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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

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Daniel Dennett
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 28
Cognitive Scientist
Philosopher
Professor
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Daniel Clement Dennett III
Daniel Clement Dennett
Spend
Consciousness
Better
Time

More quotes by Daniel Dennett

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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
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... there could be talking bunny rabbits, spiders who write English messages in their webs, and for that matter, melancholy choo-choo trains. There could be, I suppose, but there aren't-so my theory doesn't have to explain them.
Daniel Dennett
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It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.
Daniel Dennett
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Natural selection is not gene centrist and nor is biology all about genes our comprehending minds are a result of our fast evolving culture.
Daniel Dennett
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As 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.
Daniel Dennett
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The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
Daniel Dennett
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The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them - especially not from yourself. Instead of turning away in denial when you make a mistake, you should become a connoisseur of your own mistakes, turning them over in your mind as if they were works of art, which in a way they are.
Daniel Dennett
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Consciousness is cerebral celebrity--nothing more and nothing less. Those contents are conscious that persevere, that monopolize resources long enough to achieve certain typical and symptomatic effects--on memory, on the control of behavior and so forth.
Daniel Dennett
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Sometimes you don’t just want to risk making mistakes you actually want to make them - if only to give you something clear and detailed to fix.
Daniel Dennett
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You can't get through seminary and come out believing in God!
Daniel Dennett
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I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.
Daniel Dennett
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The earth has grown a nervous system, and it's us.
Daniel Dennett
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I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.
Daniel Dennett
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The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
Daniel Dennett
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In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.
Daniel Dennett
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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
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The point of asking questions is to find true answers the point of measuring is to measure accurately the point of making maps is to find your way to your destination... In short, the goal of truth goes without saying, in every human culture.
Daniel Dennett
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The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.
Daniel Dennett
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Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.
Daniel Dennett
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Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.
Daniel Dennett