Daniel Dennett Quotes

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.

Fire walking is an act of faith. I don't know why it works. I don't know why people don't die doing it. I found it very exhilarating.

I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.

Here the people could stand it no longer and complained of the long voyage; but the Admiral cheered them as best he could, holding out good hope of the advantages they would have. He added that it was useless to complain, he had come [to go] to the Indies, and so had to continue it until he found them, with the help of Our Lord.

My life is not a political campaign. I just write about what is on my mind. I just play whatever I feel like playing. Whatever is in my soul at the time is what I want to do. I have, thank god, enough people who are still interested in what I am doing so that I can go out and keep doing it.

I feel that it's nothing if not an incredible privilege to be able to get up on stage and play for people, and I don't ever take it for granted.

Sometimes you wish you could keep quiet. It's the kind of thing you heard the prophet Jeremiah complain of where he says, "You know God, I didn't want to be a prophet and you made me speak words of condemnation against a people I love deeply. Your word is like a fire burning in my breast."

I don't look at people's expressions, because I still get nervous when I play, especially when I first put the harp up there. I just try to tune - it takes me a half-hour to tune, and I get nervous if I look at anybody when I do it.

It's one thing believing in yourself, it's another thing having other people believe in you, and that is the greatest gift, honestly.

Well I've seen travel in many waysI've traveled in cars and old subwaysBut in Birmingham some people choseTo fly down the street from a fire hose.Doin' some hard travelin'...from hydrants of plenty.

Wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other, God is with them and for them and they are doing God's will.

I always felt called to serve, to empower and ennoble as many people as I could, teaching, truth-telling, exposing lies, bearing witness, and being willing to live and die for something bigger than yourself.

Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a well-organised universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of going around saying "O great table, without whom we are as naught." Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe in them or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees.

People are hungry for stories of faith. People are hungry for hope.

I play the same album over and over until the people in my house are ready to kill me.

There's more of yourself in a book than a play. that's why we know all about Dickens and not much about Shakespeare. Ben Jonson murdered people; Marlowe was a spy; Shakespeare just sat in the corner and took notes.

And this I do believe above all, especially in times of greater discouragement, that I must BELIEVE-that I must believe in my fellow people-that I must believe in myself-that I must believe in God-if life is to have any meaning.

From people who merely pray we must become people who bless.

Many people have just enough natural religion to make them immune to the real thing.

I think you get the parts that people are comfortable with seeing you play. I get that. And I don't shy away from those parts.

Kerry asks Americans to look at the evidence. Bush asks people to believe.

...sometimes God chooses to bless us and make us people of integrity in the midst of abominable circumstances, rather than change our circumstances.

The love of Christ comes from simple people who love simple people. Never be fooled by the spiritual leader who knows a lot but doesn't love a lot.

People like to play with the tuna, sometimes.