Curious about Intelligence: The Kinds, Uses and Scope

“I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.” - Abigail Adams

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” - Albert Einstein

“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.” - Salvador Dali

I was moved and inspired to write this week’s blog on Intelligence, because I just started a fascinating and motivating book. Even though I have just begun, I am already enthralled with How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci - Seven Steps to Genius Every Day written by Michael J. Gelb.

As Gelb points out in this Introduction and Preface, the last three decades have brought about a great deal of brain research and attention to Multiple Intelligences. In 1983, Howard Gardner, Professor of Education at Harvard wrote Frames of Minds, which listed seven Intelligences. Today, eight are now listed.

The eight are: Linguistic, Logical-mathematical, Musical, Bodily-kinesthetic, Spatial, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Naturalistic. If you are as interested in and curious about Intelligence, as I am, you might visit the following websites: click HERE to read all about Howard Gardner and HERE to find out more about the Multiple Intelligences. I even took a Learning Style Test HERE (the report is only $8.95). You will also find a link to a free assessment of your Multiple Intelligence Inventory (which I also took).

It’s time for a few of the incredible number of Intelligence quotations I found. These are the thoughts in general about Intelligence:

• “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” - Lao Tzu
• “A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence.” - Barbara Walters
• “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” - Michael Jordan
• “To lack intelligence is to be in the ring blindfolded.” - David M. Shoup
• “There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.” - Ronald Reagan
• “Without consciousness and intelligence, the universe would lack meaning.” - Clifford D. Simak
• “Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.” - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

How about another side to Intelligence - having it, keeping it, using it and not taking advantage of it?

• “Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.” - Leonardo da Vinci
• “Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.” - Thomas Szasz
• “I'm always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence.” - Alice Walker
• “Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier.” - Stanislaw Lec
• “We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.” - Bertrand Russell
• “An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.” - Laurence J. Peter
• “Many difficulties which nature throws in our way, may be smoothed away by the exercise of intelligence.” - Titus Livius (59-17 BC)
• “I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” - Antonio Gramsci

And, then there are those quotations I share with you for extra thinking and chewing this coming week:

“Action is the real measure of intelligence.” - Napoleon Hill

“Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.” - Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.” - Thomas A. Edison

Let me know what you think. And, do have an Intelligent week!