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. In a single… — Daniel Dennett Copy Share Image
The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it. — Daniel Dennett Copy Share Image
Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species- back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire has been ethically ambiguous. If you want to reason about faith, and offer a reasoned (and reason responsive) defense of faith as an extra category of belief worthy of special consideration, I'm eager to play. I… — Daniel Dennett Copy Share
Churches have given us great treasures such as music and architecture. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter. — Daniel Dennett Copy Share Image
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it. — Daniel Dennett Copy Share Image
Whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion… — Daniel Dennett Copy Share Image
There's no polite way to say to somebody (religious followers) 'Do you realize you've wasted your life? — Daniel Dennett Copy Share Image
Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments, it is apt to emerge again and again,… — Daniel Dennett Copy Share 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… — Daniel Dennett Copy Share Image
Cost is always an object - the second law of thermodynamics sees to that — Daniel Dennett Copy Share Image
In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was… — Daniel Dennett Copy Share Image
I look around the world and see so many wonderful things that I love and enjoy and benefit from, whether it's art or music… — Daniel Dennett Copy Share Image
In all mammalian species that have so far been carefully studied, the rate at which their members engage in the killing of conspecifics is… — Daniel Dennett Copy Share Image
Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable,"… — Daniel Dennett Copy Share
