Daniel C. Dennett Quotes: 9

• You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better.

• Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.

  Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness

• People are afraid of being more ignorant than their children―especially, apparantly, their daughters.

  Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

• 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.

  Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

• Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.

  Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

• Those who feel guilty contemplating "betraying"the tradition they love by acknowledging their disapproval of elements within it should reflect on the fact that the very tradition to which they are so loyal—the "eternal"tradition introduced to them in their youth—is in fact the evolved product of many adjustments firmly but delicately made by earlier lovers of the same tradition.

  Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

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

  Freedom Evolves

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

  Consciousness Explained

• The secret of happiness: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.