117 Quotes by Marvin Minsky

If we understood something just one way, we would not understand it at all.

Minds are simply what brains do.

In general, we’re least aware of what our minds do best.

Each practitioner thinks there's one magic way to get a machine to be smart, and so they're all wasting their time in a sense. On the other hand, each of them is improving some particular method, so maybe someday in the near future, or maybe it's two generations away, someone else will come around and say, "Let's put all these together," and then it will be smart.

One can acquire certainty only by amputating inquiry.

Good theories of the mind must span at least three different scales of time: slow, for the billions of years in which our brains have survivied; fast, for the fleeting weeks and months of childhood; and in between, the centuries of growth of our ideas through history.

An ethicist is someone who sees something wrong with whatever you have in mind.

It's ridiculous to live 100 years and only be able to remember 30 million bytes. You know, less than a compact disc. The human condition is really becoming more obsolete every minute.

The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.