Cesare Lombroso

Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.

Cesare Lombroso (6 November, 1835 – 19 October, 1909) was an Italian criminologist and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. He is the father of Criminology or the father of modern Criminology.

Quotes

Unfortunately, goodness and honor are rather the exception than the rule among exceptional men, not to speak of geniuses.

• Unfortunately, goodness and honor are rather the exception than the rule among exceptional men, not to speak of geniuses.
  • Die Welt (1909); also in A Treasury of Jewish Quotations (1985) by Joseph L. Baron

• Genius is one of the many forms of insanity.
  • As quoted in Born under Saturn: the character and conduct of artists : a documented history from antiquity to the French Revolution (1963) by Margot Wittkower.

The Man of Genius (1891)

• Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.
  • p. x

• Klopstock was questioned regarding the meaningof a passage in his poem. He replied, "God and I both knew what it meant once; now God alone knows."
  • Pt. I, Ch. 2

• The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities.
  • Pt. II, Ch. 2

• The ignorant man always adores what he cannot understand.
  • Pt. III, Ch. 3

• "Lawsuit mania"… a continual craving to go to law against others, while considering themselves the injured party.
  • Pt. III, Ch. 3