Karl R. Popper Quotes

#1. Theology, I still think, is due to lack of faith.

Karl R. Popper

#2. Moreover, if we could show, on general logical grounds, that the scientific quest is likely to succeed, one could not understand why anything like success has been so rare in the long history of human endeavours to know more about our world.

Karl R. Popper

#3. We must regard all laws or theories as hypothetical or conjectural; that is, as guesses.

Karl R. Popper

#4. I suggest that the emergence of descriptive language is at the root of the human power of imagination, of human inventiveness, and therefore the emergence of world 3.

Karl R. Popper

#5. History has no meaning.

Karl R. Popper

#6. Great men may make great mistakes;

Karl R. Popper

#7. The future depends on ourselves, and we do not depend on any historical necessity.

Karl R. Popper

#8. When the poet or the performer composes or recites he is deeply moved, and indeed possessed (not only by the god but also) by the message; for example, by the scenes he describes. And the work, rather than merely his emotional state, induces similar emotions in his audience.

Karl R. Popper

#9. The reality of time and change seemed to me the crux of realism.

Karl R. Popper

#10. 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

#11. The method of learning by trial and error - of learning from our mistakes - seems to be fundamentally the same whether it is practised by lower or by higher animals, by chimpanzees or by men of science.

Karl R. Popper

#12. All life is problem solving

Karl R. Popper

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. Never let yourself be goaded into taking seriously problems about words and their meanings. What must be taken seriously are questions of fact, and assertions about facts: theories and hypotheses; the problems they solve; and the problems they raise.

Karl R. Popper

#16. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, 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 R. Popper

#17. The Vienna Circle was empiricist and phenomenalist, Popper was a critical rationalist.

Karl R. Popper

#18. Denying realism amounts to megalomania.

Karl R. Popper

#19. Relativism is one of the many crimes committed by intellectuals. It is a betrayal of reason and of humanity.

Karl R. Popper

#20. 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

#21. I conjecture that the origin of life and the origin of problems coincide.

Karl R. Popper

#22. What we need and what we want is to moralize politics, not to politicize morals.

Karl R. Popper

#23. I wish to make it clear that 'history' in the sense in which most people speak of it simply does not exist; and this is at least one reason why I say that it has no meaning.

Karl R. Popper