Quotes by A.j. Ayer - Page 1

Even logical positivists are capable of love.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Capable
Logical
Copy Quote
No moral system can rest solely on authority.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Authority
Insightful
Morality
Copy Quote
Why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are?
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Mind
Should
Shows
Copy Quote
No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Divine
Ethics
Morality
Copy Quote
I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Book
Opinion
Saws
Copy Quote
The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Disputes
Philosopher
Philosophical
Copy Quote
It seems that I have spent my entire life trying to make life more rational and that it was all wasted effort.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Effort
Insightful
Trying
Copy Quote
While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Facts
May
Moral
Copy Quote
Bertrand Russell would not have wished to be called a saint of any description; but he was a great and good man.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Men
Good Man
Saint
Copy Quote
It appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychologyand sociology.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Branches
Ethics
Sociology
Copy Quote
But if science may be said to be blind without philosophy, it is true also that philosophy is virtually empty without science.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Blind
May
Philosophy
Copy Quote
There is philosophy, which is about conceptual analysis - about the meaning of what we say - and there is all of this ... all of life.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Analysis
Philosophy
Copy Quote
I suddenly stopped and looked out at the sea and thought, my God, how beautiful this is ... for 26 years I had never really looked at it before.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Beautiful
Sea
Years
Copy Quote
I take it, therefore, to be a fact, that one's existence ends with death. I think it possible to show how this fact can be emotionally acceptable.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Atheism
Facts
Thinking
Copy Quote
We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Given
Ifs And
Significant
Copy Quote
I see philosophy as a fairly abstract activity, as concerned mainly with the analysis of criticism and concepts, and of course most usefully of scientific concepts.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Analysis
Criticism
Philosophy
Copy Quote
We shall maintain that no statement which refers to a 'reality'transcending the limits of all possible sense- experience can possibly have any literal significance.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Limits
Reality
Significance
Copy Quote
The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Choices
Ignorance
People
Copy Quote
The only possible basis for a sound morality is mutual tolerance and respect: tolerance of one another’s customs and opinions; respect for one another’s rights and feelings; awareness of one another’s needs.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Feelings
Rights
Tolerance
Copy Quote
Theism is so confused and the sentences in which "God" appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Atheism
Confused
Impossible
Copy Quote
If the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Atheism
Atheist
Nonsensical
Copy Quote
There never comes a point where a theory can be said to be true. The most that one can claim for any theory is that it has shared the successes of all its rivals and that it has passed at least one test which they have failed.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Claims
Rivals
Tests
Copy Quote
I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Religion
Atheist
Believe
Thinking
Copy Quote
It is possible to be a meta-physician without believing in a transcendent reality; for we shall see that many metaphysical utterances are due to the commission of logical errors, rather than to a conscious desire on the part of their authors to go beyond the limits of experience.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Believe
Errors
Reality
Copy Quote
The misfortunes which God is represented in the book of Job as allowing Satan to inflict on Job, merely to test his faith, are indications, if not of positive malevolence, at least of a suspicious and ruthless insecurity, which is characteristic more of a tyrant than of a wholly powerful and benevolent deity.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
God
Jobs
Religious
Copy Quote
The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from the psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply that there is such a thing as religious knowledge...Unless he can formulate this 'knowledge' in propositions that are empirically verifiable, we may be sure that he is deceiving himself.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
People
Religious
Views
Copy Quote
If one takes full account of the persecution of heretics, the frequency and savagery of the religious wars which Christianity had endangered, the harm caused, especially to children, by the pernicious doctrine of original sin, a case could be made for saying that the world would have been better off without Christianity.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
War
Children
Religious
Copy Quote
If 'god' is a metaphysical term, then it cannot be even probable that a god exists. For to say that 'God exists' is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false. And by the same criterion, no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal significance.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Religion
Atheism
True Or False
Copy Quote
It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Past
Superstitions
Way
Copy Quote
The principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Principles
Self
Use
Copy Quote
A prevalent fallacy is the assumption that a proof of an afterlife would also be a proof of the existence of a deity. This is far from being the case. If, as I hold, there is no good reason to believe that a god either created or presides over this world, there is equally no good reason to believe that a god created or presides over the next world, on the unlikely supposition that such a thing exists.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Afterlife
Believe
World
Copy Quote
The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be the purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry. And this is by no means so difficult a task as the history of philosophy would lead one to suppose. For if there are any questions which science leaves it to philosophy to answer, a straightforward process of elimination must lead to their discovery.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Truth
Philosophical
Philosophy
Copy Quote
In other words, the propositions of philosophy are not factual, but linguistic in character - that is, they do not describe the behaviour of physical, or even mental, objects; they express definitions, or the formal consequences of definitions. Accordingly we may say that philosophy is a department of logic. For we will see that the characteristic mark of a purely logical enquiry, is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions and not with questions of empirical fact.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Character
Enquiry
Philosophy
Copy Quote
To make our position clearer, we may formulate it in another way. Let us call a proposition which records an actual or possible observation an experiential proposition. Then we may say that it is the mark of a genuine factual proposition, not that it should be equivalent to an experiential proposition, or any finite number of experiential propositions, but simply that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those other premises alone.
A.j. Ayer / Philosopher
Finite Number
May
Numbers
Copy Quote

Related Philosopher Authors

Zicheng Hong
Philosopher
Zhuangzi
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Zhang Zai
Philosopher
Zeno Of Elea
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Zengzi
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Zechariah Chafee
Philosopher
Monday, Dec 07, 1885
Friday, Feb 08, 1957
Yasuhiko Kimura
Philosopher
Yamaga Soko
Philosopher
Wednesday, Sep 21, 1622
Tuesday, Oct 23, 1685
Yajnavalkya
Philosopher
Xunzi
Philosopher
Xenophanes
Philosopher

Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Xenocrates
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
William Torrey Harris
Philosopher
Thursday, Sep 10, 1835
Friday, Nov 05, 1909
William Thompson
Philosopher
Friday, Jun 30, 1775
Thursday, Mar 28, 1833
William Pepperell Montague
Philosopher
Tuesday, Nov 11, 1873
Saturday, Aug 01, 1953

View All Philosopher Quotes

Top Authors

Bob Marley
Singer
Tuesday, Feb 06, 1945
Monday, May 11, 1981
Maya Angelou
Author
Wednesday, Apr 04, 1928
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Michael Jordan
Basketball Player
Sunday, Feb 17, 1963
George Bernard Shaw
Playwright
Saturday, Jul 26, 1856
Thursday, Nov 02, 1950
John C. Maxwell
Author
Thursday, Feb 20, 1947
Nelson Mandela
Former President Of South Africa
Thursday, Jul 18, 1918
Thursday, Dec 05, 2013
Francis Of Assisi
Saint
Thursday, Jun 24, 1182
Saturday, Oct 03, 1226
Dalai Lama
Saturday, Jul 06, 1935
Mother Teresa
Saint
Friday, Aug 26, 1910
Friday, Sep 05, 1997
Joe Biden
Vice President Of The United States
Friday, Nov 20, 1942
H. L. Mencken
Journalist
Sunday, Sep 12, 1880
Sunday, Jan 29, 1956
Dolly Parton
Singer-Songwriter
Saturday, Jan 19, 1946
Will Rogers
Actor
Tuesday, Nov 04, 1879
Thursday, Aug 15, 1935
Soren Kierkegaard
Philosopher
Wednesday, May 05, 1813
Sunday, Nov 11, 1855
Stephen Hawking
Physicist
Thursday, Jan 08, 1942

View All Authors

A.j. Ayer Quotes - Page 1

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Philosopher Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Philosopher Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page