“Each part of the mind sees only a little of what happens in some others, and that little is swiftly refined, reformulated and "represented." We like to believe that these fragments have meanings in themselves — apart from the great webs of structure from which they emerge — and indeed this illusion is valuable to us qua thinkers — but not to us as psychologists — because it leads us to think that expressible knowledge is the first thing to study.”

— Marvin Minsky

K-Linesː A Theory of Memory (1980)

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Marvin Minsky 65

American cognitive scientist 1927–2016

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“Knowledge make us valuable. When we have knowledge that other people do not readily have, somebody need us. It does not matter what we look like, or where we came from, if we have something that others have a need for.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 212

“Some things are only real because they represent what we think. When we learn the truth and think it, the old reality is no longer real to us and loses its hold on us. The truth sets us free.”

C. Terry Warner American writer

Source: Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves

“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to Besso's family (March 1955) following the death of Michele Besso, as quoted in Disturbing the Universe (1979) by Freeman Dyson Ch. 17 "A Distant Mirror", p. 193
Sometimes misquoted as "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
1950s
Variant: "He has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion." Quoted in Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson (2008), p. 540 http://books.google.com/books?id=cdxWNE7NY6QC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA540#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Variant: "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Quoted in Albert Einstein: The Miracle Mind by Tabatha Yeatts (2007), p. 116 http://books.google.com/books?id=XiyyVYvQBKQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT114#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Variant: "In quitting this strange world he has once again preceded me by a little. That doesn't mean anything. For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however tenacious." Quoted in The Structure of Physics by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1985), p. 288 http://books.google.com/books?id=DeexONN0zDgC&lpg=PR2&pg=PA288#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Variant: "Now he has departed a little ahead of me from this quaint world. This means nothing. For us faithful physicists, the separation between past, present, and future has only the meaning of an illusion, though a persistent one." Quoted in Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer (2002), p. 161 http://books.google.com/books?id=TnCc1f1C25IC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA161#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Variant: "Now he has preceded me by a little bit in his departure from this strange world as well. This means nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however tenacious this illusion may be." Quoted in Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neff (2007), p. 402 http://books.google.com/books?id=B8K6n177ZwcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA402#v=onepage&q&f=false

“We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

essay "Eye to Eye", in Sister Outsider

“What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Remarks to John Wisdom, quoted in Zen and the Work of WIttgenstein by Paul Weinpaul in The Chicago Review Vol. 12, (1958), p. 70
Attributed from posthumous publications

“What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone’s sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we’ll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 11 (p. 185)

“I think that it would do us good to have some tension […]. From this weekend, I'm going to start to overdramatise things a little.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

Said to the presenter of 'Cuatro', Iñaki Gabilondo, at the end of an interview, and referring to the 2008 general election. His words were captured by microphones when Zapatero presumed that he was no longer on air.
As President, 2008
Source: "A partir de este fin de semana, voy a dramatizar un poco" http://www.publico.es/048875/a/partir/semana/dramatizar/poco:

“Abstract cleverness of the mind only separates the thinker from the world of reality, and that world, the Forest of Real Life, is in a desperate condition now because of too many who think too much and care too little. In spite of what many minds have thought themselves into believing, that mistake cannot continue for much longer if everything is going to survive. The one chance we have to avoid certain disaster is to change our approach, and learn to value wisdom and contentment. These are things that are being searched for anyway, through Knowledge and Cleverness, but they do not come from Knowledge and Cleverness. They never have, and they never will. We can no longer afford to look so desperately hard for something in the wrong way and in the wrong place. If Knowledge and Cleverness are allowed to go on wrecking things, they will before much longer destroy all life on this earth as we know it, and what little may temporarily survive will not be worth looking at, even if it were possible for us to do so.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

The Now of Pooh.
The Tao of Pooh (1982)

“Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 164

“Because reason… is the only thing that makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists, in its entirety, in each of us…”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

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Marvin Minsky 65

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