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There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

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
Lives
Tell
Way
People
Polite
Dedicated
Illusion
Simply

More quotes by 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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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.
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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.
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Up till now, we can suppose, nervous systems solved the 'Now what do I do?' problem by a relatively simple balancing act between a strictly limited repertoire of actions - if not the famous four F's (fight, flee, feed, or mate), then a modest elaboration of them.
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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
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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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A scholar is just a library's way of making another library.
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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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YES we have a soul but it's made of lots of tiny robots
Daniel Dennett
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Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
Daniel Dennett
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Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.
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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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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We should get used to the idea that we'll probably never be able to find - and confirm - a good explanation of the ultimate origin of the universe, though I see no reason to believe that we can't press much further on this question than we have managed to date.
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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I think religion for many people is some sort of moral viagra.
Daniel Dennett
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I don't myself need that role for God. My view is that creation itself, the universe itself, is the most wonderful thing deserving awe and respect. And that satisfies me as my substitute for God.
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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Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery... a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. And, as with all of the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist - and hope - that there will never be a demystification of consciousness.
Daniel Dennett
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If the history of resistance to Darwinian thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long after every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by 'mere machines,' there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend.
Daniel Dennett