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No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.

Daniel Dennett

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

Admit Atheist President
There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dedication Illusion People Polite Simplicity
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
Philosophers’ Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
DANIEL DENNETT

Failure Imagination Mistake Necessary Philosophy
Philosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about – about what the issues really are – and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.
DANIEL DENNETT

Contribution Destination Philosophy Quite Recognition Talk
Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.
DANIEL DENNETT

Add Complication Easy Problem Science Time
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
There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dangerous Force Fundamental Planet
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
It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.
DANIEL DENNETT

Brain Ourselves
The earth has grown a nervous system, and it’s us.
DANIEL DENNETT

Earth Growth Nervous Ourselves
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
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
The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.
DANIEL DENNETT

Goodness Hide Mistake Trick Yourself
Darwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.
DANIEL DENNETT

Direction Ideas Natural People Tradition
You can’t get through seminary and come out believing in God!
DANIEL DENNETT

Believe Seminar Yourself

No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.

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No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.

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