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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

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A.J. Ayer
Conceptual
Analysis
Meaning
Philosophy
Life

More quotes by A.J. Ayer

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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
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It appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychologyand sociology.
A.J. Ayer
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Even logical positivists are capable of love.
A.J. Ayer
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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
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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
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No moral system can rest solely on authority.
A.J. Ayer
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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
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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
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While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.
A.J. Ayer
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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
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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
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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
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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
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No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.
A.J. Ayer
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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
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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
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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
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Why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are?
A.J. Ayer
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I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.
A.J. Ayer
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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