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What you can imagine depends on what you know. Philosophers who know only philosophy consign themselves to a janitorial role in the great enterprises of exploration that are illuminating the mysteries of our lives.

Daniel Dennett

Cost is always an object – the second law of thermodynamics sees to that.
DANIEL DENNETT

Cost Law Object Science See
We live in a world that is subjectively open. And we are designed by evolution to be “informavores”, epistemically hungry seekers of information, in an endless quest to improve our purchase on the world, the better to make decisions about our subjectively open future.
DANIEL DENNETT

Decision Future Improvement Live Open World
There is a time for politeness and there is a time when you are obliged to be rude.
DANIEL DENNETT

Behavior Polite Rude Time Yourself
The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died.
DANIEL DENNETT

Chain Death End Philosophy
I am inclined to think that nothing could matter more than what people love. At any rate, I can think of no value that I would place higher. I would not want to live in a world without love.
DANIEL DENNETT

Love Myself People Rate Thinking
The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
DANIEL DENNETT

Discover Endorsement Evolution Reason
A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.
DANIEL DENNETT

Library Scholar Way
No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.
DANIEL DENNETT

Easy Smart Way Yourself
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dedication Happiness Life Secret Yourself
True, you don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps. Indeed, if you are religious, you don’t have to be crazy in the medically certifiable sense in order to do massively crazy things.
DANIEL DENNETT

Crazy Medical Religious True Yourself
Go ahead and believe in God , if you like, but don’t imagine that you have been given any grounds for such a belief by science.
DANIEL DENNETT

Belief Believe God Ground Imagination Science
If I know better than you know what I am up to, it is only because I spend more time with myself than you do.
DANIEL DENNETT

Better Myself Time Yourself
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

Advertisement Better Religion Subtract Yourself
I don’t think there is any religious revival. I think what we are hearing, the furor, is merely the hysterical response of the churches the handwriting on the wall that they are seeing.
DANIEL DENNETT

Myself Religious Respond Revive See Thinking Writing
Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God.
DANIEL DENNETT

Believe God People Religious
Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.
DANIEL DENNETT

Break Down Forever Ignorance Relative Religion

What you can imagine depends on what you know. Philosophers who know only philosophy consign themselves to a janitorial role in the great enterprises of exploration that are illuminating the mysteries of our lives.

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What you can imagine depends on what you know. Philosophers who know only philosophy consign themselves to a janitorial role in the great enterprises of exploration that are illuminating the mysteries of our lives.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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