Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

A.J. Ayer
Way
Knowledge
Deceiving
People
Interesting
Psychological
Point
Experiences
Fact
View
Verifiable
Facts
Unless
Empirically
Doe
Views
Formulate
May
Sure
Imply
Thing
Religious
Propositions

More quotes by A.J. Ayer

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are?
A.J. Ayer
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The misfortunes which God is represented in the book of Job as allowing Satan to inflict on Job, merely to test his faith, are indications, if not of positive malevolence, at least of a suspicious and ruthless insecurity, which is characteristic more of a tyrant than of a wholly powerful and benevolent deity.
A.J. Ayer
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.
A.J. Ayer
Image
It appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychologyand sociology.
A.J. Ayer
Image
No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.
A.J. Ayer
Image
No moral system can rest solely on authority.
A.J. Ayer
Image
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
Image
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