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

'Til 1983, I wrote primarily for other psychologists and expected that they would be the principal audience for my book.

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

Now intelligence seemed quantifiable. You could measure someone's actual or potential height, and now, it seemed, you could also measure someone's actual or potential intelligence. We had one dimension of mental ability along which we could array everyone... The whole concept has to be challenged; in fact, it has to be replaced.

No individual can be in full control of his fate-our strengths come significantly from our history, our experiences largely from the vagaries of chance. But by seizing the opportunity to leverage and frame these experiences, we gain agency over them. And this heightened agency, in turn, places us in a stronger position to deal with future experiences, even as it may alter our own sense of strengths and possibilities.

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

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.