A J Ayer Quotes

Ayer may be considered a practical atheist: one who sees no reason to worship an invisible deity. ~ James A. Haught

I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions. ~ A.J. Ayer

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

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

While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them. ~ A.J. Ayer

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

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

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

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

It is now generally admitted, at any rate by philosophers, that the existence of a being having the attributes which define the god of any non-animistic religion cannot be demonstratively proved ... [A]ll utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical. ~ A.J. Ayer

...the fact that a conclusion does not follow from its putative premise is not sufficient to show that it is false. ~ A.J. Ayer

It appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychologyand sociology. ~ A.J. Ayer

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

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

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

No moral system can rest solely on authority. ~ A.J. Ayer

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

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

Why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are? ~ A.J. Ayer

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

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

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

Academic environments are generally characterised by the presence of peole who claim to understand more than in fact they do. Linguistic Philosophy has produced a great revolution, generating people who claim not to understand when in fact they do. Some achieve great virtuosity at it. Any beginner in philosophy can manage not to understand, say, Hegel, but I have heard people who were so advanced that they knew how not to understand writers of such limpid clarity as Bertrand Russell or A.J. Ayer. ~ Ernest Gellner

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

No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine. ~ A.J. Ayer

The principles of logic and mathematics are true universally 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

The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. ~ A.J. Ayer

Legacies are not just for legends. Whether a million people know your name, or only one person does, you still have the right to leave your mark on the world, even if it's only in your tiny corner of it, in the tiniest of ways.

Not all of us will achieve great heights and feats. Most of us will never leave our hometown or country, let alone conquer Everest. And you know what? That's okay.

Because real life is what happens in between moments of greatness. It's the little things that at the end of it all, you realize were greater than the sum of their parts. It's the amount of times you laughed, or cried, danced, sang, created, inspired, and made someone smile.

The best kind of legacies are the ones that are unseen. You'll never fully be able to measure the effect of a smile or a kind word, but I promise you, the most whispered phrase can send a shockwave around the world that lasts for centuries, or even an eternity. ~ A.J. Compton

For the most part I have been able to meet all my goals, but I always strive for bigger goals in life so everything's not complete just yet. My first aspiration was to be known as a singer and also as an advocate for sickle cell disease. I try to be that inspiration, you know. It's not as bad as people try to make it seem. I mean, it is, but it's not. People don't have to be afraid of it; they don't have to be held down by it. Try to find triumph in the situation. ~ A. J. Green

If there's one thing I've learned in all my time working with children, if I could whittle those years down to a single revelation, it's this: They are extraordinarily resilient. They can withstand neglect; they can survive abuse; they can endure, even thrive, where adults would collapse like umbrellas. ~ A.J. Finn

Hunger and necessity are poor teachers of morality. A society that cannot provide the basics of life does not get its laws obeyed. ~ A.J. Quinnell

The virtue of achievement is victory over oneself. Those who know this can never know defeat. ~ A.J. Cronin

Without purpose and meaning in our lives, we banish ourselves to wander this plane of existence with self-destructive tendencies until the bell tolls and our breath capsizes in our lungs, snatching our chance to redeem ourselves forever. ~ A.J. Darkholme

Behavior shapes emotions. ~ A. J. Jacobs

My husband and I are just really laid back people. ~ A. J. Cook

Stories can die. Of course they can. Ask any author who's had an idea wither in their head, fail to thrive and bear fruit. Or a book that spoke to you as a child but upon revisiting it was silent and empty. Stories can die from neglect, from abuse, from rot. Even war, as Shakespeare warned, can turn books to graves.
We seek to preserve the books, of course. But we forget the flip side of that duty: treasure what we have. Honor the stories that speak to you, that give you something you need to keep going. Cherish stories while they are here.
There's a reason the unwritten live on something as fragile as paper. ~ A.J. Hackwith

Projects have a beginning and an end. Chores are the things you do over and over again. A ~ J. David Cox

Let your fear drive you to evolve into greatness. ~ A.J. Darkholme

If someone was going to kill someone dear to you, and you could stop that person by killing them instead, would you kill them, knowing it was an effective way to save your loved one? ~ A.J. Darkholme

In times of war, skepticism can be just cause for execution. ~ A.J. Darkholme

I love it when the Bible gives Emily Post-like tips that are both wise and easy to follow. ~ A. J. Jacobs

The more a mind thinks upon something, the deeper it will take root and affect all subsequent and related thought. ~ A.J. Darkholme

We nearly had our asses handed to us in a sling by a bunny rabbit? ~ A.J. Culpepper

You tell them you have a hunger and a thirst. You don't sit at the same table but you have a hunger and a thirst. ~ A. J. Jacobs

Step back for a minute. Pretend you're from Mars. From a coldly rational point of view, pedestrian helmets aren't a crazy idea. ~ A. J. Jacobs

Selfies are just being selfish in a j-peg. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

Sign this... and I'll show you ~ A.J. Hartley

The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long. ~ A.J.P. Taylor

Though he can't remember how he got there or having taken off his clothes, A.J. wakes in bed wearing only his underwear. He remembers that Harvey Rhodes is dead; he remembers being an asshole to the comely Knightley Press rep; he remembers throwing the vindaloo across the room; he remembers the first glass of wine and the toast to Tamerlane. After that, oblivion. From his point of view, the evening had been a triumph. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Our task as historians is to make past conflicts live again; not to lament the verdict or to wish for a different one. It bewildered me when my old master A. F. Pribram, a very great historian, said in the nineteen-thirties: 'It is still not decided whether the Habsburg monarchy could have found a solution for its national problems.' How can we decide about something that did not happen? Heaven knows, we have difficulty enough in deciding what did happen. Events decided that the Habsburgs had not found a solution for their national problems; that is all we know or need to know. Whenever I read the phrase: 'whether so-and-so acted rightly must be left for historians to decide', I close the book; the writer has moved from history to make-believe. ~ A.J.P. Taylor

I prefer the earlier birth control techniques, which ranged from the delicious (using honey as a spermicide) to the aerobic (jumping backward seven times after coitus). ~ A. J. Jacobs

Never give up on the possibilities or accept what is when you can see it for what it could be. ~ A.J. Darkholme

You've been watching to much Pretty Woman, and I'm sorry, but there's no way I'm the hooker in this arrangement. ~ A.J. Rose

Third years are permitted to visit the village of Hogsmeade on certain weekends. Please give the enclosed permission form to your parent or guardian to sign. A ~ J.K. Rowling

If something needs to be done, do it. If something needs to be said, say it. ~ A.J. Darkholme

Turning my head to see all of the 6ft 2inches of American stud Marc Sanders, before me is a vision. ~ A.J. Walters

Our destinations are Booleans – we reach them or we don't – but our journeys are spectrums, because there are so many paths we can take to our destination that make getting there that much better. ~ A.J. Darkholme

Sometimes it feels like you have nothing, or aren't going anywhere, but while you're waiting for fortune to deliver you, there is always something you can do to help yourself, or teach yourself to better your situation. ~ A.J. Darkholme

Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day. ~ A. J. Cook

Are you okay?" he asks, breathless. "Yes," I reply, just as breathless. I think it's strange that he's asking me that when he's the one who tripped. ~ A.J. Steiger

We didn't realize there were that many boy bands until we started touring in Europe. I don't think we were ever affected by it since a lot of the groups in Europe didn't really sing live, but we did and would perform a cappella as well. ~ A. J. McLean