"It troubled him that his acceptance by others appeared to derive from his talents rather than from his qualities as a person." - referring to Beethoven
"Had it not been for the constant assurance of another's presence, I could not have endured the loneliness of my work." - Seymour Bernstein
"Success is not measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has encountered, and the courage with which he maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds." - Charles Lindbergh
"Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools." - Napoleon
"The surest way to corrupt a young man is to teach him to esteem more highly those who think alike than those who think differently." - George Santayana
"I don't see what's so wrong with having a whole lot of voices in my head. They're all smart, funny, and have good ideas." - David Borenstein
"If you value your gifts, you will act like a genius even if you cannot be one." - Seymour Bernstein
"Sometimes you have to let the idiots be wrong in peace."
"Those who know do not say; those who say do not know." - Lao-tzu
"I'm unique, just like everybody else."
"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." Goethe
"Willingness to see ourselves as we really are, not the exercise of the intellect, is the key."
"If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction. On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is also a psychological interaction. The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so friendly. The crucial point is if you can tell which is which." - Dolph Sharp, "
"The only real freedom a human being can ever know is doing what you ought to do because you want to do it."
"I have opinions of my own - strong opinions - but I don't always agree with them." - George Bush
"Just because I am doing something differently from the way you would do it does not mean I am doing it wrong."
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that." -G. H. Hardy
"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer." -Henry David Thoreau
"If I wanted your opinion I would give it to you. "
"Never try to make anyone like yourself - you know and God knows, that one of you is enough." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I never guess. It is destructive to logic." - Sherlock Holmes
"Look upon your talent as something uniquely yours, and develop it." - Seymour Bernstein
"I suppose that we must learn that to be gifted is not contingent upon how many people care, only on if you care to do all you can, when you can, to the best of your abilities, regardless of the social consequences." - Robert Kurzendoerfer
"And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all." - Socrates
"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing." - Socrates
"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher." - Socrates
"Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued" - Socrates
"The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be." - Socrates
"The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them." - Socrates
"The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear." - Socrates
"True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing." - Socrates
"Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great." - Comte DeBussy-Rabutin
"All our young lives we search for someone to love. We choose partners, change partners... all the while wondering if there's someone, somewhere, searching for us." - The Wonder Years
"Close friends love you for who you are, not what they want you to be." - Ted Rall
"Don't you understand what the means when you have that music inside you, what comes out? People say, 'Well, I can't carry a note, I can't sing, I'm tone deaf.' But nobody's tone deaf. All it takes is just love, because in the final analysis, love is power. That's where the power's at. And you want to tell me that you gave it to him, but I know different, 'cause I'm a musician. And that's really all there is to that." - Mike Nesmith
"Hold a friend's hand through times of trial, let her find love through a hug and a smile; But also know when it is time to let go-- For each and every one of us must learn to grow." - Sharon A. Heilbrunn
"Immature love says, "I love you because I need you." Mature love says, "I need you because I love you." - Erich Fromm
"In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love, you want the other person." - Margaret Anderson
"Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence of it in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. It would not leave them narrow-minded and bigoted." - Thoreau
"Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved." - Barbara Johnson
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." - Thoreau
"No friend like music when the last word's spoken and every pleading is a plea in vain; no friend like music when the heart is broken, to mend its wings and give it flight again." - Daniel Whitehead
"Through my music, I can let my emotions come out." - Celine Dion
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher." - Ambrose Bierce
"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." - Robert McCloskey
"Gifted children not only think differently from their peers, they also feel differently." - Linda Silverman
"[Gifted] is not a matter of degree but of a different quality of experiencing: vivid, absorbing, penetrating, encompassing, complex, commanding - a way of being quiveringly alive." - M. Piechowski
"In the ordinary elementary school situation, children of IQ 140 waste half their time. Those above IQ 170 waste practically all their time. With little to do, how can these children develop powers of sustained effort, respect for the task, or habits of steady work?" - L. Hollingworth
"Giftedness is a greater awareness, a greater sensitivity, and a greater ability to understand and transform perceptions into intellectual and emotional experiences." - Annemarie Roper
"Giftedness is that precious endowment of potentially outstanding abilities which allows a person to interact with the environment with remarkably high levels of achievement and creativity."
"Talented tends to be used when referring to a particular strength or ability of a person. Thought should be given to whether the talent is truly a gift or is, rather, an ability that has become a highly developed skill through practice."
"No matter how gifted, children do not develop their gifts without a parent or surrogate parent behind them encouraging, stimulating, and pushing. But the parents do not create the gift. The children are usually pushing the parents, sending out clear signals of their need for a stimulating environment. Parents try to accomodate." - Ellen Winner
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Older children are not always the mental equivalents of young gifted children, since gifted children are not just children who develop more quickly than normal, but also ones who develop and think differently from others. Older children may not share the gifted child's intensity of interests and love of challenge." - Ellen Winner
"Precocity unavoidably complicates the problem of social adjustment.The child of eight years with a mentality of twelve or fourteen is faced with a situation almost inconceivably difficult. In order to adjust normally such a child has to have an exceptionally well-balanced personality and be well nigh a social genius." - Lewis Terman
"The term "peer" does not, in essence, mean people of the same age, but refers to individuals who can interact at an equal level around issues of common interest." - W. C. Roedell
""Normal" is a setting on a clothes washer."
"Normality is an ideal fiction. It doesn't exist. It is something we seek after all our lives." - Sigmund Freud
"Normality is characterized by strength of character, the capacity to deal with conflicting emotions, the ability to experience pleasure without conflict and the ability to love." - Melanie Klein
"Normality is the ability to learn by experience, to be flexible, and to adapt to a changing environment." - Laurence Kubie
"Normality is the ability to achieve insight into one's self, an ability that is never fully accomplished." - R. E. Money-Kryle
"To have the intelligence of an adult and the emotions of a child combined in a childish body is to encounter certain difficulties. It follows that (after babyhood) the younger the child, the greater the difficulties, and the adjustment becomes easier with every additional year of age. The years between four and nine are probably the most likely to be beset with the problems mentioned." - L. S. Hollingworth
""Normal" childhood behavior is that which conforms to the expectations of the majority in a given society or culture at a given point in time. The definition of "abnormal" behavior arises from what the majority of adults consider inappropriate in form, frequency, or intensity. The criteria for such judgements are often nebulous and often arise out of the prejudices and biases of the adults." - Melvin Lewis
"...they dyed one of the monkeys pink and placed it back in the tribe. The other monkeys attacked it so viciously that they had to race to its rescue before it was killed....we all learn to wear our Brown Monkey suits to avoid being attacked."