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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

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A.J. Ayer
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More quotes by A.J. Ayer

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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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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
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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
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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
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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
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The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.
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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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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Why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are?
A.J. Ayer
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Even logical positivists are capable of love.
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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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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No moral system can rest solely on authority.
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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No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.
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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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