Creativity Quote by Daniel Johns

Daniel Johns is doing something quietly radical here: puncturing the two most addictive myths in modern culture, genius and idiocy. Pop life runs on extremes. Algorithms boost hot takes, celebrity profiles crown “visionaries,” comment sections hunt for “morons.” By insisting “none of us are really dumb and none of us are really smart,” Johns refuses the tribal sorting hat. It’s an anti-ranking statement from someone who’s spent a career being ranked.

The line works because it sounds like shrugging, but it’s actually a boundary. “Really” shows the trick: he’s not denying that people are skilled or clueless in particular moments; he’s rejecting intelligence as a permanent identity. That’s a musician’s lived critique of the way audiences freeze artists into one story - prodigy, sellout, tortured genius - and then punish them for changing.

“We’re in the middle” lands as both humility and self-defense. Middle isn’t mediocrity; it’s the messy human zone where most people live most of the time: capable, inconsistent, influenced, learning. Coming from Johns, whose public arc includes massive success and intense scrutiny, it reads like a bid for breathable air. If nobody is “really smart,” then no one is required to be infallible. If nobody is “really dumb,” then no one is disposable.

The subtext is a plea to trade the dopamine of judgment for the slower work of understanding. It’s also a subtle rebuke to a culture that confuses confidence with intelligence, volume with truth, and perfection with worth.