19 quotes
The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability.
Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)
"I exist" does not follow from "there is a thought now."
Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)
No moral system can rest solely on authority.
Humanist Outlook (1968)
The principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else.
Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)
The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.
Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)
The 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.
The Meaning of Life and Other Essays (1990)
It seems that I have spent my entire time trying to make life more rational and that it was all wasted effort.
To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
The Meaning of Life and Other Essays (1990)
The philosopher as an analyst is not concerned with the physical properties of things, but only with the way in which we speak about them.
The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.
Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)
While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.
The Meaning of Life and Other Essays (1990)
I 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.
There never comes a point where a theory can be said to be true. The most that one can claim for any theory is that it has shared the successes of all its rivals and that it has passed at least one test which they have failed.
What I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief.
I 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.
There is philosophy, which is about conceptual analysis — about the meaning of what we say — and there is all of this … all of life.
I am using the word "perceive". I am using it here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.
The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940)
I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.
Perhaps his greatest intellectual virtue was his unremitting adherence to clarity and to rational argument. His work is without allusions ...