What is crank?

Famous quotes containing the word crank:

“I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an airhole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)

“The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)