Marvin Minsky Quotes

You cannot stop the human mind from working.

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

While one man can discover a certain thing by himself, another is never able to understand it, even if taught by means of all possible expressions and metaphors, and during a long period; his mind can in no way grasp it, his capacity is insufficient for it.

Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.

The individual is the brain, not the heart.

The brains -the thinking organs- are the world producers -nature's genitals.

I love the human mind.

The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts.

Thinking doesn't seem to help very much. The human brain is too high-powered to have many practical uses in this particular universe.

One who knows nothing can understand nothing.

Intelligence is: (a) the most complex phenomenon in the Universe; or (b) a profoundly simple process. The answer, of course, is (c) both of the above. It's another one of those great dualities that make life interesting.

Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definitions.

Understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest.

To explicate the uses of the Brain seems as difficult a task as to paint the Soul, of which it is commonly said, that it understands all things but itself.

The understanding of some men is clear, that of others brilliant. The former illumines its surroundings; the latter obscures them.

I like to say understanding is the power.

Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

He wasn't smart enough to see it, said Jason Bourne. He couldn't think geometrically.

Experience teaches that a strong memory is generally joined to a weak judgment.

Do you have a brain? Then you can think your way out of it. The reason we have brains is so we can figure out how to do things.

The nature of our intelligence is such that it is stimulated far less by the will to know than by the will to understand.

We use only 10% of our brains... Imagine how smart we would be if we used the other 60%!

The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of his wisdom who made it.

Perhaps the best test of a man's intelligence is his capacity for making a summary.

You could reason with someone who was halfway educated and appeal to his intelligence, but I felt helpless in the face of utter stupidity.