Quote #0
He is the only genius with an IQ of 85.
Gore Vidal
About This Quote
In a 1975 interview, Gore Vidal was asked directly about Andy Warhol’s intelligence. Vidal replied with a quip framing Warhol as a “genius” while assigning him a low IQ number, then elaborated that he did not intend it purely as an insult and discussed Warhol’s role as a barometer of culture and modern art.
Interpretation
The line is a cutting, paradoxical compliment: Vidal suggests Warhol’s impact and originality can coexist with (or even be aided by) a cultivated simplicity or anti-intellectual persona. The joke’s force comes from pairing the prestige of “genius” with a deliberately deflating IQ figure.
Extended Quotation
“I have said of him, and it has been much quoted, that he is the only genius with an IQ of 85.”
Variations
He is the only genius with an IQ of 60.
He’s the only genius with an IQ of 6.
Andy was the only genius he had ever met with an IQ of 2.
