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The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died.

Daniel Dennett

What you can imagine depends on what you know.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dreams Imagination Knowledge Yourself
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
Cost is always an object – the second law of thermodynamics sees to that.
DANIEL DENNETT

Cost Law Object Science See
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

Achievement Concern Ethics Mathematics Problem Science System
Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.
DANIEL DENNETT

Add Complication Easy Problem Science Time
Philosophers’ Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
DANIEL DENNETT

Failure Imagination Mistake Necessary Philosophy
Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.
DANIEL DENNETT

Hold Life Paint Philosophy
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
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
In the long run I certainly hope information is the cure for fanaticism, but I am afraid information is more the cause than the cure.
DANIEL DENNETT

Afraid Cure Fantasy Hope Information Myself
There is a time for politeness and there is a time when you are obliged to be rude.
DANIEL DENNETT

Behavior Polite Rude Time Yourself
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
Darwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.
DANIEL DENNETT

Direction Ideas Natural People Tradition
You don’t get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better.
DANIEL DENNETT

Advertisement Better Religion Subtract Yourself
The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
DANIEL DENNETT

Discover Endorsement Evolution Reason
Words are memes that can be pronounced.
DANIEL DENNETT

Literature Pronounce Word

The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died.

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The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died.

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