I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

The line praises intellectual complexity: a capable mind can hold multiple, even opposing, perspectives at once without collapsing into confusion or dogmatism. It implies that intelligence is not merely quickness or certainty, but the capacity for nuance—testing arguments, recognizing tradeoffs, and suspending final judgment while weighing evidence. Read this way, the quote aligns with ideals of critical thinking and civic deliberation: mature reasoning requires understanding adversarial positions from the inside, not caricaturing them. However, while the sentiment is coherent and widely applicable, its attribution to Abigail Adams is doubtful, so any interpretive use should treat it as a modern aphorism rather than a securely documented Adams statement.