I have nothing to declare except my genius.
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This is one of Wilde's most famous sayings, which he is supposed to have said while passing through a customs checkpoint in New York. However, there is no contemporary evidence for the remark, and the earliest known appearance is Arthur Ransome, Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study (1912), which does not present it as a direct quote. For a detailed analysis see: Nothing To Declare.Oscar Wilde
Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. ... The theory of special genius, according to which for instance, it is supposed that a musical genius should be a fool at other subjects, confuses genius with talent. ... There are many kinds of talent, but only one kind of genius, and that is able to choose any kind of talent and master it.
Otto Weininger
When I was about twelve, I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. Either I'm a genius or I'm mad, which is it? "No," I said, "I can't be mad because nobody's put me away; therefore I'm a genius." Genius is a form of madness and we're all that way. But I used to be coy about it, like me guitar playing. But if there's such a thing as genius — I am one. And if there isn't, I don't care.
John Lennon
You are a man. Is it necessary for you to tell others that you are a man? No. But if you are living among donkeys, you would vehemently declare that you are a man. In the same way, I am God, but I have not to speak of it, because it is quite natural. Yet sometimes, I have to declare it.
Meher Baba
Ever since the French revolution there has developed a vicious, cretinizing tendency to consider a genius (apart from his work) as a human being more or less the same in every sense as other ordinary mortals. This is wrong. And if this is wrong for me, the genius of the greatest spiritual order or our day, a true modern genius, it is even more wrong when applied to those who incarnated the almost divine genius of the Renaissance, such as Raphael.
Salvador Dali
They say of us that we are an anti-Christian movement. They even say that I am an outspoken paganist.... I solemnly declare here, before the German public, that I stand on the basis of Christianity, but I declare just as solemnly that I will put down every attempt to introduce confessional matters into our Hitler Youth.
Baldur von Schirach
Wilde, Oscar
Wildeblood, Peter
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