by Charles Chen

Created on: May 09, 2009   Last Updated: May 11, 2009

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." The famous quote from Thomas Alva Edison can be recited by every pupil from all over the world. And here comes our question, what is the path to success, talent or hard work? Is it stupid to ask such a question, which has been answered clearly by a man who was believed to be one of the most successful man ever in history? Isn't it obvious that Edison is exactly the most convincing example?

Well, the answer is no, even if we know that there was a famous guy named Edison had already concluded that hard work weighs much more than pure talent, even if we are all familiar with his story that he had tried one thousand kinds of materials before he finally made his great bulb lit up, we do not actually believe it. We have seen in so many cases that people just accomplished great jobs with little effort. We believe they were born to be more talented, and we are the guy who sucked just because we do not have that quality which is decided by our genes.

But is that the whole truth?

At least Edison didn't think so, nor did many other successful men in human history. While looking back on those people's extraordinary lives, most of them owe much of their success to hard work. They agree that, talent, or IQ in another way to say, is necessary but not the key factor.

One of my most admired teachers used to tell me that, the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. There's no such genius who can always come up with the best way, without even making a small mistake. Success is based on numerous trial and error. But in many cases, even if one has a high IQ score, he or she could turn out to be nobody because they just can't go through the errors, they can not bear the try!

Let's take a look at two examples, who I personally think were the two most intelligent people in history.

The first one is Leonardo Di Ser Piero Da Vinci, the great artist and scientist from Italy. He was famous for his talent in art. But most of us know more about him from Monalisa than from our science text book. Actually he was also a great contributor of the development of science in his times. He had a really wide range of interest, and he had studied in so many fields so deeply that we can not even believe they were done by a single man.

The second one is Albert Einstein, the most intelligent man in history accepted by many people. He did made the miracle of building the whole theory of relativity all by his own. The

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