Daniel Dennett Quotes

In philosophy you're never 100% sure. You're always undermining what you think you know. That's always been my philosophy and my intellectual ethos.

The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.

Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true.

To philosophize is to doubt.

Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)

Not all questions are answered, but fortunately some answers are questioned.

This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking "What do I know?"

We must not let go manifest truths because we cannot answer all questions about them.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.

Truth is the object of philosophy, but not always of philosophers.

A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about.

Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know.

That's something I learned as a philosophy major: The philosophy ethos is, always question, never rest.

I know that science is very interested in answers, and I'm just happy with a good question.

I have often said that philosophy is better at questions than at answers – and that's nontrivial. They don't think it's their job to understand how things actually work, whereas I think that should be the job of philosophers.

Descartes, the father of modern philosophy ... would never-so he assures us-have been led to construct his philosophy if he had had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what he had been told; but, finding that his professors disagreed with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing doctrine was certain.

Question everything. Your love, your religion, your passion. If you don't have questions, you'll never find answers.

I think it's okay to ask questions. I don't think everything is answerable though.

But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can't acquire knowledge.

We cannot begin with complete doubt.