Other Minds Quotes

Books are but stepping stones to show you where other minds have been.

We're terrible at realising what goes on in other people's heads because we are trapped inside our own.

As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is conscious. This power to deny that other people have feelings is not just an academic exercise but an all-too-common vice, as we see in the long history of human cruelty.

Fiction is able to do one thing better than any other art form: it is able to convey a convincing sense of what is going on in someone else's head. To me, that is the great mystery of life: what is everyone else thinking?

I never feel like I'm looking to get away from my own self. Not as much as I'm trying to get inside the mind of somebody else.

All the dreams you show up in are not your own.

I wouldn't claim to know what another person is thinking. I can imagine it, but it's my interpretation, and I try to make that clear. It's my vision of what I think their life is. I don't think there are empirical truths in that regard.

Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.

Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams

I'm concerned about the unknowability of other people.

It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears.