Quote

...but I also can't prove that mushrooms could not be intergalactic spaceships spying on us.

Daniel Dennett

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Daniel Dennett
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 28
Cognitive Scientist
Philosopher
Professor
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Daniel Clement Dennett III
Daniel Clement Dennett
Spaceships
Mushrooms
Prove
Religion
Also
Intergalactic
Spying

More quotes by Daniel Dennett

Image
I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.
Daniel Dennett
Image
The earth has grown a nervous system, and it's us.
Daniel Dennett
Image
If the best the roboticists can hope for is the creation of some crude, cheesy, second-rate, artificial consciousness, they still win.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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
Image
The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God this that here really are lots of ways of repaying your debt of goodness - by setting to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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
Image
People are afraid of being more ignorant than their children―especially, apparantly, their daughters.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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
Image
Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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
Image
It stands to reason that we love chocolate cake because it is sweet. Guys go for girls like this because they are sexy. We adore babies because they're so cute. And, of course, we are amused by jokes because they are funny. This is all backwards. It is. And Darwin shows us why.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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
Image
I think many people are terribly afraid of being demoted by the Darwinian scheme from the role of authors and creators in their own right into being just places where things happen in the universe.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.
Daniel Dennett
Image
Keep Darwinian thinking out of cosmology, out of psychology, out of human culture, out of ethics, politics, and religion!
Daniel Dennett
Image
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
Image
In 50 years - or 20 years, or 200 years - our current epistemic horizon (the Big Bang, roughly) may look as parochial as the horizon Newton had to settle for in his day, but no doubt there will still be good questions whose answers elude us.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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