Marvin Minsky Quotes

You know so much about me and yet you don't understand me. To know is not to understand. We could know everything and still not understand anything.

Knowledge is not a loose leaf notebook of facts.

Thinking is the desire to gain reality by means of ideas.

I think perception is important.

But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

Our understanding is correlative to our perception.

I really like science because it seems to be that place where you get the big picture, everything connects.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

I'm looking to see what the bigger picture is.

Books allow you to see the world through the eyes of others.

Knowledge is the life of the mind.

Cognition is not fighting, but once someone knows a lot, he will have much to fight for, so much that he will be called a relativist because of it.

To understand is to perceive patterns.

You can think deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into a subject, depending on what you are writing about.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

I think I learned how it works in the league. When you are outside you don't understand everything, but when you are inside you can know how it works.

Since a thing cannot be known directly or totally, one can only attune to it, with greater or lesser degrees of intimacy.

Sometimes you need to be aware of the bigger picture you are missing.

When people don't understand what they're watching, a lot of what they perceive has to do with who they themselves are.

It's one thing thinking something and another thing knowing it.

Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us.

from one thing, know ten thousand things

Why don’t I know You?” “Does anyone ever really know someone else?” “You think your cute,” she told him. “You think your gorgeous. But I’m the one guy here who knows better.” “So I’m not gorgeous?” Macey challenged. “Of course you are,” He started away, turned back at the last minute. “But I’m the guy who figured out that’s not all you are." — Double Crossed by Ally Carter

It means nothing to be open to a proposition we don't understand.

I have never been able to understand anyone on this planet who lacks a need for knowledge. Is it not God's greatest gift to us all, this capacity to think, to wonder, to imagine?