Robert Sternberg Quotes

Management teams aren't good at asking questions. In business school, we train them to be good at giving answers.

I always say I have a Socratic approach to most things that I do. I pummel people with questions, because I need to know what they're thinking, what they're trying to achieve, what they believe the final outcome is going to be.

I have always been much better at asking questions than knowing what the answers were.

One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.

Curiosity at work isn't a matter of style. It's much more powerful than that. If you're the boss, and you manage by asking questions, you're laying the foundation for the culture of your company or your group. You're letting people know that the boss is willing to listen.

Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.

I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.

Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you don't think, you're not really a human.

What's the use of inventing a better system as long as there just aren't enough folks with sense to go around?

The most part of men, though they have the use of reasoning a little way, as in numbering to some degree; yet it serves them to little use in common life; in which they govern themselves, some better, some worse, according to their differences of experience, quickness of memory, and inclinations to several ends; but specially according to good or evil fortune, and the errors of one another.

I began to realize that thinking itself is nothing but the process of asking and answering questions.

I'm not an analytical person, so it's not my job to even know what the hell the thing meant. It's not my problem. I'm just supposed to do it. Sometimes, people have explained things to me that I might have been semi-conscious of or not.

A man who cannot think is not an educated man however many college degrees he may have acquired.

Intellect takes you to the door, but it doesn't take you into the house.

Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.

Intelligence is a harder gift. For this you must work, you must practice it, challenge it, and maybe toward the end of your life you will master it. Cleverness is the shadow, whereas intelligence is the substance. -Doc

Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

You don't actually need to know anything, you can find out at the point when you need to know it. It's the teachers job to point young minds towards the right kind of question, a teacher doesn't need to give any answers because answers are everywhere.

I'm a big believer in pose some questions and then answer a few of them before you move onto the next set of questions.

A research problem is not solved by apparatus; it is solved in a man's head.

It's not enough to have the right answers. You have to have the right questions.

Here's one thing I never say anymore: These people can't be that stupid, can they?

Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to use all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment.

My job is not to produce answers. My job is to produce good questions.

Reason is the main resource of man in his struggle for survival.