Howard Gardner > Quotes

“I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place”
― Howard Gardner

“Stories are the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal”
― Howard Gardner

“Perhaps, indeed, there are no truly universal ethics: or to put it more precisely, the ways in which ethical principles are interpreted will inevitably differ across cultures and eras. Yet, these differences arise chiefly at the margins. All known societies embrace the virtues of truthfulness, integrity, loyalty, fairness; none explicitly endorse falsehood, dishonesty, disloyalty, gross inequity. (Five Minds for the Future, p136)”
― Howard Gardner

“While we may continue to use the words
smart and stupid, and while IQ tests may
persist for certain purposes, the monopoly
of those who believe in a single general
intelligence has come to an end. Brain
scientists and geneticists are documenting
the incredible differentiation of human capacities, computer programmers are creating systems that are intelligent in different ways, and educators are freshly acknowledging that their students have distinctive strengths and weaknesses.”
― Howard Gardner, Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century

“Creativity begins with an affinity for something. It’s like falling in love.”
― Howard Gardner

“Part of the maturity of the sciences is an appreciation of which questions are best left to other disciplinary approaches.”
― Howard Gardner

“When Einstein had thought through a problem, he always found it necessary to formulate this subject in as many different ways as possible and to present it so that it would be comprehensible to people accustomed to different modes of thought and with different educational preparations.”
― Howard Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi

“It is important for leaders to know their stories; to get them straight; to communicate them effectively, particularly to those who are in the thrall of rival stories; and, above all, to embody in their lives the stories that they tell.”
― Howard E. Gardner, Leading Minds: An Anatomy Of Leadership

“Discover your difference—the asynchrony with which you have been blessed or cursed—and make the most of it.”
― Howard E. Gardner, Extraordinary Minds: Portraits Of 4 Exceptional Individuals And An Examination Of Our Own Extraordinariness

“Until now, most schools in most cultures have stressed a certain combination of linguistic and logical intelligences. Beyond question that combination is important for mastering the agenda of school, but we have gone too far in ignoring the other intelligences. By minimizing the importance of other intelligences within and outside of schools, we consign many students who fail to exhibit the "proper" blend to the belief that they are stupid, and we do not take advantage of ways in which multiple intelligences can be exploited to further the goals of school and the broader culture.”
― Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think And How Schools Should Teach

“All children everywhere will become more skilled in those pursuits that engage their interests and their efforts and that are valued by adults and peers in their environment. Skill develops not only in areas of vocation and avocation but also in the simple activities of living—telling stories, estimating large numbers, handling disputes, instructing a younger person. Which areas show the most improvement, and how rapidly the improvement occurs, will reflect the accidents of culture and individual, but a steady improvement, at least for a while, can be counted upon.”
― Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think And How Schools Should Teach

“And Einstein stood out among natural scientists in his abiding curiosity about children's minds. He had once declared that we know all the physics that we will ever need to know by the age of three.”
― Howard Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi

“Extraordinary individuals are distinguished less by their impressive “raw powers” than by their ability to identify their strengths and then to exploit them.”
― Howard E. Gardner, Extraordinary Minds: Portraits Of 4 Exceptional Individuals And An Examination Of Our Own Extraordinariness

“Einstein was remarkable for his powers of concentration; he could work uninterruptedly for hours and even days on the same problem. Some of the topics that interested him remained on his mind for decades. For relaxation he turned to music and to sailing, but often his work would continue during these moments as well; he usually had a notebook in his pocket so that he could jot down any idea that came to him. Once, after the theory of relativity had been put forth, he confessed to his colleague Wolfgang Pauli, "For the rest of my life I want to reflect on what light is." It is perhaps not entirely an accident that a focus on light is also the first visual act of the newborn child.”
― Howard Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi

“Few things in life are as enjoyable as when we concentrate on a difficult task, using all our skills, knowing what has to be done.”
― Howard Gardner, Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet

“if you think you know what is going on, you haven’t got a clue about what’s going on.”
― Howard E. Gardner, Extraordinary Minds: Portraits Of 4 Exceptional Individuals And An Examination Of Our Own Extraordinariness

“Einstein did not seek loneliness, but unlike Freud, he did not find it a threat. He was quite happy to be on his own from earliest life and did not crave companionship. This lack of craving for another person may well explain why neither of his marriages was a success and why his relations to his two sons were also unsatisfactory. In working out problems, Einstein once recalled, "I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of quiet life stimulates the creative mind." He went on to comment, with some nostalgia: "There are certain callings in our modern organization which entail such an isolated life without making a great claim on bodily and intellectual effort. I think of such occupations as the service [sic] in lighthouses and lightships.”
― Howard Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi

“He knows everything but he lacks inexperience.”
― Howard E. Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, G

