Leonardo said so himself. "Intellectual passion drives out sensuality," he wrote in one of his notebooks.

This was fortunate. He would have made a poor notary: he got bored and distracted too easily, especially when a project became routine rather than creative.14

the ability to make connections across disciplines-arts and sciences, humanities and technology-is a key to innovation, imagination, and genius.

After you interact with Ginevra de' Benci long enough, what at first seem like a vacant face and distant stare begin to appear suffused with a haunting tinge of emotion. She seems pensive and...

As the Leonardo scholar Charles Hope has pointed out, "He had no real understanding of the way in which the growth of knowledge was a cumulative and collaborative process."41 Although he would...

A bird is like an instrument working according to mathematical law, and it is in the capacity of man to reproduce such an instrument, Leonardo da Vinci

He who can go to the fountain does not go to the water-jar.

Skill without imagination is barren. Leonardo knew how to marry observation and imagination, which made him history's consummate innovator.

What made Leonardo a genius, what set him apart from people who are merely extraordinarily smart, was creativity, the ability to apply imagination to intellect.

He turned out to be good in geometry, but he never mastered the use of equations or the rudimentary algebra that existed at the time.

He was particularly good at apprehending movement, from the motions of a flapping wing to the emotions flickering across a face.

In 1482, the year he turned thirty, Leonardo da Vinci left Florence for Milan, where he would end up spending the next seventeen years.

For Leonardo, this talent may have been connected to growing up with a love of nature while not being overly schooled in received wisdom.

Ideas are often generated in physical gathering places where people with diverse interests encounter one another serendipitously. That is why Steve Jobs liked his buildings to have a central atrium...

Although he was neither fully original nor correct in his description of a senso comune, he was right in his general view that the human brain receives visual and other stimuli, processes them into...

each moment is not distinct but instead contains connections to a narrative.

Leonardo's optics experiments produced discoveries that would not be rediscovered for another century.23 In addition, they were important in honing his ability to match theory with experiment, and...

Florence flourished in the fifteenth century because it was comfortable with such people. Above all, Leonardo's relentless curiosity and experimentation should remind us of the importance of...

One of the assistants who lived in Leonardo's household at the time was a technician and locksmith named Giulio Tedesco, known as Jules the German, who returned to Germany around 1499 and spread...

Like most artist-craftsmen of his era, he did not sign his work.

using analogy to discover nature's patterns.

the calm in the vortex.

Leonardo's interest in machinery was linked to his fascination with motion.

Leonardo was not content merely to measure every aspect of every body part. In addition, he felt compelled to record what occurs when each of these parts moves.

Leonardo was experimenting with the trick known as anamorphosis, in which some elements of a work may look distorted when viewed straight on but appear accurate when viewed from another angle....

His method was rooted in experiment, curiosity, and the ability to marvel at phenomena that the rest of us rarely pause to ponder after we've outgrown our wonder years.

Other than a little training in commercial math at what was known as an abacus school, Leonardo was mainly self-taught. He often seemed defensive about being an unlettered man, as he dubbed himself...

Painting a conventional portrait for a pushy patron did not interest him. Nor did money motivate him. He painted portraits if the subject struck his fancy, such as the Musician, or if a powerful ruler...

and was again willing to embrace flamboyant, eccentric, and artistic free

A left-hander, Leonardo wrote from right to left on a page