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It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
Gertrude Stein
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Genius often requires patience and the willingness to let ideas develop over time.

This quote by Gertrude Stein suggests that the process of becoming a genius or achieving greatness is not just about active work but also involves periods of quiet contemplation and seemingly unproductive time. It emphasizes that real creativity and insight often arise from moments of doing nothing, allowing the mind to wander and nurture thoughts until they grow into profound ideas.

Themes

GeniusCreativityPatienceContemplationIdeas

In practice

Example use cases

In a motivational speech about the importance of creativity and downtime.

More from Gertrude Stein

. . . money . . . is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel, animals feel, and vice versa, but animals do not know about money.
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The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.
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If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.
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The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.
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I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods.
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It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.
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