Paul Feyerabend Short Quotes

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No single theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain

Paul Feyerabend
One knows quite well that harmony can be a harmony of appearances

Paul Feyerabend
Ultimate Reality, if such an entity can be postulated, is ineffable.

Paul Feyerabend
The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.

Paul Feyerabend
Mathematical Reasoning is not only exact; it has its own criteria of reality

Paul Feyerabend
Rationalism... is a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God.

Paul Feyerabend
Without a constant misuse of language, there cannot be any discovery, any progress.

Paul Feyerabend
Humane science must be adapted to the requirements of a balanced and rewarding life.

Paul Feyerabend
Arguments hardly affect the faithful- their beliefs have an entirely different foundation.

Paul Feyerabend
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education.

Paul Feyerabend
There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge.

Paul Feyerabend
Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress.

Paul Feyerabend
There was a moment when I knew how nature worked. It had elegance and beauty. The goddam thing was gleaming.

Paul Feyerabend
The validity of usefulness, adequacy of popular standards can be tested only by research that violates them.

Paul Feyerabend
The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious.

Paul Feyerabend
Results from a given approach are "facts" as long as the approach fits the group or the tradition that is being addressed

Paul Feyerabend
I do not see why I should be polite to tyrants, who slobber of humanitarianism and think only of their own petty interests.

Paul Feyerabend
Not only are facts and theories in constant disharmony, they are never as neatly separated as everyone makes them out to be.

Paul Feyerabend
All religion may be centered around a generally good idea, however, this has not stopped its adherents from acting like bastards

Paul Feyerabend
Copemicanism and other essential ingredients of modem science survived only because reason was frequently overruled in their past.

Paul Feyerabend
A Universal Good should reflect the reality of the individual benefits that are collected under its name, not the other way around.

Paul Feyerabend
An anarchist is like an undercover agent who plays the game of Reason in order to undercut the authority of Reason (Truth, Honesty, Justice and so on).

Paul Feyerabend
All religions are good 'in principle' - but unfortunately this abstract Good has only rarely prevented their practitioners from behaving like bastards.

Paul Feyerabend
Early Chinese thinkers had taken variety at face value. They had favored diversification and collected anomalies instead of trying to explain them away.

Paul Feyerabend
Traditions are neither good nor bad, they simply are... Rationality is not an arbiter of traditions, it is itself a tradition or an aspect of a tradition.

Paul Feyerabend
Teachers' using grades and the fear of failure mould the brains of the young until they have lost every ounce of imagination they might once have possessed.

Paul Feyerabend
First-world science is one science among many; by claiming to be more it ceases to be an instrument of research and turns into a (political) pressure group.

Paul Feyerabend
A good teacher will not just make people accept a form of life, he will also provide them with means of seeing it in perspective and perhaps of even rejecting it.

Paul Feyerabend
Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.

Paul Feyerabend
The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution.

Paul Feyerabend