A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.
A.C. GRAYLINGA human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.
A.C. GRAYLINGThe wise say that our failure is to form habits: for habit is the mark of a stereotyped world.
A.C. GRAYLINGAnd 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. GRAYLINGHumanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life.
A.C. GRAYLINGI 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. GRAYLINGReligions survive mainly because they brainwash the young.
A.C. GRAYLINGLook at the blogosphere – the biggest lavatory wall in the universe, a palimpsest of graffiti and execration.
A.C. GRAYLINGTo 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. GRAYLINGIf 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. GRAYLINGJust 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. GRAYLINGIt 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. GRAYLINGI am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton’s head.
A.C. GRAYLINGMisuse 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…mastery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life.
A.C. GRAYLINGNothing 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. GRAYLINGWhen 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