Key Difference: Intelligence is one who is clever and quick at understanding. On the other hand, Talent is a special ability or cleverness which one has in oneself.

Intelligence and talent, both are known as the person’s good knowledge or ability. The words are used to appreciate or encourage. They both are interlinked with each other. How? Let us describe it with good examples.

According to Dictionary.com, ‘Intelligence’ is:

• Capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.
• Manifestation of a high mental capacity.
• The faculty of understanding.
• Knowledge of an event, circumstance, etc., received or imparted; news; information.
• The gathering or distribution of information, especially secret information.

Intelligence is what one can improve by studies, reasoning, understanding and learning. It is most widely studied in humans, but animals and plants also have intelligence. Plants, though they are non-living, understand everything. Intelligence is derived from the Latin word intelligere which means ‘to pick up’.

As a basic term, intelligence is a high capacity of learning or understanding a particular term. It can only be developed from childhood. No one is born intelligent, one needs to work on it and improve his skills.

You must have seen that a few kids in a large group are not that intelligent than others. They are not able to grasp things so easily. It is because they have not taken interest and have not tried to improve their knowledge.

There are different types of intelligence- Business Intelligence, Sales Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, Social Intelligence, Defense Intelligence and many more.

Dictionary.com defines ‘Talent’ as:

• A special natural ability or aptitude: a talent for drawing.
• A capacity for achievement or success; ability: young men of talent.
• A talented person: the cast includes many of the theater's major talents.
• A group of persons with special ability: 
• Movies and television, Professional actors collectively, especially star performers.

Talent does actually come from the intelligence. If one is not intelligent he will not be able to know about his talent. Talent, basically, is a natural ability or aptitude one have, when they are born. It is in-built.

Talent is like you are good at basketball or drawing. Drawing can’t be taught, it’s an in-built talent which one has in his hand. It is a skill, that if one has, can be developed more. They need to work hard for it, try it once, and have to explore it. We usually say “YOU HAVE A BORN TALENT”.

A talented person is a gifted person. All don’t have talent. Very few are gifted by God who have talent in their veins. Having talent, without intelligence is worthless, as to nurture your talent you require intelligence to explore it. If one has a talent and with his intelligence he started working on it, he will have an ideal personality to lead human race.

The examples below will easily make you understand about both the terms:

• It requires a degree of intelligence to do this job well.
• With a regular email you can build relationship and develop market intelligence.
• Thank you friend, your intelligence saved us today!
• He writes with intelligence and wit.
• One needs a talent for drawing.
• In the competitive music industry, talent is not enough.
• Tom is an extremely talented synthesizer player.
• An exhibition of watercolors by the local talent.
• Deb’s talent for hockey was obvious from a very early age.

INTELLIGENCE is nothing but the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge by means of thought and reason, on the other hand, TALENT is a special natural ability or aptitude.

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