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
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
Interpretation
True happiness comes from dedicating yourself to a cause greater than yourself.
This quote by Daniel Dennett suggests that genuine happiness is achieved when we focus our energies on something that transcends our own personal desires and ambitions. By finding and committing ourselves to a purpose that is more significant than our individual selves, we can experience fulfillment and joy that goes beyond mere self-interest.
In practice
In a motivational speech about finding purpose in life.
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.
Philosophers 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.
Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
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.
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.
If the concept of consciousness were to fall to science, what would happen to our sense of moral agency and free will? If conscious experience were reduced somehow to mere matter in motion, what would happen to our appreciation of love and pain and dreams and joy? If conscious human beings were just animated material objects, how could anything we do to them be right or wrong?
By breaking down our sense of self-importance, all we lose is a parasite that has long infected our minds. What we gain in return is freedom, openness of mind, spontaneity, simplicity, altruism: all qualities inherent in happiness.
Of all the gifts bestowed by nature on human beings, hearty laughter must be close to the top.
I really do live for the future, because when I'm eating a box of candy, I can't wait to taste the last piece.
Do you wish the world were happy? Then remember day by day, just to scatter seeds of kindness as you pass along the way. . . .
The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.
Never let your fears be the boundaries of your dreams._x000D_ _x000D_ Happiness is a direction, not a place.
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