Karl Popper Quotes

125 Sourced Quotes

Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology. (All that technology may say about ends is whether or not they are compatible with each other or realizable.)

Karl Popper
Thus science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices.

Karl Popper
No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

Karl Popper
Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification — the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

Karl Popper
In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.

Karl Popper
For this, indeed, is the true source of our ignorance—the fact that our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

Karl Popper
We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

Karl Popper
We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

Karl Popper
There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world.

Karl Popper
I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth

Karl Popper
It is part of my thesis that all our knowledge grows only through the correcting of our mistakes.

Karl Popper
As with our children, so with our theories, and ultimately with all the work we do: our products become largely independent of their makers. We may gain more knowledge from our children or from our theories than we ever imparted to them.

Karl Popper
Every discovery contains an irrational element or a creative intuition.

Karl Popper
Only a man who understands science (that is scientific problems) can understand its history... Only a man who has some real understanding of its history (the history of its problem situations) can understand science.

Karl Popper
The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff.

Karl Popper
A system such as classical mechanics may be 'scientific' to any degree you like; but those who uphold it dogmatically - believing, perhaps, that it is their business to defend such a successful system against criticism as long as it is not conclusively disproved - are adopting the very reverse of that critical attitude which in my view is the proper one for the scientist.

Karl Popper
Optimism is a duty. The future is open. It is not predetermined. No one can predict it, except by chance. We all contribute to determining it by what we do. We are all equally responsible for its success.

Karl Popper
If we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

Karl Popper
Theories are nets cast to catch what we call "the world": to rationalize, to explain, and to master it. We endeavor to make the mesh ever finer and finer.

Karl Popper
The hope of getting some argument or theory to share our responsibilities is, I believe, one of the basic motives of "scientific" ethics.

Karl Popper
The difference between the amoeba and Einstein is that, although both make use of the method of trial and error elimination, the amoeba dislikes erring while Einstein is intrigued by it...

Karl Popper
Scientific theories, if they are not falsified, for ever remain hypotheses or conjectures.

Karl Popper
We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell. Only if we give up our authoritarian attitude in the realm of opinion, only if we establish the attitude of give and take, of readiness to learn from other people, can we hope to control acts of violence inspired by piety and duty.

Karl Popper
Our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable as it is dangerous... our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.

Karl Popper
The old scientific ideal of episteme - of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge - has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever.

Karl Popper
Our belief in any particular natural law cannot have a safer basis than our unsuccessful critical attempts to refute it.

Karl Popper
Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.

Karl Popper
Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle — the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.

Karl Popper
Marxism is only an episode—one of the many mistakes we have made in the perennial and dangerous struggle for building a better and a freer world.

Karl Popper
Science is most significant as one of the greatest spiritual adventures that man has yet known.

Karl Popper