Marvin Minsky Quotes

Unless we can explain the mind in terms of things that have no thoughts or feelings of their own, we'll only have gone around in a circle.

Marvin Minsky

• Mind
• Thoughts

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Whether you listen to a piece of music, or a poem, or look at a picture or a jug, or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own.

  

  Basil Bunting
  • Music
  • Picture
  • Look

• I've always been proud that my name stands for peace.

  

  Paloma Picasso
  • Peace
  • Proud
  • Name

• I don't start writing a script until I can see it all in my head, then it's a matter of getting it down in white heat.

  

  J. Michael Straczynski
  • Writing
  • Start
  • Down

• I cannot go to Montreal without going to Beauty's, my favorite place for breakfast, where I have the Mish-Mash omelet with hot dogs, salami, eggs, green peppers, and onions, and the best banana bread in the world. It's legendary!

  

  Gail Simmons
  • World
  • Best
  • Beauty

• Why would Senator Allen want to oppose saving money for the state? It's simply another example of Republicans fighting the governor tooth and nail against any measure where she might be able to turn the state's budget around.

  

  Bart Stupak
  • Money
  • Fighting
  • Measure

• Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.

  

  S. J. Perelman
  • Learning
  • Living
  • Will

• Winning the peace is harder than winning the war.

  

  Xavier Becerra
  • War
  • Peace
  • Winning

• They have a crystalline sense of right and wrong; it disappears when they walk out the door with their M.B.A.

  

  Carl Hiaasen
  • Door
  • Sense
  • Walk

• That's one of the lucky things about getting the success later on. I know how I want to dress, I know what kind of house I want to live in, I just know more about myself, and that's true about the roles I want to play and what parts of myself I want to express. You're just more in touch with yourself.

  

  Naomi Watts
  • Live
  • True
  • House

• In my proper character, I am an officer of the United States Army.

  

  Zebulon Pike
  • Character
  • Army
  • United States

• I wasn't going to make a slick, glossy over-produced piece of entertainment because then I would be doing what the Capitol did. Then I'm actually putting on the Hunger Games and not making a movie of the 'Hunger Games.'

  

  Gary Ross
  • Movie
  • Doing
  • Entertainment

• Growing up on a mountain in Tennessee, I spent most of my childhood outside.

  

  Rachel Boston
  • Up
  • Growing
  • Childhood

• Fracking is an incredible risk to the human race, I don't know why they even thought of doing it.

  

  Yoko Ono
  • Why
  • Risk
  • Thought

• If I sit down with an electric guitar, what's going to come out are Sabbath/Zeppelin type riffs, but if I'm sitting behind a piano late at night, I might write something like 'Desperado.' You're not going to write 'Desperado' between a wall of Marshalls and thumping, crushing volume.

  

  Zakk Wylde Black Label Society
  • Night
  • Wall
  • Write

• The alliance in Jammu and Kashmir is one of the most important developments on the contemporary political scene.

  

  Narendra Modi
  • Important
  • Political

• If you ask me to summarise our mission, I would put it this way: We were a military regime that sought to lay the foundations for freedom and liberty in a complex society.

  

  Ibrahim Babangida
  • Society
  • Freedom
  • Military

• The names of common flowers change from decade to decade, so I spent a lot of time with old outdated dictionaries, with awful flower names like 'mouse-eared chickweed.'

  

  Vanessa Diffenbaugh
  • Time
  • Change
  • Flower

• N.Y. hip-hop is ok, but we gotta become brave again; we have to be brave enough and do something new - that's what New York is about... New.

  

  Nas
  • New York
  • Brave
  • Hip Hop

• Love can never explain the loved one, my dear. It is the essence of wild unreason.

  

  Han Suyin
  • Love
  • For Her
  • Essence

• Music, of all the liberal arts, has the greatest influence over the passions, and it is that to which the legislator ought to give the greatest encouragement.

  

  Napoleon Bonaparte
  • Music
  • Passions
  • Encouragement

• Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Last
  • Consistency
  • Refuge

• The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician. Therefore the physician must start from nature, with an open mind.

  

  Paracelsus
  • Mind
  • Art
  • Nature

• I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be. It's wonderful to have someone like that around, you always feel you can count on them. You can go away and come back, you can change your mind and your hairdo and your politics, and when you get through doing all these upsetting things, you look around and there they are, just the way they were, just being.

  

  Elizabeth Janeway
  • People
  • Life
  • Mind

• Unless we can explain the mind in terms of things that have no thoughts or feelings of their own, we'll only have gone around in a circle.

  

  Marvin Minsky
  • Mind
  • Thoughts