No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.
A.J. AYERNo morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.
A.J. AYERThe 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. AYERWe 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. AYERI saw a Divine Being. I’m afraid I’m going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.
A.J. AYERIt appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychologyand sociology.
A.J. AYERThe traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.
A.J. AYERI 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. AYERI 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. AYERIt seems that I have spent my entire life trying to make life more rational and that it was all wasted effort.
A.J. AYERThere 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. AYERBertrand Russell would not have wished to be called a saint of any description; but he was a great and good man.
A.J. AYERWhile moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.
A.J. AYERIf 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. AYERWe 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. AYERI 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. AYERWhy should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are?
A.J. AYER