# Quote — Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea

> The evidence of evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy (Darwin's chief sources), but from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences. To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write. Doubts about the power of Darwin's idea of natural selection to explain this evolutionary process are still intellectually respectable, however, although the burden of proof for such skepticism has become immense...

- 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/the-evidence-of-evolution

## 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)