Look at the blogosphere – the biggest lavatory wall in the universe, a palimpsest of graffiti and execration.
A.C. GRAYLINGLook at the blogosphere – the biggest lavatory wall in the universe, a palimpsest of graffiti and execration.
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. GRAYLINGThe 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. GRAYLINGI despise people who depend on these things [heroin and cocaine]. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.
A.C. GRAYLINGReligions survive mainly because they brainwash the young.
A.C. GRAYLINGI am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton’s head.
A.C. GRAYLINGThe wise say that our failure is to form habits: for habit is the mark of a stereotyped world.
A.C. GRAYLINGHumanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life.
A.C. GRAYLING…mastery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life.
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. 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. 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. GRAYLINGInculcating the various competing – competing, note – falsehoods of the major faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal.
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. GRAYLINGTo read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.
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. GRAYLING