But those who cannot take the measure of true stature diminish themselves

From Where Have All the Geniuses Gone? by Darrin M. McMahon.

A culture that prostrates before idols makes itself small. But those who cannot take the measure of true stature diminish themselves. In an age as suspicious of greatness as our own, perhaps it is time to recognize that for all the perversion of the cult of genius in the past, it did preserve a sense of wonder in the face of human possibility, an exhilarating sense of awe at being—and being transcendent—in the world. We relinquish that wonder at a cost.

and later, concluding,

Instead we are left with what we have today, the sanctimonious praise of "excellence" (how that word has been abused) and a form of intellectual celebrity that, in practice, is not far removed from the genius of popular culture. A constellation of stars, a world of fashions, an ebb and flow of trends, a new group of MacArthur fellows. No one doubts their merits, but surely not so many geniuses are created in a year, and surely not so many of them reside in the United States. In a world without a genuine appreciation of genius, this is what we get—excellence by committee and blind peer review. And with it, a nagging sense of nostalgia for a world that could stand to wonder and marvel a little more.