Feyerabend Quotes

#1. On the way, I shared the backseat of Feyerabend's little sports car with the inflatable raft he kept there in case an 8-point earthquake came while he was on the Bay Bridge.

Lee Smolin

#2. I do not see why I should be polite to tyrants, who slobber of humanitarianism and think only of their own petty interests.

Paul Feyerabend

#3. In a war a totalitarian state has a free hand.

Paul Feyerabend

#4. The sciences of today are business enterprises run on business principles. Research in large institutes is not guided by Truth and Reason but by the most rewarding fashion, and the great minds of today increasingly turn to where the money is - which means military matters.

Paul Feyerabend

#5. The attitude of the Church was not as dogmatic as is often assumed. Interpretations of Bible passages had been revised in the light of scientific research before. Everyone regarded the earth as spherical and as freely floating in space though the Bible tells a different story.

Paul Feyerabend

#6. Rationalism ... is a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God.

Paul Feyerabend

#7. Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.

Paul Feyerabend

#8. The validity of usefulness, adequacy of popular standards can be tested only by research that violates them.

Paul Feyerabend

#9. A Universal Good should reflect the reality of the individual benefits that are collected under its name, not the other way around.

Paul Feyerabend

#10. We need a dream-world in order to discover the features of the real world we think we inhabit.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

#11. The church at the time was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just.

Paul Feyerabend

#12. Ultimate Reality, if such an entity can be postulated, is ineffable.

Paul Feyerabend

#13. Love of Truth is one of the strongest motives for replacing what really happens by a streamlined account or, to express it in a less polite manner
love of truth is one of the strongest motives for deceiving oneself and others.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

#14. The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

#15. Those who violate the rules of a language do not enter new territory; they leave the domain of meaningful discourse. Even facts in these circumstances dissolve, because they are shaped by the language and subjected to its limitations.

Paul Feyerabend

#16. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress.

Paul Feyerabend

#17. Yes, the academic world is screwed up, and there is nothing you can do about it. But don't worry about that. Just do what you want. If you know what you want to do and advocate for it, no one will put any energy into stopping you.

Paul Feyerabend

#18. First-world science is one science among many; by claiming to be more it ceases to be an instrument of research and turns into a (political) pressure group.

Paul Feyerabend

#19. Without a constant misuse of language there cannot be any discovery, any progress

Paul Karl Feyerabend

#20. The only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths.

Paul Feyerabend

#21. Taking experimental results and observations for granted and putting the burden of proof on the theory means taking the observational ideology for granted without having ever examined it.

Paul Feyerabend

#22. Events and developments, such as ... the Copernican Revolution, ... occurred only because some thinkers either decided not to be bound by certain "obvious" methodological rules, or because they unwittingly broke them.

Paul Feyerabend

#23. Not only are facts and theories in constant disharmony, they are never as neatly separated as everyone makes them out to be.

Paul Feyerabend

#24. Every profession has an ideology and a drive for power that goes far beyond its achievements and it is the task of democracy to keep this ideology and this drive under control. Science is here no different from other institutions.

Paul Feyerabend

#25. Arguments hardly affect the faithful- their beliefs have an entirely different foundation.

Paul Feyerabend

#26. The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

#27. Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise ...

Paul Feyerabend

#28. Progress has always been achieved by probing well-entrenched and well-founded forms of life with unpopular and unfounded values. This is how man gradually freed himself from fear and from the tyranny of unexamined systems.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

#29. When Western civilization invaded the Near and Far East and what is now called the Third World it imposed its own ideas of a proper environment and a rewarding life. Doing this, it disrupted the delicate patterns of adaptation and created problems that had not existed before.

Paul Feyerabend

#30. So far Unitarian realism claiming to possess positive knowledge about Ultimate Reality has succeeded only by excluding large areas of phenomena or by declaring, without proof, that they could be reduced to basic theory, which, in this connection, means elementary particle physics.

Paul Feyerabend

#31. Teachers' using grades and the fear of failure mould the brains of the young until they have lost every ounce of imagination they might once have possessed.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

#32. Humane science must be adapted to the requirements of a balanced and rewarding life.

Paul Feyerabend

#33. An anarchist is like an undercover agent who plays the game of Reason in order to undercut the authority of Reason (Truth, Honesty, Justice and so on).

Paul Karl Feyerabend

#34. Traditions are neither good nor bad, they simply are ... Rationality is not an arbiter of traditions, it is itself a tradition or an aspect of a tradition.

Paul Feyerabend

#35. One knows quite well that harmony can be a harmony of appearances

Paul Feyerabend

#36. Mathematical Reasoning is not only exact; it has its own criteria of reality

Paul Feyerabend

#37. No single theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain

Paul Feyerabend

#38. Copernicanism and other essential ingredients of modern science survived only because reason was frequently overruled in their past.

Paul Feyerabend

#39. Results from a given approach are " facts " as long as the approach fits the group or the tradition that is being addressed

Paul Feyerabend

#40. Early Chinese thinkers had taken variety at face value. They had favored diversification and collected anomalies instead of trying to explain them away.

Paul Feyerabend

#41. The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

#42. Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages. In a democracy it should be separated from the state just as churches are now separated from the state.

Paul Feyerabend

#43. All religion may be centered around a generally good idea, however, this has not stopped its adherents from acting like bastards

Paul Feyerabend

#44. It is often assumed that science starts from facts and eschews counter-factual theories. Nothing could be further from the truth. What is one of the basic assumptions of the scientific world-view? That the variety of events that surrounds us is held together by a deeper unity.

Paul Feyerabend

#45. Rational discourse is only one way of presenting and examining an issue and by no means the best. Our new intellectuals are not aware of its limitations and of the nature of the things outside.

Paul Feyerabend

#46. Science is essentially an anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

#47. A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power . A tradition receives these rights not because the importance the cash value, as it were) it has for outsiders but because it gives meaning to the lives of those who participate in it.

Paul Feyerabend

#48. All religions are good 'in principle' - but unfortunately this abstract Good has only rarely prevented their practitioners from behaving like bastards.

Paul Karl Feyerabend