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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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Daniel Dennett
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 28
Cognitive Scientist
Philosopher
Professor
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Daniel Clement Dennett III
Daniel Clement Dennett
Accuracy
Brains
Using
Humility
Brain
Much
Yarns
Yarn
Spin

More quotes by Daniel Dennett

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You can't get through seminary and come out believing in God!
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
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Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.
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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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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An inert historical fact is any fact about a perfectly ordinary arrangement of matter in the world at some point in the past that is no longer discernible, a fact that has left no footprints at all in the world today.
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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Keep Darwinian thinking out of cosmology, out of psychology, out of human culture, out of ethics, politics, and religion!
Daniel Dennett
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Whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its member to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does!
Daniel Dennett
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The earth has grown a nervous system, and it's us.
Daniel Dennett
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People are afraid of being more ignorant than their children―especially, apparantly, their daughters.
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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To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.
Daniel Dennett
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The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight - that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything [that] a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether.
Daniel Dennett
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The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died
Daniel Dennett
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There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.
Daniel Dennett
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A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.
Daniel Dennett
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I even agree that the concept of god helps some people lead better lives. That does happen. Don't ever forget it. I just think there are better ways to help people lead better lives.
Daniel Dennett
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The haven all memes depend on reaching is the human mind, but a human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes.
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