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.
Daniel DennettRead
It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our thoughts and stories shape our identities more than we consciously realize.
This quote by Daniel Dennett suggests that the stories we tell and the narratives we engage with significantly influence our thinking and behavior. It implies that rather than us being the sole creators of our ideas, it is often the ideas themselves that shape our minds and identities, highlighting the intertwining relationship between storytelling and human consciousness.
Themes
StoriesIdentityNarrativeThoughtsConsciousness
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of storytelling in culture.
More from Daniel Dennett
All quotes βPhilosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about - about what the issues really are - and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.
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Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
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The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
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Some philosophers can't bear to say simple things, like "Suppose a dog bites a man." They feel obliged instead to say, "Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t," thereby demonstrating their unshakable commitment to logical rigor, even though they don't go on to manipulate any formulae involving d, m, and t.
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As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive.
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