“Comprehension, inventiveness, direction, and criticism: intelligence is contained in these four words.”

— Alfred Binet

Alfred Binet (1909, 118) as cited in: Seymour Bernard Sarason, ‎John Doris (1979), Educational handicap, public policy, and social history. p. 32
Modern ideas about children, 1909/1975

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Comprehension, inventiveness, direction, and criticism: intelligence is contained in these four words." by Alfred Binet?

Alfred Binet 21

French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intell… 1857–1911

Related quotes

“The key to the understanding and to the full comprehension of all that the Prophets have said is found in the knowledge of the figures, their general ideas, and the meaning of each word they contain.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Introduction

“I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 10 (p. 111)

“Critical evaluation was transformed into understanding, and criticism became not an act of judgment but of comprehension.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 1 : The Frontiers of Nonsense

“Both Hopkins and Lawrence were religious not just in the ritualistic sense but in the sense of being obsessed with the word — the word made life and truth — with the need to invent a language as direct as religious utterance.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

Pt. 2, Ch. 3
The Struggle of the Modern (1963)
Context: Both Hopkins and Lawrence were religious not just in the ritualistic sense but in the sense of being obsessed with the word — the word made life and truth — with the need to invent a language as direct as religious utterance. Both were poets, but outside the literary fashions of their time. Both felt that among the poets of their time was an absorption in literary manners, fashions and techniques which separated the line of the writing from that of religious truth. Both felt that the modern situation imposed on them the necessity to express truth by means of a different kind of poetic writing from that used in past or present. Both found themselves driven into writing in a way which their contemporaries did not understand or respond to yet was inevitable to each in his pursuit of truth. Here of course there is a difference between Hopkins and Lawrence, because Hopkins in his art was perhaps over-worried, over-conscientious, whereas Lawrence was an instinctive poet who, in his concern for truth, understood little of the problems of poetic form, although he held strong views about them.