing, in our histories.
I think people who have faults are a lot more interesting than people who are perfect.
No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.