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Religion and science have a common ancestor - ignorance.

A.C. Grayling

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A.C. Grayling
Science
Ancestor
Ignorance
Common
Religion

More quotes by A.C. Grayling

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Try lighting your house by prayer instead of electricity and see which one works.
A.C. Grayling
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The wise say that our failure is to form habits: for habit is the mark of a stereotyped world.
A.C. Grayling
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A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.
A.C. Grayling
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There is a beautiful and life-enhancing alternative outlook that offers insight, consolation, inspiration and meaning, which has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the best, most generous, most sympathetic understanding of human reality.
A.C. Grayling
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Misuse of reason might yet return the world to pre-technological night plenty of religious zealots hunger for just such a result, and are happy to use the latest technology to effect it.
A.C. Grayling
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I believe that decisions about the timing and manner of death belong to the individual as a human right. I believe it is wrong to withhold medical methods of terminating life painlessly and swiftly when an individual has a rational and clear-minded sustained wish to end his or her life.
A.C. Grayling
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Religious apologists complain bitterly that atheists and secularists are aggressive and hostile in their criticism of them. I always say: look, when you guys were in charge, you didn't argue with us, you just burnt us at the stake. Now what we're doing is, we're presenting you with some arguments and some challenging questions, and you complain.
A.C. Grayling
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...mastery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life.
A.C. Grayling
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I despise people who depend on these things [heroin and cocaine]. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.
A.C. Grayling
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Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.
A.C. Grayling
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I do not believe that there are any such things as gods and goddesses, for exactly the same reasons as I do not believe there are fairies, goblins or sprites, and these reasons should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten.
A.C. Grayling
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And I say, the meaning of life is what you make it. There will be as many different meaningful lives as there are people to live them.
A.C. Grayling
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Nothing is truly unnatural, because everything that exists, including human intelligence, is a product of nature. If human intelligence can devise ways for the genes from two men to result in a child, their doing so is an entirely natural event.
A.C. Grayling
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Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric.
A.C. Grayling
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To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.
A.C. Grayling
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If there is anything worth fearing in the world, it is living in such a way that gives one cause for regret in the end.
A.C. Grayling
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It takes a certain ingenuous faith - but I have it - to believe that people who read and reflect more likely than not come to judge things with liberality and truth.
A.C. Grayling
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Religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young.
A.C. Grayling
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I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton's head.
A.C. Grayling
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Christian churches and Muslim groups have no more right to have their say than women's institutes or trades unions. The government has actively encouraged faith-based education, and therefore given a megaphone to religious voices and fundamentalists.
A.C. Grayling