Giftedness Quotes

“May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.”
― Minnie Louise Haskins, The Gate of the Year

“But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“She has man's brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me when He made that so good combination.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“We find that at present the human race is divided into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become 'politicians'; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly outnumbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics, or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off under the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare. It is pleasant to have command, observes Sancho Panza, even over a flock of sheep, and that is why the politicians raise their banners. It is, moreover, the same thing for the sheep whatever the banner. If it is democracy, then the nine knaves will become members of parliament; if fascism, they will become party leaders; if communism, commissars. Nothing will be different, except the name. The fools will be still fools, the knaves still leaders, the results still exploitation. As for the wise man, his lot will be much the same under any ideology. Under democracy he will be encouraged to starve to death in a garret, under fascism he will be put in a concentration camp, under communism he will be liquidated.”
― T.H. White, The Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once & Future King

“...simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.... A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist." How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

“He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

“Owing to the shape of a bell curve, the education system is geared to the mean. Unfortunately, that kind of education is virtually calculated to bore and alienate gifted minds. But instead of making exceptions where it would do the most good, the educational bureaucracy often prefers not to be bothered.

In my case, for example, much of the schooling to which I was subjected was probably worse than nothing. It consisted not of real education, but of repetition and oppressive socialization (entirely superfluous given the dose of oppression I was getting away from school). Had I been left alone, preferably with access to a good library and a minimal amount of high-quality instruction, I would at least have been free to learn without useless distractions and gratuitous indoctrination. But alas, no such luck.

Let’s try to break the problem down a bit. The education system […] is committed to a warm and fuzzy but scientifically counterfactual form of egalitarianism which attributes all intellectual differences to environmental factors rather than biology, implying that the so-called 'gifted' are just pampered brats who, unless their parents can afford private schooling, should atone for their undeserved good fortune by staying behind and enriching the classroom environments of less privileged students.

This approach may appear admirable, but its effects on our educational and intellectual standards, and all that depends on them, have already proven to be overwhelmingly negative. This clearly betrays an ulterior motive, suggesting that it has more to do with social engineering than education. There is an obvious difference between saying that poor students have all of the human dignity and basic rights of better students, and saying that there are no inherent educationally and socially relevant differences among students. The first statement makes sense, while the second does not.

The gifted population accounts for a very large part of the world’s intellectual resources. As such, they can obviously be put to better use than smoothing the ruffled feathers of average or below-average students and their parents by decorating classroom environments which prevent the gifted from learning at their natural pace. The higher we go on the scale of intellectual brilliance – and we’re not necessarily talking just about IQ – the less support is offered by the education system, yet the more likely are conceptual syntheses and grand intellectual achievements of the kind seldom produced by any group of markedly less intelligent people. In some cases, the education system is discouraging or blocking such achievements, and thus cheating humanity of their benefits.”
― Christopher Langan

“Within the universe of the extraordinary, those qualities we designate to human concepts of gender are often shared, exchanged, or even completely obliterated. Because of this mixture of traits, these twins called Genius and Madness often appear to be the same thing. They both have a tendency to blur the lines of what we call norms, or established reality. They both, when we study that grand tapestry known as history and modern-day society, tend to stand out in much bolder relief than other figures.
-- from Dancing with Madness, Dancing with Genius”
― Author-Poet Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“A psychic reading is not just about career opportunities, good fortune or meeting tall, dark strangers. It is a sacred portal to manifesting your true destiny.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other kind of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world’s champions.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

“I usually found so-called "small talk" boring. I like "large talk", which is more about theories and concepts, mixed with facts and known quantities.”
― Holly Goldberg Sloan, Counting by 7s

“Those for whom things came easily usually made less of an effort, not more.”
― David McCullough, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

“To be envied for your giftedness is better than to be accepted for your untalentedness.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“Talent silences your competition; genius deafens them.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“He gifted the people He made with an echo of His creative power.”
― Sharon Hinck, Hidden Current

“0 true and heavenly grace, without which our own merits are nothing, and our natural gifts of no account! Neither arts nor riches, beauty nor strength, genius nor eloquence have any value in Your eyes, Lord, unless allied to grace. For the gifts of nature are common to good men and bad alike, but grace or love are Your especial gift to those whom You choose, and those who are sealed with this are counted worthy of life everlasting.”
― Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

“It's your difference that sets you apart not your similarity, stand out!”
― Bernard Kelvin Clive

“In my opinion, defining intelligence is much like defining beauty, and I don’t mean that it’s in the eye of the beholder. To illustrate, let’s say that you are the only beholder, and your word is final. Would you be able to choose the 1000 most beautiful women in the country? And if that sounds impossible, consider this: Say you’re now looking at your picks. Could you compare them to each other and say which one is more beautiful? For example, who is more beautiful— Katie Holmes or Angelina Jolie? How about Angelina Jolie or Catherine Zeta-Jones? I think intelligence is like this. So many factors are involved that attempts to measure it are useless. Not that IQ tests are useless. Far from it. Good tests work: They measure a variety of mental abilities, and the best tests do it well. But they don’t measure intelligence itself.”
― Marilyn Vos Savant

“Your inner gifts and passions are your gifts to the world. Let the world bask in your authentic lit up glory.”
― Hiral Nagda

“Soon she noted that teachers in subjects besides gym didn't report her if she cut. They were happy not to have her there: her intelligence made her a problem. It demanded attention and rushed their lesson plans forward.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“If you try to cultivate your talents in someone else’s shadow, they might wilt.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“Being gifted means facing the next level of depth without ever being repulsed by the curse that comes with the magic of being different.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones

“Polly had a gift for baking pies, and she poured her heart and soul into every one she made.”
― Sarah Weeks, Pie

“Like the sand of the earth, your gifts are countless, and some are stepping on theirs without knowing.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“I can swallow an "F" on the science fair project if that happens. I'm proud of my machine and it's more important to me to show what I can do than to get a good grade for it.”
― Richard Roberts

“I can swallow an "F" on the science fair project if that happens. I'm proud of my machine and it's more important to me to show what I can do than to get a good grade for it.”
― Richard Roberts, Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain

“Those members who are more gifted have a job: to equip and encourage the less gifted believers to do the work of building up. Today's system of clergy and laity, where a few believers do all the teaching and preaching but the majority stay passive year after years has not (and does not) equip believers to do what the clergies are doing; therefore they cannot build up the body of Christ. What should happen is that after receiving the equipping from the more gifted ministers, all of those saints would go and preach the gospel, teach the truth, and meet in fellowship with all other believers themselves. This would directly build up the body of Christ.”
― Henry Hon, ONE: Unfolding God's Eternal Purpose from House to House

“The gift of clairvoyance is not for the faint of heart.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Oneironaut’s Diary

“To love art and to be good at it is to be condemned to a lifetime of creating quality art.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson , The Oneironaut’s Diary

“I hate when people say they are not creative. That destructive self-denial keeps them trapped within the confines of a false bubble of protection. What they are doing is attempting to not feel the judgement of others and to not have their feelings hurt. Just like giftedness, everyone has a degree of, and an area in which, they are either more gifted or more creative than the average person. Believing in your abilities is the first step in overcoming this fear.”
― Jeff Keene II