Daniel Dennett Quotes

Quotes about:

• What you can imagine depends on what you know.

  Daniel Dennett

  Inspirational, Imagine, Knows

  65 Copy quote

• The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

  Daniel Dennett

  Motivation, Inspiration, Secret

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• There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

  Daniel Dennett

  People, Way, Illusion

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• Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.

  Daniel Dennett

  Cells, Care, Knows

  Daniel Clement Dennett (2005). “Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness”, p.2, MIT Press

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• The idea that God is a worthy recipient of our gratitude for the blessings of life but should not be held accountable for the disasters is a transparently disingenuous innovation of the theologians.

  Daniel Dennett

  Gratitude, Blessing, Ideas

  83 Copy quote

• There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.

  Daniel Dennett

  Religion, Atheism, Force

  Daniel C. Dennett (2014). “Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life”, p.515, Simon and Schuster

  58 Copy quote

• Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners.

  Daniel Dennett

  Life, Spring, Perspective

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• I am confident that those who believe in belief are wrong. That is, we no more need to preserve the myth of God in order to preserve a just and stable society than we needed to cling to the Gold Standard to keep our currency sound. It was a useful crutch, but we've outgrown it. Denmark, according to a recent study, is the sanest, healthiest, happiest, most crime-free nation in the world, and by and large the Danes simply ignore the God issue. We should certainly hope that those who believe in belief are wrong, because belief is waning fast, and the props are beginning to buckle.

  Daniel Dennett

  Faith, Believe, Order

  "The folly of pretence" by Daniel Dennett, www.theguardian.com. July 16, 2009.

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• I think religion for many people is some sort of moral viagra.

  Daniel Dennett

  Thinking, People, Viagra

  "The Atheism Tapes". BBC Documentary, 2004.

  43 Copy quote

• There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.

  Daniel Dennett

  Knowledge, May, Limits

  "Kinds Of Minds: Toward An Understanding Of Consciousness (Science Masters Series)". Book by Daniel Dennett, June 27, 1996.

  58 Copy quote

• The mind is the effect, not the cause.

  Daniel Dennett

  Mind, Causes, Effects

  "Daniel Dennett: 'I don't like theory of mind". Interview with Carole Jahme, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2013.

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• Whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its member to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does!

  Daniel Dennett

  Responsibility, Medicine, People

  "Thank Goodness!" by Daniel C. Dennett, www.edge.org. November 2, 2006.

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• It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.

  Daniel Dennett

  Humility, Yarn, Brain

  Daniel C. Dennett (2013). “Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking”, p.339, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.

  Daniel Dennett

  Caring, Best Effort, Society

  Daniel C. Dennett (2014). “Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better.

  Daniel Dennett

  Atheist, Atheism, Doe

  Daniel C. Dennett (2006). “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon”, p.56, Penguin

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• Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery... a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. And, as with all of the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist - and hope - that there will never be a demystification of consciousness.

  Daniel Dennett

  Confused, Lasts, Tongue

  76 Copy quote

• Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster.

  Daniel Dennett

  School, Ideas, Disrespect

  "Liberals and the New McCarthyism" by Derrick Jensen, www.counterpunch.org. August 10, 2015.

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• The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.

  Daniel Dennett

  Mistake, Chiefs, Tricks

  Daniel C. Dennett (2014). “Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking”, p.22, W. W. Norton & Company

  78 Copy quote

• Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. It is not just a wonderful idea. It is a dangerous idea.

  Daniel Dennett

  Ideas, Space, Awards

  "Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life". Book by Daniel Dennett, 1995.

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• I listen to all these complaints about rudeness and intemperateness, and the opinion that I come to is that there is no polite way of asking somebody: have you considered the possibility that your entire life has been devoted to a delusion? But that’s a good question to ask. Of course we should ask that question and of course it’s going to offend people. Tough.

  Daniel Dennett

  People, Good Questions, Asking

  "Dan Dennett and the New Atheism". Interview with Julian Baggini, www.philosophersmag.com. March 2010.

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• We need to let our children grow up to face the world armed with knowledge, with much more knowledge than we ourselves had at their age. It is scary, but the alternative is worse.

  Daniel Dennett

  Children, Growing Up, Scary

  Daniel C. Dennett (2006). “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon”, p.50, Penguin

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• Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God.

  Daniel Dennett

  Believe, People, Atheism

  "How To Save Our Secular America!" by Jack Huberman, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 5, 2007.

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• No matter how smart you are, you're smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.

  Daniel Dennett

  Smart, Effort, Matter

  Daniel C. Dennett (2014). “Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking”, p.3, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It's a no win situation. It's a mug's game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity.

  Daniel Dennett

  Hurt, Winning, Opportunity

  24 Copy quote

• The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them - especially not from yourself. Instead of turning away in denial when you make a mistake, you should become a connoisseur of your own mistakes, turning them over in your mind as if they were works of art, which in a way they are.

  Daniel Dennett

  Art, Mistake, Mind

  Daniel C. Dennett (2014). “Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking”, p.22, W. W. Norton & Company

  40 Copy quote

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