A.J. Ayer

No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.

— A.J. Ayer

In other words, the propositions of philosophy are not factual, but linguistic in character - that is, they do not describe the…

— A.J. Ayer

The principles of logic and mathematics are true universally simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason…

— A.J. Ayer

I suddenly stopped and looked out at the sea and thought, my God, how beautiful this is ... for 26 years I…

— A.J. Ayer

The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from the psychological point of view, but it does not in any way…

— A.J. Ayer

If 'god' is a metaphysical term, then it cannot be even probable that a god exists. For to say that 'God exists'…

— A.J. Ayer

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

“What is not so generally recognized is that there can be no way of proving that the existence of a god, such…

— A.J. Ayer

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

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

There is philosophy, which is about conceptual analysis - about the meaning of what we say - and there is all of…

— A.J. Ayer

If the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical,…

— A.J. Ayer

A prevalent fallacy is the assumption that a proof of an afterlife would also be a proof of the existence of a…

— A.J. Ayer

Theism is so confused and the sentences in which "God" appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to…

— A.J. Ayer

Why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are?

— A.J. Ayer

I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their…

— A.J. Ayer

It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the…

— A.J. Ayer

“To predict tomorrow's weather, I need not take into account the state of mind of the Emperor of Manchukuo.”

— A.J. Ayer

If one takes full account of the persecution of heretics, the frequency and savagery of the religious wars which Christianity had endangered,…

— A.J. Ayer

Even logical positivists are capable of love.

— A.J. Ayer

No moral system can rest solely on authority.

— A.J. Ayer

The misfortunes which God is represented in the book of Job as allowing Satan to inflict on Job, merely to test his…

— A.J. Ayer

It appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychologyand sociology.

— A.J. Ayer

There never comes a point where a theory can be said to be true. The most that one can claim for any…

— A.J. Ayer

The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.

— A.J. Ayer