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When I was 14 a chaplain at school gave me a reading list. I read everything and I went back to him with a question: how can you really believe in this stuff?

A.C. Grayling

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A.C. Grayling
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More quotes by 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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Try lighting your house by prayer instead of electricity and see which one works.
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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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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The media no longer hesitate to whip up lurid anxieties in order to increase sales, in the process undermining social confidence and multiplying fears.
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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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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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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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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It doesn't have to be the Grand Canyon, it could be a city street, it could be the face of another human being - Everything is full of wonder.
A.C. Grayling
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Religion and science have a common ancestor - ignorance.
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
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...mastery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life.
A.C. Grayling
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Future generations may or may not judge Wittgenstein to be one of the great philosophers. Even if they do not, however, he is sure always to count as one of the great personalities of philosophy. From our perspective it is easy to mistake one for the other which he is time will tell.
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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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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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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Humanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life.
A.C. Grayling
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Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person's broad mind and narrow waist change places.
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