Karl Popper Quotes
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.
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.
If you can't say it simply and clearly, keep quiet, and keep working on it till you can.
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.
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.
A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
Evolution is not a fact. Evolution doesn't even qualify as a theory or as a hypothesis. It is a metaphysical research program, and it is not really testable science.
It is the rule which says that the other rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification.
The only way to test a hypothesis is to look for all the information that disagrees with it.
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.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
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.
no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.
It is not possible to write clearly enough to avoid being misrepresented by people who are sufficiently determined to do so.
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.
Whenever we propose a solution to a problem, we ought to try as hard as we can to overthrow our solution, rather than defend it.
If you know that things are bound to happen whatever you do, then you may feel free to give up the fight against them.
. . . it seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.
If we wish our civilization to survive we must break with the habit of deference to great men.
Science is perhaps the only human activity in which errors are systematically criticized and, in time, corrected.
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
I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy,' and the other, 'tyranny.'.
The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us.
Our aim must be to make our successive mistakes as quickly as possible. To speed up evolution.
It is wrong to ask who will rule. The ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. That is democracy.
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.
I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme.
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.
We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.
You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.