Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions

⚡️ 9 Quotes from the book

“The first step toward understanding that people think in different ways is understanding that different ways of thinking exist.”

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“Think of it this way: the object thinkers build the trains, and the spatial visualizers make them run.”

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“It turns out that algebra is a barrier that keeps some students from completing high school or a community college technical degree. These are the visual thinkers who can invent machinery but can’t solve for x, and we are screening them out.”

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“Different types of thinking provide strengths in one area and deficits in another. My thinking is slower but it may be more accurate. Faster thinking would be helpful in social situations, but slower, careful thought would enhance production of art or building mechanical devices.”

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“It’s possible that the most important thing my mother did for me was to not see me primarily as disabled, or herself primarily as the mom of a disabled child. Being free of those labels allowed her to focus on the specific help I needed—the speech therapy, the home tutoring, and the supportive schooling environments that allowed me to read, write, and talk.”

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“It’s important to recognize that labels are just that: labels. They aren’t the entirety of the person, and with respect to that person’s conditions—whether physical, mental, or psychological—they may be attempting to cover so wide a range of traits and behaviors that they are stretched to the limits of usefulness.”

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“Architecture and engineering used to stay in their silos. The architects had the vision, the engineers implemented it.”

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“Visual thinking does not enable me to predict the future. But it does allow me to home in on design flaws and system failures that, unaddressed, can lead to disaster.”

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“I believe emotions underlie learned behavior and are genetically ingrained to drive inherited behavior patterns.”

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