Famous Quotes by Daniel C. Dennett

“Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.”

“Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.”

“Imagination is cheap as long as you don't have to worry about the details.”

The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.

The whole idea of revenge and punishment is a childish daydream. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.

The ideal scientist thinks like a poet, works like a bookkeeper, and writes like a journalist.

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.

If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.

There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

The mind is the effect, not the cause.

The only way to construct a robust philosophy for life is to have a clear and realistic picture of what life actually is.

Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence.

Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else.

Humans are very often not very good at understanding the mind, but that's because the mind is a very complex system.

Science is the best tool we have for understanding the world, but it's not the only tool.

In science, there is only one rule: If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

Consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery. Even the most sophisticated thinkers are tongue-tied and confused by it.

The earth has grown a nervous system, and it's us.

We humans, each of us, are free to change our behavior if we know what needs to be changed.

If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.

In the long run, the theory of evolution by natural selection will be seen as one of the most important ideas ever proposed.

Every day, you make decisions that determine your future; those decisions are influenced by the philosophy you hold.

If you have a deep question in mind, you will eventually find answers, even if the question is incredibly difficult.

There’s a huge danger in thinking of consciousness as a magic trick performed by the brain.