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Karl Popper Quotes

Karl Popper
  • Mini Bio
  • Name: Karl Popper
  • Born: 28th July 1902, Vienna, Austria-Hungary
  • Died: 17th September 1994, London, England, UK
  • Resting place: Lainzer cemetery, Vienna
  • Alma Mater: University of Vienna
  • Occupation: Scientific philosopher
  • Era: 20th-century philosophy
  • Region: Western philosophy
  • Notable works: The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), The Poverty of Historicism (1957) and Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, 3 volumes (1981–82)
  • School of thought: Analytic philosophy, Correspondence theory of truth, Critical rationalism, Interactionism and Metaphysical realism
  • Marriage resume: Josefine Anna Henninger, 11th Apr 1930 - 17th Nov 1985 (her death)
  • Influenced by: Albert Einstein, Aristotle, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bernard Bolzano, David Hume, Edmund Husserl, Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, Socrates and Søren Kierkegaard
  • Inspired: Alan Musgrave, Bertrand Russell, David Miller, Ernst Gombrich, George Soros, Hermann Bondi, Imre Lakatos, Jeremy Shearmur, John Eccles, Joseph Agassi, Paul Feyerabend, Peter Medawar and Thomas Szasz
  • Hobbies: He loved to wile away hours at the piano playing his favourites by Beethoven and Bach
  • Trivia: In 1965 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, meaning his name carried the prefix Sir Karl Popper

"If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change"

Karl Popper

"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

"I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous - from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows"

Karl Popper

"You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence democracy, and the other tyranny"

Karl Popper

"If the many, the specialists, gain the day, it will be the end of science as we know it - of great science. It will be a spiritual catastrophe comparable in its consequences to nuclear armament"

Karl Popper

"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

"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

"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

"Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship"

Karl Popper

"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

"Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification - the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit"

Karl 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

"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you"

Karl Popper

"There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life"

Karl Popper

"I believe it is worthwhile trying to discover more about the world, even if this only teaches us how little we know"

Karl Popper

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

Karl Popper

"We must distinguish between truth, which is objective and absolute, and certainty, which is subjective"

Karl Popper

"It seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness"

Karl Popper

"We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant"

Karl Popper

"The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth"

Karl Popper

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

Karl Popper

"Our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite"

Karl Popper

"True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it"

Karl Popper

"There are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority"

Karl Popper

"Non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science"

Karl Popper

"This civilization has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth"

Karl Popper

"All moral urgency has its basis in the urgency of suffering or pain"

Karl Popper

"Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again"

Karl Popper

"Scientists are not as self-critical as they should be"

Karl Popper

"The history of science is everywhere speculative"

Karl Popper

"If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want"

Karl Popper

"All things living are in search of a better world"

Karl Popper

"Pain cannot be outweighed by pleasure"

Karl Popper

"There is chaos in every grass"

Karl Popper

"I believe in the human mind"

Karl Popper
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Karl Popper Controversy

When he published 'The Open Society and Its Enemies' in 1945, his criticism of Plato, Marx and Hegel caused a storm that reverberated throughout the remaining decades of the 20th century.

The books criticism from his detractors were legion including Walter Kaufmann, Ernest Mandel, Rajeev Bhargava and Robert C. Solomon all citing the authors positivist narrowness of thought. For every critic there was a supporter with the likes of Gilbert Ryle, George Soros, Bertrand Russell and Sidney Hook all rushing to the defence of Popper.

The Legacy of Karl Popper

No one has had more influence on the course of the philosophy of science throughout the 20th century than Karl Popper. With his rejection of verificationism Popper offered an alternative by testing scientific theories using falsificationism.

His was a scientific philosophy that any hypotheses must be falsifiable before it can be considered to be scientific. Meaning that if any claim that cannot withstand the scrutiny of being proven to be false or incorrect then it cannot be a scientific claim.

Popper believed a shift in thought was required and scientists could increase knowledge by pushing the limits of testing theories. The more tests carried out on any theory will increase knowledge and lead to a greater understanding of the world and the universe.

Post WWII Popper took up a position as the only philosopher at the LSE (London School of Economics). From a bare classroom he built a philosophical empire that entwined the thoughts of social and political philosophy with his philosophy of science that captured the imagination of generations of students. He clearly illustrated that public scrutiny in a democracy should reach the same level of critical questioning that a theory does in a scientific laboratory.

Perhaps his greatest gift to the world is the legion of alumni who went from his hallowed halls of academia to pace the corridors of power in politics or grace the corporate chambers of commerce and can look back in pride and gratitude towards one of the greatest philosophical minds of the twentieth century, Karl Poppers.

Quotes About Karl Popper

Bertrand Russell described his principal political treatise (The Open Society and Its Enemies) thus: "A work of first-class importance which ought to be widely read for its masterly criticism of the enemies of democracy, ancient and modern. His (Popper's) attack on Plato, while unorthodox, is in my opinion thoroughly justified. His analysis of Hegel is deadly. Marx is dissected with equal acumen, and given his due share of responsibility for modern misfortunes. The book is a vigorous and profound defence of democracy"

The philosopher Michael Esfeld opined this opinion: "Popper’s philosophy of science teaches us that no individual or group of individuals can determine the course of society by means of a prepared plan (a “conspiracy”)"

Hermann Bondi felt a debt of gratitude towards his work: "There is no more to science than its method, and there is no more to its method than Popper has said"

The economist Friedrich Hayek was impressed to say: "The conception of science as a hypothetico-deductive system has been expounded by Karl Popper in a manner which brings out clearly some very important points"

An eminent professor and philosopher of science Alan Chalmers shared this observation: "One of the things that I have learnt is that on a number of major issues Popper is indeed wrong, as is argued in the latter portions of this book. However, this does not alter the fact that the Popperian approach is infinitely better than the approach adopted in most philosophy departments that I have encountered"

The financier George Soros, who was his student at LSE commented: "How could Popper take it for granted that free political discourse is aimed at understanding reality? And even more intriguingly, how could I, who gave the manipulative function pride of place in the concept of reflexivity, follow him so blindly? Let me spell out my conclusion more clearly, an open society is a desirable form of social organization, both as a means to an end, and an end in itself"

The Neurophysiologist John Eccles was inspired: "I learned from Popper what for me is the essence of scientific investigation - how to be speculative and imaginative in the creation of hypotheses, and then to challenge them with the utmost rigor, both by utilizing all existing knowledge and by mounting the most searching experimental attacks"

The author and a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, James Ladyman, shared this evaluation: "The leading critic of the positivists in their heyday was of course Popper. There has been a tendency for philosophers of science to regard Popper as something of an embarrassment. However, naturalistic philosophers should take it as an interesting fact about science that Popper has long been the favourite philosopher of science among scientists"

The mathematician John Maynard Smith was full of indecisive admiration: "I do have a great respect for Popper. I mean, I think... he's nearer to... I mean, Popper's ambition, in relation to science, at least, was to discriminate between, sort of, science and what he called pseudo-science"

The American philosopher of science Tim Maudlin held no such misconceptions: "Popper was kind of an egocentric jerk"

The academic Nassim Nicholas Taleb was laudatory in his words: "Popper believed that any idea of Utopia is necessarily closed owing to the fact that it chokes its own refutations. The simple notion of a good society that cannot be left open for falsification is totalitarian. I learned from Popper, in addition to the difference between an open and a closed society, that between an open and a closed mind"


Karl Popper quote

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