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Quotes of Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994), was an Austrian-born British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is counted among the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. Popper is perhaps best known for repudiating the classical observationalist-inductivist account of scientific method by advancing empirical falsifiability as the criterion for distinguishing scientific theory from non-science; and for his vigorous defense of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism which he took to make the flourishing of the "open society" possible.
- The only alternative to violence, is an attitude of reasonable-ness.
- Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.
- 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.
- It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.
- No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
- Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
- Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology.
- Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
- Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
- 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.
- Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
- We have become makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.
- We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.
- 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.