The Hidden Habits of Genius Quotes

“Apposite here is a saying attributed to Einstein: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer cleverly made this point in 1819: “A person of talent hits a target that no one else can hit; a person of genius hits a target that no one else can see.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Jack Ma recalls saying to his son in 2015, “You don’t need to be in the top three in your class, being in the middle is fine, so long as your grades aren’t too bad. Only this kind of person [a middle-of-the-road student] has enough free time to learn other skills.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Oprah Winfrey said in a Harvard commencement speech in 2013, “There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age,” said the novelist Aldous Huxley.22”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“On the other hand, in a famous “genius test” conducted at Stanford by Lewis Terman and colleagues from the 1920s into the 1990s, a cohort of 1,500 youngsters with IQs over 135 ultimately failed to produce a single genius.48”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Steve Jobs was quoted in Business Week as saying “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“First, at the outset, the Berlin psychologists failed to test students for natural musical ability. They did not compare apples to apples but rather compared the talented to the truly gifted. Extraordinary natural ability makes practice fun and easy, encouraging the participant to want to do more.24 Parents and peers tend to be impressed by those to whom things come effortlessly, and they offer praise, thereby strengthening the positive feedback loop. Ericsson and company have confused cause and effect. Practice is a result. The initial catalyst is the natural gift.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg once said “Optimists tend to be successful. And pessimists tend to be right”

If you think something will be terrible and it’s going to fail, Then You will look for the data points to prove you right. And you will find them. That’s what pessimists do.

But if you think something’s possible then you’ll find a way to make it work.

Finding that way to make it work is the genius’s mission, passion, perhaps compulsion obsession.

Genius or plotter, we all need a mission we think we can accomplish.

No matter how crazy or maladjusted it may seem, simply having that mission helps keep us alive.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit - Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Some of the most creative scientific achievements have been accomplished by men who, trained in one field, enter upon another.”27 You need to cross-train.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Every human needs an activity with a salutary forward trajectory. Even if what you are creating is insignificant to others, thinking that it is important can be a lifesaver.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“If you want to succeed, get some enemies.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit - Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“I don’t care so much about making my fortune, as I do getting ahead of the other fellows.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“As Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said in 2017, “Optimists tend to be successful, and pessimists tend to be right. . . . If you think that something’s going to be terrible and it’s going to fail, then you’re going to look for the data points that prove you right. And you’ll find them. That’s what pessimists do. . . . But if you think that something is possible, then you’re going to try to find a way to make it work.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Genius is only childhood recovered at will.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Washing machines, vacuums, drills, pumps, and electric fans, among other things, are still powered by Tesla’s perambulatory insight.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“But a caveat for all creative movers: although the place of activity does not matter, the pace does. Increasing the speed of the walk from seventeen-minute miles to twelve-minute miles, or the run from ten-to eight-minute miles, for example, will cause the average brain to shift out of a relaxed mode and into one focused on the mechanics of walking or running.28 Thus, if you are on an exercise treadmill, ignore all the electronic monitors; if you are outside, ditch the Fitbits; on the road, focused concentration is the enemy of creativity.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“The avid walker Henry David Thoreau said in 1851, “The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“The son of Mark Twain recounted that his father paced while he worked: “Some of the time when dictating, Father walked the floor . . . then it always seemed as if a new spirit had flown into the room.”24 Bill Gates is a pacer, too. “It helps him organize his mind and see what others can’t see,” says his wife, Melinda.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“AFTER OBSESSING OVER THE RELATIONSHIP OF ALL KNOWN CHEMICAL elements in 1869, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev fell asleep, and the solution came to him: the structure of the periodic table.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Lillian Ross, who often wrote about Robin Williams in The New Yorker, said this about the comedian in 2018: “Robin was a genius, and genius doesn’t produce normal men next door who are good family men and look after their wives and children. Genius requires its own way of looking at and living in the world, and it isn’t always compatible with conventional ways of living.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“But his sister, Nannerl, in a short biography in 1800, defended Mozart’s memory, saying “It is certainly easy to understand that a great genius, who is preoccupied with the abundance of his own ideas, and who soars from earth to heaven with amazing speed, is extremely reluctant to lower himself to noticing and dealing with mundane affairs.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Should Shakespeare have stayed home in Stratford-on-Avon to help rear his family and not have abandoned them for London, the city that made him?”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Edison said, “Restlessness is discontent, and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man, and I will show you a failure.”35”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“In Shakespeare’s time only about .8 percent of the world’s population could speak English; today about 20 percent can. Shakespeare was lucky: a rising tide lifted his posthumous boat.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Oscar Levant: “What the world needs is more geniuses with humility. There are so few of us left.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Albert Einstein: “To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“Benjamin Franklin: “If we don’t all hang together we surely will all hang separately.” “I probably should be proud of my humility.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“In the 1920s, a tech engineer’s “half-life of knowledge” was thirty-five years; in the 1960s, it was a decade; and today it is five years at most.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness

“My curiosity is interfering with my work!” Einstein lamented in 1915 while trying to finalize his Theory of General Relativity.”
― Craig Wright, The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness