black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.

Daniel Dennett

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
Words are memes that can be pronounced.
DANIEL DENNETT

Literature Pronounce Word
What you can imagine depends on what you know.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dreams Imagination Knowledge Yourself
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

Criticism Feeling Hurt Opportunity Religious Situation Win
The haven all memes depend on reaching is the human mind, but a human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes.
DANIEL DENNETT

Brain Depend Human Mindset Place Reach
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
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
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
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
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
The evidence for evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy, but of course from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences.
DANIEL DENNETT

Evidence Life Science Subject
A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.
DANIEL DENNETT

Library Scholar Way
I look around the world and see so many wonderful things that I love and enjoy and benefit from, whether it’s art or music or clothing or food and all the rest. And I’d like to add a little to that goodness.
DANIEL DENNETT

Different Enjoyment Goodness Love Myself See World
Philosophers’ Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
DANIEL DENNETT

Failure Imagination Mistake Necessary Philosophy
Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.
DANIEL DENNETT

Hold Life Paint Philosophy
We have had plenty of atheist presidents; they just wouldn’t admit it.
DANIEL DENNETT

Admit Atheist President

The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Daniel Dennett Quotes