5 quotations, each verified against its source and credited to the work it comes from — the wording as Salvador Dalí wrote or said it, not as the internet passes it around.
How these quotes were checked
Salvador Dalí wrote books, gave lectures, and performed his persona in print for fifty years, so his real quotations are unusually well documented — The Secret Life, the Diary of a Genius, the interviews. A line enters this collection only when its wording is verified against those authored volumes.
One famous “Dalí” line fails the check outright, and it is documented below.
A sentence linked to Hemingway may be exact, shortened, remembered by someone else, or unsupported. Each label below explains what the available evidence actually proves.
A full-text search across Dalí's authored volumes finds no version of this sentence. It is attributed to him everywhere and cited nowhere; his documented lines about perfection say other things.
The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.
At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.
Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí.
The only difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist.
Picasso is a genius. So am I.
There is no evidence he did. The sentence appears nowhere in his authored books in a full-text search, and the attributions never cite a source.
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad,” from The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942). Its close rival opens Diary of a Genius: at six he wanted to be a cook, at seven Napoleon — “and my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”
What the record carries is sharper: after the Surrealist group expelled him, his standing answer was “The only difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist.”
In his Madrid lecture of 11 November 1951: “Picasso is a genius. So am I.” The lecture runs the parallel on — Picasso is Spanish, so is he; Picasso is a communist — “neither am I.”
From Diary of a Genius (1964): “Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí.”
By his own telling, in the opening lines of Diary of a Genius: at six a cook, at seven Napoleon — “and my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”
The sources below are the editions, archives, and full-text searches used to verify the quotations on this page. Every line was checked against one or more of them before it appeared here.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Salvador Dalí page.
Verification is the point of this collection: a quotation is listed only when its wording has been checked against the sources above, and the attribution notes record what each check found about the famous lines that failed.
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