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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

There’s no polite way to say to somebody (religious followers) ‘Do you realize you’ve wasted your life?
DANIEL DENNETT

Life Polite Religious Wasted Time Yourself
The mind is the effect, not the cause.
DANIEL DENNETT

Effect Mindset Science
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
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
Words are memes that can be pronounced.
DANIEL DENNETT

Literature Pronounce Word
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
As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive.
DANIEL DENNETT

Destruction Enemy Hit Mindset Panic Worst Yourself
The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.
DANIEL DENNETT

Goodness Hide Mistake Trick Yourself
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
What you can imagine depends on what you know.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dreams Imagination Knowledge Yourself
In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all.
DANIEL DENNETT

Beginning Purpose Reason World
Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species – us.
DANIEL DENNETT

Condition Freedom Human Mistake Objection Oneself
To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.
DANIEL DENNETT

Fair Ignorance Learning Myself Process Reading Writing
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
The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.
DANIEL DENNETT

Care Effort Examination Life Meaning Worth
A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.
DANIEL DENNETT

Library Scholar Way

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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