This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the management of great affairs, has been imputed to divers causes, that need not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain writer observes be true, that when a great genius appears in the world the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) English writer and churchman

Essay on the Fates of Clergymen (1728)

Restatement of this earlier thought.