Popper Quotes

#1. As a prayer popper, I stay in touch with God. I send lots of spiritual postcards. Little bits and bytes of adoration, supplication, and information attached prayer darts speed in God's direction all day long.

Sybil MacBeth

#2. Rap music ... sounds like somebody feeding a rhyming dictionary to a popcorn popper.

Tom Robbins

#3. Much of what Karl Popper contributed to the philosophy of science has now passed into mainstream thought, into the currency of that nebulous, tricky ontology known as 'common sense.'

Liz Williams

#4. Of course, Marxism is an example of what Carl Popper would have called a 'World Three' structure, in that it's got immense power as an idea, but you couldn't actually hold up anything in the world and say: 'this is Marxism'.

Alan Moore

#5. The conspiracy theory of society . . . comes from abandoning God and then asking: "Who is in his place?" - Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, London, Routledge,

Umberto Eco

#6. The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology.

Imre Lakatos

#7. Whatever moisture is left in the popcorn when it gets from harvest to bag to your popper is what's going to determine how well the corn pops.

Ken Kercheval

#8. Popper says that the best way out of the problem of having unconscious points of view is to state clearly one's view and to recognize that there are also other points of view.

William Lane Craig

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

Karl R. Popper

#10. Many people, including myself, had our scientific lives changed by the inspiring new vision of science that Popper gave us.

John Eccles

#11. In April 2013, Nathaniel Popper of 'The New York Times' reported on Bitcoin in an article titled, 'Digital Money is Gaining Champions in the Real World'.

Steve Hanke

#12. And that was it: infinite loop; no alt-tab out. You could force close, shut down the computer, start all over and run it again, and the game would still lock up and freeze at the same place. "Where's Popper?" No cheat code. Game over. There was no way past that moment.

Donna Tartt

#13. When I was in college, we used to take a popcorn popper, because that was the only thing they would let us use in the dorm, and we would fry squirrels in a popcorn popper in the dorm room.

Mike Huckabee

#14. Belief may be a regrettably unavoidable biological weakness to be kept under the control of criticism: but commitment is for Popper an outright crime.

Imre Lakatos

#15. Taleb's hero, on the other hand, is Karl Popper, who said that you could not know with any certainty that a proposition was true;

Malcolm Gladwell

#16. With regards to political enemies Plato had a kill-and-banish principle ... In interpreting it , modern-day Platonists are clearly disturbed by it, even as they make elaborate attempts to defend Plato.

Karl Popper

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

Karl R. Popper

#18. 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

#19. We have become makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

Karl Popper

#20. The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being.

Karl Popper

#21. There can be no ultimate statements science: there can be no statements in science which can not be tested, and therefore none which cannot in principle be refuted, by falsifying some of the conclusions which can be deduced from them.

Karl Popper

#22. All the gold in the world was worth around $7 trillion. If Bitcoin became even half as popular, that would put the value of each Bitcoin at around half a million dollars - or

Nathaniel Popper

#23. If you can't say it simply and clearly, keep quiet, and keep working on it till you can.

Karl Popper

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

Karl R. Popper

#25. Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology.

Karl Popper

#26. 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

#27. Plato felt that a complete reconstruction of society's political program was needed.

Karl Popper

#28. Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.

Karl Popper

#29. History has no meaning.

Karl R. Popper

#30. [To] interpret Parmenides as a Kant before Kant ... this is exactly what we must do.

Karl Popper

#31. There is no history, only histories.

Karl Popper

#32. Great men may make great mistakes;

Karl R. Popper

#33. The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff.

Karl Popper

#34. It is part of my thesis that all our knowledge grows only through the correcting of our mistakes.

Karl Popper

#35. Every discovery contains an irrational element or a creative intuition.

Karl Popper

#36. A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations.

Karl Popper

#37. 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.

Karl Popper

#38. I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth

Karl Popper

#39. The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

Karl Popper

#40. Our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable as it is dangerous ... our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.

