Marvin Minsky Quotes

In physical science a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.

Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.

If quantitatively the American achievement is impressive, qualitatively it is somewhat less satisfying.

Incommensurables cannot be compared.

Everywhere you turn, there are lists and statistics. Any business, any sport, any hobby - we will try to categorize who is the best at some component of that endeavor. It's part human nature and part technology, since we have been conditioned to have access to answers and trivial problems at our fingertips.

It's very hard to rank performances. It's very difficult, and it doesn't really matter if you rank performances.

I know it was more than that. But it was also less than that, too.

Wherever there are qualities there are likewise quantities, but not always vice versa.

A gramme is better than a damn.

It's quantity, not quality.

To measure is to know. If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.

We don’t have any metrics on that.

We live in a culture that venerates scores. We affix numbers to how much fat is in our mochachinos, how quickly our telephones suck information from the air, how much pain we're in. Reading, too, has become a skill to quantifiably assess.

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.

Art is very subjective and having to put numbers on it seems counterintuitive.

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.

Are there quantitative aspects to the phenomena of war that can be counted? Evidently!

You'll never be able to really measure anything, right? Including teachers.

The old story is a story of measurement. And the New Story is to bring measurement and meaning together. You cannot measure meaning.

In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics.

As with marathon runs and lengths of toilet paper, there had to be standards to measure up to.

Mathematics is concerned only with the enumeration and comparison of relations.

It's not about size, it's a science.

There is no shortage of mechanisms by which to measure almost anything.

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another - but which one? Differences are crucial.