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Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is considerable competition among memes for entry in as many minds as possible.

Daniel Dennett

The mind is the effect, not the cause.
DANIEL DENNETT

Effect Mindset Science
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
Now that mobile phones and the internet have altered the epistemic selective landscape in a revolutionary way, every religious organisation must scramble to evolve defences or become extinct.
DANIEL DENNETT

Evolution Internet Organization Phone Revolution Selection
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
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
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
There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.
DANIEL DENNETT

Assumption Freedom Lying Philosophy Science
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
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
There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dedication Illusion People Polite Simplicity
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
Cost is always an object – the second law of thermodynamics sees to that.
DANIEL DENNETT

Cost Law Object Science See
Thanks to technology, what almost anybody can do has been multiplied a thousandfold, and our moral understanding about what we ought to do hasn’t kept pace.
DANIEL DENNETT

Moral Ourselves Technology Understand
Words are memes that can be pronounced.
DANIEL DENNETT

Literature Pronounce Word
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

Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is considerable competition among memes for entry in as many minds as possible.

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Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is considerable competition among memes for entry in as many minds as possible.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Daniel Dennett Quotes