“The less a person understands his own feelings, the more he will fall prey to them. The less a person understands the feelings, the responses, and the behavior of others, the more likely he will interact inappropriately with them and therefore fail to secure his proper place in the world.”
― Howard Gardner

“Jean Monnet: “I regard every defeat as an opportunity.”
― Howard Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, G

“The cause of this state of affair is undoubtedly complex. In my Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed (2011), I argue that the challenge to truth comes from three complementary sources: (l) increased knowledge about the wide range of cultures around the globe, many of which hold apparently incompatible views about the world; (2) the postmodern critique of such traditional notions as truth, according to which claims to truth are seen as simple assertions of power; and (3) the human tendency, particularly during adolescence and early adulthood, to adopt relativistic stances (“you’ve got the right to your opinion, just like I have the right to my opinion”). Whatever the relative contributions of these and other factors, it seems clear that leadership becomes more difficult when everyone’s story is considered equally valid, independent of corroborating evidence.”
― Howard E. Gardner, Leading Minds: An Anatomy Of Leadership

“By introducing these elements at the outset, I wish to stress that all creative activity grows, first, out of the relationships between an individual and the objective world of work and, second, out of the ties between an individual and other human beings.”
― Howard E. Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, G

“Extraordinary individuals fail often and sometimes dramatically. Rather than giving up, however, they are challenged to learn from their setbacks and to convert defeats into opportunities.”
― Howard E. Gardner, Extraordinary Minds: Portraits Of 4 Exceptional Individuals And An Examination Of Our Own Extraordinariness

“In this book I contend that even when school appears to be successful, even when it elicits the performances for which it has apparently been designed, it typically fails to achieve its most important missions. Evidence for this startling claim comes from a by now overwhelming body of educational research that has been assembled over the last decades. These investigations document that even students who have been well trained and who exhibit all the overt signs of success—faithful attendance at good schools, high grades and high test scores, accolades from their teachers—typically do not display an adequate understanding of the materials and concepts with which they have been working.”
― Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think And How Schools Should Teach

“Indeed, knowledge that one will be judged on some criterion of "creativeness" or "originality" tends to narrow the scope of what one can produce (leading to products that are then judged as relatively conventional); in contrast, the absence of an evaluations seems to liberate creativity.”
― Howard Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi

“In biology, the most basic assumptions of evolutionary theory elude otherwise able students who insist that the process of evolution is guided by a striving toward perfection. College students who have studied economics offer explanations of market forces that are essentially identical to those preferred by college students who have never taken an economics course. Equally severe biases and stereotypes pervade the humanistic segment of the curriculum, from history to art. Students who can discuss in detail the complex causes of the First World War turn right around and explain equally complex current events in terms of the simplest "good guy-bad guy" scenario. (This habit of mind is not absent from political leaders, who are fond of portraying the most complicated international situations along the lines of a Hollywood script.) Those who have studied the intricacies of modern poetry, learning to esteem T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, show little capacity to distinguish masterworks from amateurish drivel once the identity of the author has been hidden from view.”
― Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think And How Schools Should Teach

“In mathematics, students are at the mercy of rigidly applied algorithms. They learn to use certain formalisms in certain ways, often effectively, if provided with a pre-arranged signal that a particular formalism is wanted.

In social studies and the humanities, the enemies of understanding are scripts and stereotypes. Students readily believe that events occur in typical ways, and they evoke these scripts even inappropriately. For example, they regard struggles between two parties in a dispute as a "good guy versus bad guy" movie script.”
― Howard Gardner, Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century

“Gruber speaks of an "evolving systems" approach to the study of creativity: that is, one monitors simultaneously the organization of knowledge in a domain, the purpose(s) pursued by the creator, and the affective experiences he or she undergoes. While these systems are only "loosely coupled," their interaction over time helps one understand the ebb and flow of creative activity over the course of a productive human life.”
― Howard Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi

“It cannot be overstated that the emphasis on visual thinking among German-speaking scientists and engineers circa 1900 was widespread. Yet in 1905 it was Einstein who combined visual thinking with Gedanken experiments and quasiaesthetic notions with dazzling results.”
― Howard Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi

“At such times, it is particularly important to return to fundamentals. Many assumptions about leadership in the political realm are superficial and unsubstantiated ; there is no need to guide one’s policies by the results of the latest poll or to force every complex idea into a sound bite. Here one can take inspiration from those individuals who have not accepted the conventional wisdom, who have risked defeat, rejection, obscurity, even their lives, in order to pursue ideas in which they (and perhaps a few followers) believe. To put it simply: Leaders can actually lead. One of the important roles that elders can provide in a society is to call attention to those figures from whom one may learn, and by whose lives one may be guided.”
― Howard E. Gardner, Leading Minds: An Anatomy Of Leadership