Karl Popper famous quotes

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

#Attitude #Men #Doe

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
-- Karl Popper

#Libertarian #Problem #Theory

The best thing that can happen to a human being us to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears.
-- Karl Popper

#Falling In Love #Trying #Problem

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
-- Karl Popper

#Ignorance #Absence #Refusal

Ignorance is not a simple lack of knowledge but an active aversion to knowledge, the refusal to know, issuing from cowardice, pride, or laziness of mind.
-- Karl Popper

#Ignorance #Pride #Simple

Definitions.... are never really needed, and rarely of any use
-- Karl Popper

#Use #Definitions #Needed

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

#Spring #Trouble #Impatience

In my view, aiming at simplicity and lucidity is a moral duty of all intellectuals: lack of clarity is a sin, and pretentiousness is a crime.
-- Karl Popper

#Views #Simplicity #Moral

The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell.
-- Karl Popper

#Heaven #Earth #Hell

The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance
-- Karl Popper

#Ignorance #Knowledge #World

We have the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should tolerate even them whenever we can do so without running a great risk; but the risk may become so great that we cannot allow ourselves the luxury.
-- Karl Popper

#Running #Luxury #Risk

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

#Atheism #Reform #Use

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 #Stressed

The moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not conflict with the principle of tolerance.
-- Karl Popper

#Long #Decision #Tolerance

All life is problem solving
-- Karl Popper

#Inspiring #Inspire #Problem

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

For myself, I am interested in science and in philosophy only because I want to learn something about the riddle of the world in which we live, and the riddle of man's knowledge of that world. And I believe that only a revival of interest in these riddles can save the sciences and philosophy from an obscurantist faith in the expert's special skill and in his personal knowledge and authority.
-- Karl Popper

#Philosophy #Believe #Men

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.
-- Karl Popper

#Men #Decision #Authority

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

#Fate #Prophet #Makers

The war of ideas is a Greek invention. It is one of the most important inventions ever made. Indeed, the possibility of fighting with with words and ideas instead of fighting with swords is the very basis of our civilization, and especially of all its legal and parliamentary institutions.
-- Karl Popper

#War #Fighting #Civilization

The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.
-- Karl Popper

#Games #One Day #Principles

Every intellectual has a very special responsibility. He has the privilege and the opportunity of studying. In return, he owes it to his fellow men (or 'to society') to represent the results of his study as simply, clearly and modestly as he can. The worst thing that intellectuals can do - the cardinal sin - is to try to set themselves up as great prophets vis-à-vis their fellow men and to impress them with puzzling philosophies. Anyone who cannot speak simply and clearly should say nothing and continue to work until he can do so.
-- Karl Popper

#Philosophy #Responsibility #Opportunity

It is clear that everybody interested in science must be interested in world 3 objects. A physical scientist, to start with, may be interested mainly in world 1 objects--say crystals and X-rays. But very soon he must realize how much depends on our interpretation of the facts, that is, on our theories, and so on world 3 objects. Similarly, a historian of science, or a philosopher interested in science must be largely a student of world 3 objects.
-- Karl Popper

#World #Philosopher #Students

The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us.
-- Karl Popper

#Ideas #Survival #Values

[Great scientists] are men of bold ideas, but highly critical of their own ideas: they try to find whether their ideas are right by trying first to find whether they are not perhaps wrong. They work with bold conjectures and severe attempts at refuting their own conjectures.
-- Karl Popper

#Hard Work #Men #Ideas

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society... then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
-- Karl Popper

#Names #Tolerance #Unlimited

If you can't say it simply and clearly, keep quiet, and keep working on it till you can.
-- Karl Popper

#Quiet

I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important than equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree.
-- Karl Popper

#Beautiful #Dream #Simple

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

We do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things — and above all on ourselves.
-- Karl Popper

#Freedom #Political #Promise

I think that there is only one way to science - or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it and to live with it happily, till death do ye part - unless you should meet another and even more fascinating problem or unless, indeed, you should obtain a solution. But even if you do obtain a solution, you may then discover, to your delight, the existence of a whole family of enchanting, though perhaps difficult, problem children, for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to the end of your days.
-- Karl Popper

#Falling In Love #Children #Philosophy

Why do I think that we, the intellectuals, are able to help? Simply because we, the intellectuals, have done the most terrible harm for thousands of years. Mass murder in the name of an idea, a doctrine, a theory, a religion - that is all "our" doing, "our" invention: the invention of the intellectuals. If only we would stop setting man against man - often with the best intentions - much would be gained. Nobody can say that it is impossible for us to stop doing this.
-- Karl Popper

#Men #Thinking #Years

It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.
-- Karl Popper

#Communication #Misunderstood #Way

There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. … It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.
-- Karl Popper

#Men #Objectivity #Society

. . . it seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.
-- Karl Popper

#People #Stupidity #Wickedness

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.
-- Karl Popper

#Religious #War #Fire

Nature consists of facts and of regularities, and is in itself neither moral nor immoral. It is we who impose our standards upon nature, and who in this way introduce morals into the natural world, in spite the fact that we are part of this world. We are products of nature, but nature has made us together with our power of altering the world, of foreseeing and of planning for the future, and of making far-reaching decisions for which we are morally responsible. Yet, responsibility, decisions, enter the world of nature only with us
-- Karl Popper

#Responsibility #Decision #Together

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

It is a myth that the success of science in our time is mainly due to the huge amounts of money that have been spent on big machines. What really makes science grow is new ideas, including false ideas.
-- Karl Popper

#Ideas #Machines #Bigs

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

#Happiness #Fighting #Inner Peace

Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations.
-- Karl Popper

#Beautiful #Dream #Men

The belief in a political Utopia is especially dangerous. This is possibly connected with the fact that the search for a better world, like the investigation of our environment, is (if I am correct) one of the oldest and most important of all the instincts.
-- Karl Popper

#Political #Important #World

If we wish our civilization to survive we must break with the habit of deference to great men.
-- Karl Popper

#Men #Civilization #Wish

A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others - not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others
-- Karl Popper

#Ideas #Important #Opinion

It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.
-- Karl Popper

#Knowledge #Men #Quests

We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.
-- Karl Popper

#Gratitude #Humility #Math

While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.
-- Karl Popper

#Ignorance #Littles #Infinite

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

#Science #Errors #Differences

I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy,' and the other, 'tyranny.'.
-- Karl Popper

#Freedom #Government #Democracy

Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.
-- Karl Popper

#Mistake #Interesting #Objective Truth

It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it.
-- Karl Popper

#Freedom #Thinking #Victory

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

#Political #World #Kind

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

#Freedom #Reason #Plans

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
-- Karl Popper

#Criticism #Myth

My thesis is that what we call 'science' is differentiated from the older myths not by being something distinct from a myth, but by being accompanied by a second-order tradition-that of critically discussing the myth. ... In a certain sense, science is myth-making just as religion is.
-- Karl Popper

#Order #Criticism #Tradition

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
-- Karl Popper

#Funny #Art #Crazy

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
-- Karl Popper

#Names #Tolerance #Claims

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

#Reality #Doe #Speak

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
-- Karl Popper

#Promise #Earth #Paradise

no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.
-- Karl Popper

#Swans #White #Doe