Outside my classroom hangs an art display featuring stylized portraits of 11 Great Thinkers. I’m fascinated by it — not only because of the drawings but by who the artist chose to be on the list. It’s such a subjective assessment — who is a great thinker in your field may not be as relevant in mine, and someone may not make the list because their impact is yet to be felt, etc.
But the engraver, Mauricio Lasansky, chose these eleven: Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Giuseppe Verdi, Louis Pasteur, Francisco Goya, Michelangelo, Leo Tolstoy, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, Leonardo da Vinci, and the only woman, Marie Curie. I noted that they aren’t all philosophers or “professional thinkers” but were able to exert their influence through art, music, writing, politics, medicine, science, and psychology — many excelling in multiple fields.
We place great value on “doing” but too often fail to reward or even recognize the virtues of thinking. Perhaps you can add your own gallery of great thinkers from your organization — people who have had the foresight to envision something that others could not see, who influenced those that came after them by how they performed their craft, or who caused others to pause and reflect about what was even possible. Great thinking precedes great doing.
