A sufficient touch of genius

I don’t think much of myself as a synthesist…I would like to have been a synthesist, but I am acutely aware that many of my characteristics are second-rate. I haven’t quite got the memory, nor the integrating ability, nor the physical strength, nor the strength of character to do the job. I am not depressed about it, but I know my own shortcomings. I am sufficiently brilliant and sufficiently imaginative to realize acutely just how superficial my acquaintance with the world is and to know that I have not the health, ambition, or years remaining to me to accomplish what I would like to accomplish…I have just sufficient touch of genius to know that I am not a proper genius—and I am not much interested in second prize. In the meantime I expect to have quite a lot of fun and do somewhat less constructive work than I might, if I tried as hard as I could. That last is not quite correct. I simply don’t have the ambition to try as hard as I might, nor quite the health. But I do have fun!

—Robert A. Heinlein, in a letter to John W. Campbell