Popper Quotes: top 98 famous quotes about Popper

Popper Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Popper quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

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

A theory that explains everything, explains nothing — Karl Popper

The growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement. — Karl Popper

It can't happen here is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere. — Karl Popper

There is no such thing as a failure who keeps trying. — John Popper

Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted outside philosophy and they die if these roots decay. — Karl Popper

Great men may make great mistakes; — Karl R. Popper

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

It is not possible to write clearly enough to avoid being misrepresented by people who are sufficiently determined to do so. — Karl Popper

We must regard all laws or theories as hypothetical or conjectural; that is, as guesses. — Karl R. Popper

Historically speaking all - or very nearly all - scientific theories originate from myths. — Karl Popper

What we need and what we want is to moralize politics, not to politicize morals. — Karl R. Popper

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

Belief may be a regrettably unavoidable biological weakness to be kept under the control of criticism: but commitment is for Popper an outright crime. — Imre Lakatos

The Vienna Circle was empiricist and phenomenalist, Popper was a critical rationalist. — Karl R. Popper

We do not know. We can only guess. — Karl Popper

The question is not how to get good people to rule; THE QUESTION IS: HOW TO STOP THE POWERFUL from doing as much damage as they can to us. — Karl Popper

Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement ... — Karl Popper

No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it — Karl Popper

I have spoken to Einstein and he admitted to me that his theory was in fact no different from the one of Parmenides. — Karl Popper

[To] interpret Parmenides as a Kant before Kant ... this is exactly what we must do. — Karl Popper

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

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

It is wrong to ask who will rule. The ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. That is democracy. — Karl Popper

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

The future is always present, as a promise, a lure and a temptation. — Karl Popper

There is no reason to believe that a definition necessarily determines the ontological status of the term defined.) — Karl Popper

Science is perhaps the only human activity in which errors are systematically criticized and, in time, corrected. — Karl Popper

Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology. — Karl Popper

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

It must be possible for an empirical system to be refuted by experience. — Karl Popper

All life is problem solving — Karl R. Popper

The initial stage, the act of conceiving or inventing a theory, seems to me neither to call for logical analysis nor to be susceptible of it. — 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

I conjecture that the origin of life and the origin of problems coincide. — Karl R. Popper

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

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

I was a bleeding-heart liberal, until I got a job. — John Popper

We never know what we are talking about. — Karl Popper

Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification. — Karl Popper

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

Whatever moisture is left in the popcorn when it gets from harvest to bag to your popper is what's going to determine how well the corn pops. — Ken Kercheval

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

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

The only way to test a hypothesis is to look for all the information that disagrees with it. — Karl Popper

I need a prison in order to dream of being free. — John Popper

Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you. — Karl Popper

The essential feature of dualist-interactionism is that the mind and brain are independent entities...and that they interact by quantum physics. — Karl R. Popper

The most we can say of democracy or freedom is that they give our personal abilities a little more influence on our well-being. — Karl Popper

The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being. — Karl Popper

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

Relativism is one of the many crimes committed by intellectuals. It is a betrayal of reason and of humanity. — Karl R. Popper

Coasting to the bottom is the only disgrace. — John Popper

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

Taleb's hero, on the other hand, is Karl Popper, who said that you could not know with any certainty that a proposition was true; — Malcolm Gladwell

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

Contrary to the outstanding work of art, outstanding theory is susceptible to improvements. — Karl Popper

No particular theory may ever be regarded as absolutely certain ... No scientific theory is sacrosanct ... — Karl Popper

I would rather find a single causal law than be the king of Persia! — Karl Popper

Rap music ... sounds like somebody feeding a rhyming dictionary to a popcorn popper. — Tom Robbins

Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite. — Karl Popper

Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again. — Karl Popper

I have learned more from Hayek than from any other living thinker, except perhaps Alfred Tarski - but not even excepting Russell. — Karl Popper

We hate the very idea that our own ideas may be mistaken, so we cling dogmatically to our conjectures. — Karl Popper

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

Every 'good' scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is. — Karl R. Popper

The quest for precision is analogous to the quest for certainty, and both should be abandoned. — Karl Popper

Theology, I still think, is due to lack of faith. — Karl R. Popper

Plato felt that a complete reconstruction of society's political program was needed. — Karl Popper

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

The reality of time and change seemed to me the crux of realism. — Karl R. Popper

History has no meaning. — Karl R. Popper

Denying realism amounts to megalomania. — Karl R. Popper

A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations. — Karl Popper

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

I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme ... — Karl Popper

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

Better our hypotheses die for our errors than ourselves. — Karl Popper

Every solution of a problem raises new unsolved problems. — Karl Popper

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

The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology. — Imre Lakatos

There is no pure, disinterested, theory-free observation, — Karl Popper

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

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

There is no history, only histories. — Karl Popper

Many people, including myself, had our scientific lives changed by the inspiring new vision of science that Popper gave us. — John Eccles

I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens up the way for those who rule by hate. — Karl R. Popper

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

I think comedy is the hardest art form there is. — John Popper

All things living are in search of a better world . — Karl Popper

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

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

You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you. — Karl Popper

The future depends on ourselves, and we do not depend on any historical necessity. — Karl R. Popper

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

This is why the conflict between rationalism and irrationalism has become the most important intellectual, and perhaps even moral, issue of our time. — Karl R. Popper

All nationalism or racialism is evil, and Jewish nationalism is no exception. — Karl Popper