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What you can imagine depends on what you know. Philosophers who know only philosophy consign themselves to a janitorial role in the great enterprises of exploration that are illuminating the mysteries of our lives.

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

Better Myself Time Yourself
Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
DANIEL DENNETT

Conscious Human Mystery Survive
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
Cost is always an object – the second law of thermodynamics sees to that.
DANIEL DENNETT

Cost Law Object Science See
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
No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.
DANIEL DENNETT

Easy Smart Way Yourself
Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.
DANIEL DENNETT

Natural Religion Social System
The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
DANIEL DENNETT

Discover Endorsement Evolution Reason
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
There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dedication Illusion People Polite Simplicity
A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.
DANIEL DENNETT

Library Scholar Way
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
AI makes philosophy honest.
DANIEL DENNETT

Artificial Honesty Intelligence Philosophy
Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.
DANIEL DENNETT

Add Complication Easy Problem Science Time
Words are memes that can be pronounced.
DANIEL DENNETT

Literature Pronounce Word
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

What you can imagine depends on what you know. Philosophers who know only philosophy consign themselves to a janitorial role in the great enterprises of exploration that are illuminating the mysteries of our lives.

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What you can imagine depends on what you know. Philosophers who know only philosophy consign themselves to a janitorial role in the great enterprises of exploration that are illuminating the mysteries of our lives.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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