Quote of the day by Arthur Schopenhauer: 'Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits...'

An archer steps up to the line, pulls back the bowstring and releases an arrow that hits a bullseye two hundred yards away through thick fog. The crowd applauds the incredible skill needed to make a shot that almost nobody else could manage.Then another marksman steps forward, turns forty-five degrees away from the target range and fires an arrow into an empty part of the forest. Moments later, a target that nobody knew was hanging there falls from a high branch.“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see,” wrote the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.The difference challenges the common idea that talent and genius are simply different levels of the same ability. Talent is a quantitative advantage. It means being extremely good at working within existing rules, tools and systems. Genius is different. It is a qualitative change: the ability to see possibilities that other people do not even recognize.A lonely philosopher’s view of human abilityArthur Schopenhauer published this metaphor in the expanded 1844 edition of The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung), in Chapter 31, titled “On Genius.”In the origina...