# Quote — Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea

> Philosophers might care to ask themselves … how often they are accomplices in increasing the audience for a second-rate article simply because their introductory course needs a simple-minded version of a bad idea that even freshmen can refute. Some of the most frequently reprinted articles in twentieth-century philosophy are famous precisely because nobody believes them; everybody can see what's wrong with them. … The confirmation of this claim is left as an exercise for the reader. Among the memes that structure the infosphere and hence affect the transmission of other memes are the laws of libel.

- Author: [Daniel Dennett](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett.md)
- Book: [Darwin's Dangerous Idea](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett#Darwin's_Dangerous_Idea_(1995)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea/philosophers-might-care

## More from this book

> If you have ever asked yourself if there are facts about yourself (about your health, your competence, your prospects) you would rather not know, and decided that there were, you should be prepared to consider seriously the suggestion that the best — perhaps the only — way to ensure that such facts are not imposed on people is by prohibiting investigations likely to discover them.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea/if-you-have.md)

> Political correctness, in the extreme versions worthy of the name, is antithetical to almost all surprising advances in thought. We might call it eumemics, since it is, like the extreme eugenics of Social Darwinists, an attempt to impose myopically derived standards of safety and goodness on the bounty of nature. Few today — but there are a few — would brand all genetic counseling, all genetic policies, with the condemnatory title of eugenics.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea/political-correctness-in-the.md)

> [T]he only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea/t-he-only-meaning.md)