But he believed it with weakening conviction; he could see all the arguments for considering humanism a vain promise.
Yet it is an ambitious undertaking, to bounce strobes of wit and artifice off the surface of your own narrative without letting hairline cracks invisibly weaken its conviction.
By abandoning our own values in pursuit of victory we not only reinforce the extremist narrative among vulnerable host populations, we weaken the conviction in ourselves about why we are fighting in the first instance.
In order to keep faith, we must allow nothing to enter our thought which will weaken this conviction.
Soon afterward, Ayer reported that his near-death experience, in which he saw a red light that seemed to govern the universe, "slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death..
The skeptical British philosopher A. J. Ayer has written about an encounter that was less splendid; it "slightly weakened his conviction" that his death would be the end of him, "though I continue to hope that it will be".
Soon afterward, Ayer reported that his near-death experience, in which he saw a red light that seemed to govern the universe, "slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death... will be the end of me".
It continues to be weakened by convictions.
In five years, Plan Colombia has offered no evidence to weaken The Economist's conviction that cocaine should be legalised (though its use, like that of tobacco, should be discouraged).Rationing carrot and stickAs long as prohibition continues, Latin American governments have to try to contain the drug trade's ill-effects.
How much does it take to weaken someone's moral convictions?
After his request for release on compassionate grounds was rejected, he embarked on a second appeal, buoyed by the 2007 findings of a Scottish judicial review that seemed to weaken the case for his conviction.
