Karl Popper Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• A system is empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation... It must be possible for an empirical or scientific system to be refuted by experience.

  Karl Popper

  Taken, Atheism, Consideration

  'The Logic of Scientific Discovery' (1934) ch. 1, sect. 6

  8 Copy quote

• The use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible.

  Karl Popper

  Should Have, Atheism, Use

  Karl Popper (2012). “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, p.360, Routledge

  9 Copy quote

• No number of sightings of white swans can prove the theory that all swans are white. The sighting of just one black one may disprove it.

  Karl Popper

  Swans, White, Numbers

  9 Copy quote

• Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And we must hazard them to win our prize. Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.

  Karl Popper

  Mean, Winning, Games

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.280, Routledge

  41 Copy quote

• The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities-perhaps the only one-in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there. In most other fields of human endeavour there is change, but rarely progress ... And in most fields we do not even know how to evaluate change.

  Karl Popper

  Dream, Mistake, Learning

  1960 Conjectures and Refutations (published1963), ch.10.

  22 Copy quote

• We know a great deal, but our ignorance is sobering and boundless. With each step forward, with each problem which we solve, we not only discover new and unsolved problems, but we also discover that where we believed that we were standing on firm and safe ground, all things are, in truth, insecure and in a state of flux.

  Karl Popper

  Ignorance, Insecure, Safe

  16 Copy quote

• The Conspiracy Theory of Society... [is] a typical result of the secularization of a religious superstition. The belief in the Homeric gods whose conspiracies explain the history of the Trojan War is gone. The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by powerful men or groups - sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is responsible for all the evils we suffer from - such as the Learned Elders of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists.

  Karl Popper

  Religious, Powerful, War

  "The Open Society and its Enemies: Hegel and Marx".

  8 Copy quote

• I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as a 'body of knowledge,' but rather as a system of hypotheses; that is to say, as a system of guesses or anticipations which in principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know they are 'true' or 'more or less certain' or even 'probable.'

  Karl Popper

  Knowledge, Science, Thinking

  The Logic of Scientific Discovery (p. 317)

  22 Copy quote

• Our aim must be to make our successive mistakes as quickly as possible. To speed up evolution.

  Karl Popper

  Mistake, Evolution, Speed

  19 Copy quote

• If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.

  Karl Popper

  Pet, Looks, Favors

  Karl Popper (2013). “The Poverty of Historicism”, p.124, Routledge

  24 Copy quote

• Philosophy is a necessary activity because we, all of us, take a great number of things for granted, and many of these assumptions are of a philosophical character; we act on them in private life, in politics, in our work, and in every other sphere of our lives -- but while some of these assumptions are no doubt true, it is likely, that more are false and some are harmful. So the critical examination of our presuppositions -- which is a philosophical activity -- is morally as well as intellectually important.

  Karl Popper

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Character

  29 Copy quote

• Science is not a system of certain, or -established, statements; nor is it a system which steadily advances towards a state of finality... And our guesses are guided by the unscientific, the metaphysical (though biologically explicable) faith in laws, in regularities which we can uncover-discover. Like Bacon, we might describe our own contemporary science-'the method of reasoning which men now ordinarily apply to nature'-as consisting of 'anticipations, rash and premature' and as 'prejudices'.

  Karl Popper

  Nature, Science, Men

  31 Copy quote

• A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda.

  Karl Popper

  Crush, Successful, Men

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.557, Routledge

  10 Copy quote

• We should realize that, if [Socrates] demanded that the wisest men should rule, he clearly stressed that he did not mean the learned men; in fact, he was skeptical of all professional learnedness, whether it was that of the philosophers or of the learned men of his own generation, the Sophists. The wisdom he meant was of a different kind. It was simply the realization: how little do I know! Those who did not know this, he taught, knew nothing at all. This is the true scientific spirit.

  Karl Popper

  Mean, Men, Wisest Man

  10 Copy quote

• If you know that things are bound to happen whatever you do, then you may feel free to give up the fight against them.

  Karl Popper

  Giving Up, Fighting, May

  Karl Popper (2012). “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, p.38, Routledge

  26 Copy quote

• Rationalism is an attitude of readiness to listen to contrary arguments and to learn from experience... of admitting that "I may be wrong and you may be right and, by an effort, we may get nearer the truth."

  Karl Popper

  Attitude, Effort, Admitting

  18 Copy quote

• Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it.

  Karl Popper

  Tests, Genuine, Theory

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.48, Routledge

  8 Copy quote

• Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or 'given' base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Doe, Swamps

  "The Logic of Scientific Discovery".

  36 Copy quote

• We never know what we are talking about.

  Karl Popper

  Math, Talking, Mathematical Logic

  Karl Popper (2005). “Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography”, p.26, Routledge

  12 Copy quote

• Aestheticism and radicalism must lead us to jettison reason, and to replace it by a desperate hope for political miracles. This irrational attitude which springs from intoxication with dreams of a beautiful world is what I call Romanticism. It may seek its heavenly city in the past or in the future; it may preach 'back to nature' or 'forward to a world of love and beauty'; but its appeal is always to our emotions rather than to reason. Even with the best intentions of making heaven on earth it only succeeds in making it a hell - that hell which man alone prepares for his fellow-men.

  Karl Popper

  Beautiful, Dream, Attitude

  Karl Raimund Popper (1950). “The Open Society and Its Enemies”

  20 Copy quote

• The conspiracy theory of society... comes from abandoning god and then asking: "Who is in his place"

  Karl Popper

  Asking, Conspiracy, Theory

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.204, Routledge

  9 Copy quote

• I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is [as] admirable and sound as it is dangerous – from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.

  Karl Popper

  Spring, Trouble, Impatience

  "After The Open Society: Selected Social and Political Writings".

  10 Copy quote

• Appealing to his [Einstein's] way of expressing himself in theological terms, I said: If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change. But he seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one.

  Karl Popper

  Men, Interesting, Events

  Karl Popper (2005). “Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography”, p.150, Routledge

  24 Copy quote

• I have insisted that we must be tolerant. But I also believe that this tolerance has its limits. We must not trust those anti-humanitarian religions which not only preach destruction but act accordingly. For if we tolerate them, then we become ourselves responsible for for their deeds.

  Karl Popper

  Believe, Tolerance, Deeds

  6 Copy quote

• We have become makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

  Karl Popper

  Fate, Prophet, Makers

  The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) Introduction

  15 Copy quote

Page 4 of 7

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin