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What you can imagine depends on what you know.

Daniel Dennett

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

Blessing God Gratitude Ideas Innovation Life Ourselves Worth
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
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 Growth Knowledge Need Ourselves Worst
The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.
DANIEL DENNETT

Achievement Concern Ethics Mathematics Problem Science System
Darwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.
DANIEL DENNETT

Direction Ideas Natural People Tradition
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
The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God this that here really are lots of ways of repaying your debt of goodness – by setting to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come.
DANIEL DENNETT

Best Creation Goodness Place Thankful
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
Churches have given us great treasures such as music and architecture. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter.
DANIEL DENNETT

Architecture Greatness Harm Music Pay Treasure
The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.
DANIEL DENNETT

Goodness Hide Mistake Trick Yourself
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

Imagination Live Mystery Ourselves Philosophy
We have had plenty of atheist presidents; they just wouldn’t admit it.
DANIEL DENNETT

Admit Atheist President
I’m the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think — just ask my critics.
DANIEL DENNETT

Color Criticism Deny Experience Myself Pain People Repeat
A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.
DANIEL DENNETT

Alone Children Desert Empathy
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

Care Complete Guide Knowledge Limitation Yourself
What you can imagine depends on what you know.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dreams Imagination Knowledge Yourself

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

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What you can imagine depends on what you know.

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