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 DENNETTAs 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.
More Daniel Dennett Quotes
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I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.
DANIEL DENNETT -
There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.
DANIEL DENNETT -
Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
DANIEL DENNETT -
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 -
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 -
A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.
DANIEL DENNETT -
AI makes philosophy honest.
DANIEL DENNETT -
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 -
You can’t get through seminary and come out believing in God!
DANIEL DENNETT -
Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.
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What you can imagine depends on what you know.
DANIEL DENNETT -
True, you don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps.
DANIEL DENNETT -
Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.
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I think religion for many people is some sort of moral viagra.
DANIEL DENNETT -
There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.
DANIEL DENNETT