Conventional measures of mental ability, such as intelligence tests and scholarship, show some of the very highest records belong to INFP and INFJ types, who relegate thinking to last place or next to last. The preference for thinking appears to have far less intellectual effect than the preference for intuition, even in some technical fields, such as scientific research, where its influence was expected to be most important.
Interpretation
Intuition can be more impactful than logical thinking in determining intelligence and success.
In this quote, Isabel Briggs Myers highlights the unexpected importance of intuition over conventional thinking in assessing mental ability. Despite traditional measures focusing on logical reasoning, those with a preference for intuition—like the INFP and INFJ personality types—often achieve remarkable intellectual accomplishments, indicating that creativity and insight can play a significant role in fields typically dominated by analytical thinking.
In practice
In a panel discussion about education, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of creative thinking in learning methodologies.
In teaching, the other main problem related to type is the students’ interest. Intuitives and sensing types differ greatly in what they find interesting in any subject even if they like, that is, are interested in, the same subjects. Intuitives like the principle, the theory, the why. Sensing types like the practical application, the what and the how.
Introverted feeling types have a wealth of warmth and enthusiasm, but they may not show it until they know someone well. They wear their warm side inside, like a fur-lined coat.
Whatever the circumstances of your life, the understanding of type can make your perceptions clearer, your judgements sounder, and your life closer to your heart's desire
You psychologists focus on what is wrong with people; I want to focus on what is right and what could be right.
If what the heart approves conforms to proper patterns, then even if one's desires are many, what harm would they be to good order?
I come to Jerusalem. There, the sky is blue and memory becomes clear.
The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past.
A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.
Pessimism is a very easy way out because it is a short view of life. If you look at what is happening around us today, you can't help but feel that life is a terrible complexity of problems. But if you look back a few thousand years, you realize that we have advanced fantastically. If you take a long view, I do not see how you can be pessimistic about the future of mankind.
But I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions; and, attentively considering those cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep, that I feel greatly astonished; and in amazement I almost persuade myself that I am now dreaming.
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