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 juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote illustrates the idea of adaptation and the loss of unnecessary traits over time.
Daniel Dennett uses the juvenile sea squirt's journey and eventual loss of its brain after finding a suitable home as a metaphor for evolution and the idea that living beings often shed traits that are no longer useful for their survival. This quote highlights the nature of growth and the transformations that life undergoes, suggesting that sometimes, in the pursuit of stability and security, we may discard parts of ourselves that were once vital for navigating the world.
Themes
EvolutionAdaptationTransformationGrowthSurvival
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on personal growth, one might say, 'As Daniel Dennett noted, sometimes we must shed our old selves to truly thrive.'
More from Daniel Dennett
All quotes →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.
Daniel DennettRead
Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
Daniel DennettRead
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
Daniel DennettRead
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.
Daniel DennettRead
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.
Daniel DennettRead
Similar quotes
The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
Whenever you see, in an official lectionary, the command to omit two or three verses, you can normally be sure that they contain words of judgment. Unless, of course, they are about sex.
N. T. WrightRead
We inherited these principles and these freedoms and we here highly resolve that we shall pass them on, as we will pass on an undivided Republic purged of racism and slavery, to our descendants. The popgun discharges of a few pathetic sectarians and crackpot revisionists are negligible, and will be drowned by the mounting chorus that demands: 'Mr Jefferson! BUILD UP THAT WALL'.
Christopher HitchensRead
Religious unity can look like a carnival and religious liberty can look like a funeral.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible.
John GreenRead
What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream.
Franz KafkaRead