5 Quotes & Sayings By Aj Ayer

Sir Alfred Jules Ayer (1910-1989) was an English philosopher, logician, and forceful advocate of logical positivism. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest British philosophers of the 20th century, though his work has been highly controversial in its time. He served as the Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University from 1947 until his retirement in 1966. Sir Alfred died in 1989 at the age of 74.

1
It is now generally admitted, at any rate by philosophers, that the existence of a being having the attributes which define the god of any non-animistic religion cannot be demonstratively proved... [A]ll utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical. A.J. Ayer
2
I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it. A.J. Ayer
3
...His argument, as set out in The Problems of Philosophy, was based on the empirical fact that we are not only aware of things but are also, very frequently, aware of being aware of them. A.J. Ayer
4
... 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