Robert Sternberg quotes

Robert Sternberg is an American educator and psychologist renowned for his work on intelligence, creativity, and leadership. His triarchic theory of intelligence and research on love and wisdom have significantly influenced modern psychology and education. He continues to be a leading figure in the study of human cognition and learning. Here are 33 of his quotes:

If you're not adapting to the very rapidly changing environment, if you can't think creatively, you lose big in this society because there are very few jobs for you left.

Robert Sternberg

So, for example, if a child is labeled as having a learning disability, it has very concrete consequences for the kinds of services and potentially accommodations that child will get.

Robert Sternberg

In other words, if a teacher only teaches in one way, then they conclude that the kids who can't learn well that way don't have the ability, when, in fact, it may be that the way the teacher's teaching is not a particularly good match to the way those kids learn.

Robert Sternberg

And so, you can do hundreds and hundreds of studies showing a general factor and just so long as you restrict your populations, your testing materials and the kinds of situations you look at, you can keep finding the same wrong thing again and again.

Robert Sternberg

In other words, the better they did on the IQ test, the worse they did on the practical test and the better they did on the practical tests, the worse they did on the IQ test.

Robert Sternberg

There is no recipe to be a great teacher, that's what is unique about them.

Robert Sternberg

And in order to succeed in later life, you need creative skills because look at how fast the world is changing.

Robert Sternberg

If there's going to be an SAT, it's probably practical to invest in a book or perhaps in a course, but I'm sorry to say, I went to some classes that my kids took and it was clear in school that what they were doing was just SAT training.

Robert Sternberg

But in any case, I did poorly on the tests and so, in the first three years of school, I had teachers who thought I was stupid and when people think you're stupid, they have low expectations for you.

Robert Sternberg

And if we don't have a test, what we may end up doing is going back to what this country has done before. We could use social class and we still do, but in the 50s, it was, do you have the right last name and are your parents in privileged positions?

Robert Sternberg

You can quickly go from having passion and love to passion and hate when an act of betrayal happens.

Robert Sternberg

The three parts of the theory are analytical ability, the ability to analyze things to judge, to criticize. Creative, the ability to create, to invent and discover and practical, the ability to apply and use what you know.

Robert Sternberg

I've taught statistics, math courses and what I've found is that often if you teach them algebraically the formulas, you'll have one group of kids doing well.

Robert Sternberg

Well, first of all, we did lots of studies where we show practical intelligence doesn't correlate with G. We have probably two dozen studies that practical intelligence better predicts job success than IQ.

Robert Sternberg

The problem is that there are very few technologies that essentially haven't changed for 60, 70 years.

Robert Sternberg

All of the studies we do in my group are quantified.

Robert Sternberg

In other words, unlike some people with new theories, we will go out, we'll go into a school and we get products and the products are evaluated, whether it's by teachers or others. The scores are quantified and then we compare performances.

Robert Sternberg

To the Kenyan families, school doesn't really matter because none of them are going on to college. Almost all of drop out of school and so, they're spending their time learning things that are important to them.

Robert Sternberg

ACT and SAT each have their own parts of the country. The GRE has its lock on graduate admissions. And so, one could blame the companies, but really, economically, they have no incentive to change things very much because they're getting the business.

Robert Sternberg

If Tufts doesn't work out, my safety is to go back to Yale, where I used to teach.

Robert Sternberg

If you bore them to death and say, this hurts me more than it hurts you, #A, they're not going to believe it, and #B, they're going to invest their time in other things anyway.

Robert Sternberg

The essence of intelligence would seem to be in knowing when to think and act quickly, and knowing when to think and act slowly.

Robert Sternberg