Marvin Minsky Quotes

Our deep desires define us, really.

Nothing is stranger to man than his own image.

I'm still the same person I've always been.

I think, personally, it's our flaws that define us to us - or maybe it's just me.

It is good to know what a man is, and also what the world takes him for. But you do not understand him until you have learnt how he understands himself.

You think you know who you are, and then other people have these other ideas.

I define myself from a vision, from a point of view of life.

I don't have dreams. How can I say it? I myself am a dream.

I have always felt that I am the sum total of my parts.

If people are telling you a story about themselves, they gradually map their own local territories and know themselves by them.

Human beings, from their own point of view, are very different than what people see.

The development of the meaning attaching to the personal self, the conscious being, is the subject matter of the history of psychology.

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

You see a person when you look in the mirror that no one sees but you. Other people see a person when they look at you, but you're not that person, either.

There's nothing harder than defining oneself.

What is your identity, and how do you know who you are if you don't have language?

I don't even know who I am. All I know is that I am the sibling, daughter, sister, the friend of somebody, and I need to know who I am outside of that.

We get older, and we get more wrinkles, but fundamentally, we stay the same... You have the same fears and doubts and concerns and dreams and passions and all those kinds of things, so I feel like you don't change as much as you think you do.

My personal life is a big part of who my character is.

My identity will always inform my experience and shape my perception. But I am an unremarkable person.

I'm interested in how we understand ourselves in our relatioships and how we define ourselves.

In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.

I'm you and you are me. I'm a man and you're a man. When people understand the more they know Self, the real Inner Self of themselves it's the same physical structure you've got. The same things you deal with I deal with. Everything derives from the mind. What's funny is the mind is the hardest question and I guess that's why I'm always writing about it.

I consider my selfbeing ... that taste of myself, of I and me above and in all things, which is more distinctive than the taste of ale or alum, more distinctive than the smell of walnutleaf or camphor, and is incommunicable by any means to another man.

I have managed to establish an identity that is based on my internal self, and for that I feel tremendously lucky.