A. C. Grayling

“Dare to know: that is the motto of enlightenment.”

“A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.”

“A fault denied is twice committed.”

“To 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.”

“Socrates famously said that the unconsidered life is not worth living. He meant that a life lived without forethought or principle is a life so vulnerable to chance, and so dependent on the choices and actions of others, that it is of little real value to the person living it. He further meant that a life well lived is one which has goals, and integrity, which is chosen and directed by the one who lives it, to the fullest extent possible to a human agent caught in the webs of society and history.”

“If there is anything worth fearing in the world, it is living in such a way that gives one cause for regret in the end.”

“Religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young... Inculcating the various competing - competing, note - falsehoods of the major faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal.”

“I do not believe that there are any such things as gods and goddesses, for exactly the same reasons as I do not believe there are fairies, goblins or sprites, and these reasons should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten.”

“Try lighting your house by prayer instead of electricity and see which one works.”

“The fact that a human nose (use the letter X to symbolise the nose) is a necessary condition for spectacles to be perched in front of the eyes (use the letter Y to symbolise ‘spectacles being perched in front of the eyes’) does not entail that, because Y is the case, X is in itself necessary. ‘Necessity’ in the logical sense of ‘having to be so’ is not the same thing as the necessity involved in a ‘necessary condition’ – here things have to be so only relative to something else’s being the way it is. In the case of X’s being a necessary condition relative to Y, but not in itself necessary, X could have been different, and if it were so, there would, or at least might, be no Y. For example: if humans did not have noses, spectacles might be worn as goggles are, held before the eyes by an elastic strap.
   This is just how it is with the universe. We humans are the Y of which nature’s parameters are the X. We exist because the parameters are as they are; had they been different, we would not be here to know it. The fact that we exist because of how things happen to be with the universe’s structure and properties entails nothing about design or purpose. Depending on your point of view, it is just a lucky or unlucky result of how things happen to be. The universe’s parameters are not tuned on purpose for us to exist. It is the other way round: we exist because the laws happen to be as they are.”

“There is a beautiful and life-enhancing alternative outlook that offers insight, consolation, inspiration and meaning, which has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the best, most generous, most sympathetic understanding of human reality.”

“Humanism offers us an opportunity to have a global outlook that anyone and everyone could sign up to, no matter what part of the world they live in or come from.”

“Religious belief, of all kinds, shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies. This remark outrages the sensibilities of those who have deep religious convictions and attachments, and they regard it as insulting. But the truth is that everyone takes this attitude about all but one (or a very few) of the gods that have ever been claimed to exist...The atheist adds just one more deity to the list of those not believed in; namely, the one remaining on the Christian's or Jew's or Muslim's list.”

“Theistic claims that supernatural agency exists in the universe derive from ancient traditions of belief. The word 'atheist' is a theist's term for a person who does not share such beliefs. Theists think that atheists have a belief or set of beliefs, just as theists do but in the opposite sense, about theism-related questions. This is a mistake; atheists certainly have beliefs about many things, but they are not 'theistic-subject-matter-related beliefs' in any but a single negative sense. For atheism is the absence of 'theistic-subject-matter-related belief. Although it is true that 'absence of belief in supernatural agency' is functionally equivalent to 'belief in the absence of supernatural agency', theists concentrate on the latter formulation in order to make atheism a positive as opposed to privative thesis with regard to theistic-subject-matter-related matters. This is what makes theists think they are in a kind of belief football match, with opposing sets of beliefs vying for our allegiance. What is happening is that the theists are rushing about the park kicking the ball, but the atheists are not playing. They are not even on the field; they are in the stands, arguing that this particular game should not be taking place at all.”

“Stoicism was the outlook of most educated people in the Hellenic and Roman world. Their principle of reason (the logos) as the ordering principle of the world is a principle of rational structure, of rightness and fittingness in the natural order, to which ethical endeavour – so they argued – should conform itself. The Stoics did not worship or petition the logos, and did not think of it as a person or as conscious or purposive.”

“Religious apologists complain bitterly that atheists and secularists are aggressive and hostile in their criticism of them. I always say: look, when you guys were in charge, you didn't argue with us, you just burnt us at the stake. Now what we're doing is, we're presenting you with some arguments and some challenging questions, and you complain.”

“And 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.”

“[M]astery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life.”
“Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.”

“I believe that decisions about the timing and manner of death belong to the individual as a human right. I believe it is wrong to withhold medical methods of terminating life painlessly and swiftly when an individual has a rational and clear-minded sustained wish to end his or her life.”

“If the world is to have a future, it lies in the hands of women. At time of this writing nearly half of all women in the Middle East are illiterate; millions in poor countries are shackled to the most basic daily urgencies of finding water and feeding children; the majority of the world's women exist in various forms of bondage to necessity, to poverty, and to men.”

“To 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. Grayling.com


Grayling “Humanism” 1:04:07


Grayling “Renaissance” 59:33


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