Alfred Jules Ayer Quotes

The true contrast between science and myth is more nearly touched when we say that science alone is capable of verification.

...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.

Truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.

The role of science is to be systematic, to be accurate, to be orderly, but it certainly is not to imply that the aggregated, successful hypotheses of the past have the kind of truth that goes into a number system.

Truth and falsity is something that concerns language, it's a property of language.

A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.

The papers that flourish will be papers that serve a national audience. Papers that have figured out how to make the transition to the electronic platform that aren't simply providing a duplicate experience of the words on paper experience, but are doing something that arises organically from the new electronic medium. It's really just a matter of finding the right platforms for the way people want to read newspapers. I mean, maybe it will be the iPhone. But one way or another, newspapers on paper are just not really going to exist to any significant degree within a decade.

In drying plants, botanists often dry themselves. Dry words and dry facts will not fire hearts.

It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent.

Every theory in philosophy, which is built on pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay.

A little fact is worth a whole limbo of dreams.

One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice.

In doing that which we most enjoy, we will probably make our most significant contribution to society, and the contribution we make to society determines our rewards.

I don't see any significant recession or depression in the offing.

A lot of people my age are dead and you could look it up.

I have friends that I have made through Twitter or things like that, but they're all verified as real people - I've either seen them perform, or we're mutual fans of each other, something like that. I don't have any authentic. I have a lot of good people in my actual life, but I will say that it's a strange time that we live in - it's easy to make friends and to make connections through social media, and if you're a good-hearted person, sometimes you can just assume people are who they say they are, and that isn't always the case.

Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.

Where there is truth, there also is knowledge which is true.

Our hypotheses are initially rooted in theoretical consistency and elegance, but...ultimatel y it is experiment not rigid belief that determines what is correct.

A stereotype becomes a stereotype when a significant percentage of the population appears to conform to it.

I’ve spent something like 17 years working on a theory for which there is essentially no direct experimental support.

Progress is achieved by exchanging our theories for new ones which go further than the old, until we find one based on a larger number of facts. ... Theories are only hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best, but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed.

A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought. A thought is a proposition with a sense.

All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment; he that refines the public taste is a public benefactor.

When I go to vote for anything, I always pencil in the proposition to return California and Texas to Mexico. I'm the one person that's voting for that one.