Marvin Minsky Quotes

By doubting we come to questioning, and by questioning we perceive the truth.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

By doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth.

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.

I love to doubt as well as know.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.

We'd all like to be certain of what we know, but I think the most important question is to ask yourself do you really know what you know?

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty.

All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.

On the road halfway between faith and criticism stands the inn of reason. Reason is faith in what can be understood without faith, but it's still a faith, since to understand presupposes that there's something understandable.

We cannot begin with complete doubt.

Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true.

In doubting we come to inquiry; by inquiry we perceive the truth.

A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it... Skepticism is the first step toward truth.

Belief is not the beginning of knowledge - it is the end.

He believed in the primacy of doubt, not as a blemish upon our ability to know, but as the essence of knowing.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know.

I don't want to believe. I want to know.

Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.

Doubting charms me not less than knowledge.