"Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede; not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people cannot count above fourteen."
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
related: The Level Above Mine
Seeking a citation, I found the following:
To see every day how people get the name ‘genius' just as the wood-lice in the cellar the name ‘millipede' - not because they have that many feet, but because most people don't want to count to 14 - this has had the result that I don't believe anyone any more without checking.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Lichtenberg: Aphorisms & Letters (1969), 48, translated by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield.
...on this horribly-formatted website. Google Books verifies.
(P.S. Note that the original is in German.)
(Since there didn't seem to be one for this month, and I just ran across a nice quote.)
A monthly thread for posting any interesting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently on the Internet, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages.