Howard Gardner Quotes

Anything that is worth teaching can be presented in many different ways. These multiple ways can make use of our multiple intelligences.

It's not how smart you are that matters, what really counts is how you are smart.

You learn at your best when you have something you care about and can get pleasure in being engaged in.

The Goal of Education is to Help People Use Their Minds Better

If you are not prepared to resign or be fired for what you believe in, then you are not a worker, let alone a professional. You are a slave.

Intelligence is the ability to find and solve problems and create products of value in one's own culture.

Kids make their mark in life by doing what they can do, not what they can't... School is important, but life is more important. Being happy is using your skills productively, no matter what they are.

All human beings have all of the intelligences. But we differ, for both genetic and experiential reasons, in our profile of intelligences at any moment.

Teachers must be encouraged - I almost said 'freed', to pursue an education that strives for depth of understanding.

Stories are the single most powerful tool in a leader's toolkit.

If you think education is expensive, try estimating the cost of ignorance.

Creativity begins with an affinity for something. It's like falling in love.

Being creative means first of all doing something unusual... On the other hand, however unusual it may be, the idea also has to be reasonable for people to take it seriously.

Teaching which ignores the realities of children will be rejected as surely as any graft which attempts to ignore the body's immune system.

An individual understands a concept, skill, theory, or domain of knowledge to the extent that he or she can apply it appropriately in a new situation.

We need to focus on the kind of human beings we want to have and the kind of society in which we want to live.

I believe that the brain has evolved over millions of years to be responsive to different kinds of content in the world. Language content, musical content, spatial content, numerical content, etc.

Our way of managing and leading, rewarding and judging people is totally out of tune with the fact that we are all individuals.

If I know you're very good in music, I can predict with just about zero accuracy whether you're going to be good or bad in other things.

No academic ever expects to be taken seriously by more than three other people, because really, we write for three people in our field.

An intelligence is the biological and psychological potential to analyze information in specific ways, in order to solve problems or to create products that are valued in a culture.

Kids go to school and college and get through, but they don't seem to really care about using their minds. School doesn't have the kind of long term positive impact that it should.

There is no single truth, but each of the scholarly disciplines has methods which lead one ever closer to the truth.

The ability to solve problems or to create products that are valued within one or more cultural settings.

One must exploit the asynchronies that have befallen one, link them to a promising issue or domain, reframe frustrations as opportunities, and, above all, persevere.

Twenty-five years ago, the notion was you could create a general problem-solver software that could solve problems in many different domains. That just turned out to be totally wrong.

The biggest communities in which young people now reside are online communities.

Part of the maturity of the sciences is an appreciation of which questions are best left to other disciplinary approaches.

To ask "Where in your brain is intelligence?" is like asking "Where is the voice in the radio?"

Well, if storytelling is important, then your narrative ability, or your ability to put into words or use what someone else has put into words effectively, is important too.

I reject the notion that human beings have a single intelligence, which can be drawn on for the full range of problem solving.

I’d rather see the United States as a beacon of Good Work and Good Citizenship, rather than as #1 on some international educational measurement.

I don't think that it is necessary to rethink curricular goals. But it is certainly worth thinking about whether these goals can be reached in multiple ways.

I think that any important educational goal can be realized via several routes.

Hitler didn't travel. Stalin didn't travel. Saddam Hussein never traveled. They didn't want to have their orthodoxy challenged.

While I’ve worked on many topics and written many books, I have not abandoned my interest in multiple intelligences.

I am knowledgeable enough about the world of prizes to realize that there is a large degree of luck - both for the recognitions that you receive and those that you did not.

We are natural mind changing entities until we are 10 or so. But as we get older...then it is very hard to change our minds

My belief in why America has been doing so well up to now is that we have been propelled by our immigrants and our encouragement of technical innovation and, indeed, creativity across the board.

By nature, I am not an optimist, though I try to act as if I am.

Fundamentalism is a kind of decision not to change your mind about something...Many of us are fundamentalists...because it worked pretty well for us.

Beauty reveals itself in the course of an experience with an object.

A continuing conversation with other persons, with cultural products, and with oneself, is a large part of what it means to be a human being, in our time and perhaps in all time.

I want to understand how best to create and preserve a form of higher education that we value but that is in jeopardy for many reasons.

I think that I am strongest in linguistic and musical intelligence, and I continue to work on my interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence.

Much of the material presented in schools strikes students as alien, if not pointless.

We can enhance our intelligences, but I am never going to become Yo-Yo Ma, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, or Pele.

Education is at a turning point

While truth is ultimately convergent, beauty is ultimately divergent. No one can and no one should tell anyone else what that person should consider beautiful.

In the United States these days, 'diversity' is a big word and a buzzword.