Karl Popper

#41. But it is certainly not possible to insist on one hand that the formalism is complete and to insist on the other hand that its application to 'the actual' actually demands a step which cannot be derived from it.

Karl Popper

#42. 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.

Karl Popper

#43. Learning to read, and to a lesser degree, to write, are of course the major events in one's intellectual development. There is nothing to compare with it, since very few people (Helen Keller is the great exception) can remember what it meant for them to learn to speak.

Karl Popper

#44. While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.

Karl Popper

#45. It is a myth that the success of science in our time is mainly due to the huge amounts of money that have been spent on big machines. What really makes science grow is new ideas, including false ideas.

Karl Popper

#46. Our belief in any particular natural law cannot have a safer basis than our unsuccessful critical attempts to refute it.

Karl Popper

#47. The future is always present, as a promise, a lure and a temptation.

Karl Popper

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

Karl R. Popper

#49. I would rather find a single causal law than be the king of Persia!

Karl Popper

#50. No particular theory may ever be regarded as absolutely certain ... No scientific theory is sacrosanct ...

Karl Popper

#51. In philosophy methods are unimportant; any method is legitimate if it leads to results capable of being rationally discussed. What matters is not methods or techniques but a sensitivity to problems, and a consuming passion for them; or, as the Greeks said, the gift of wonder.

Karl Popper

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

Karl Popper

#53. Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted outside philosophy and they die if these roots decay.

Karl Popper

#54. 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.

Karl Popper

#55. The Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state, using a blueprint of society as a whole, is one which demands a strong centralized rule of a few, and which is therefore likely to lead to a dictatorship.

Karl Popper

#56. All nationalism or racialism is evil, and Jewish nationalism is no exception.

Karl Popper

#57. We hate the very idea that our own ideas may be mistaken, so we cling dogmatically to our conjectures.

Karl Popper

#58. Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.

Karl Popper

#59. 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

#60. 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

#61. The war of ideas is a Greek invention. It is one of the most important inventions ever made. Indeed, the possibility of fighting with with words and ideas instead of fighting with swords is the very basis of our civilization, and especially of all its legal and parliamentary institutions.

Karl Popper

#62. The growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement.

Karl Popper

#63. I need a prison in order to dream of being free.

John Popper

#64. 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.

Karl Popper

#65. Bitcoins are not illegal in and of themselves and have known legitimate uses," the FBI agent, who drew up the complaint, wrote. This brief sentence was one of the strongest statements to date about the legality of Bitcoin in the United States - and it came from one

Nathaniel Popper

#66. Science is perhaps the only human activity in which errors are systematically criticized and, in time, corrected.

Karl Popper

#67. The quest for precision is analogous to the quest for certainty, and both should be abandoned.

Karl Popper

#68. 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.

Karl Popper

#69. It is wrong to ask who will rule. The ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. That is democracy.

Karl Popper

#70. We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.

Karl Popper

#71. There is no such thing as a failure who keeps trying.

John Popper

#72. Every solution of a problem raises new unsolved problems.

Karl Popper

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

Karl R. Popper

#74. My thesis is that what we call 'science' is differentiated from the older myths not by being something distinct from a myth, but by being accompanied by a second-order tradition-that of critically discussing the myth ... In a certain sense, science is myth-making just as religion is.

Karl Popper

#75. The point is that, 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. Few of us, unfortunately, practice this precept; but other people, fortunately, will supply the criticism for us if we fail to supply it ourselves.

Karl Popper

#76. Definitions ... are never really needed, and rarely of any use

Karl Popper

#77. Better our hypotheses die for our errors than ourselves.

Karl Popper

#78. The influence (for good or ill) of Plato's work is immeasurable. Western thought, one might say, has been Platonic or anti-Platonic, but hardly ever non-Platonic.

Karl Popper

#79. 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

#80. [The aim of science is] to explain what so far has taken to be an explicans, such as a law of nature. The task of empirical science constantly renews itself. We may go on forever, proceeding to explanations of a higher and higher universality ...

Karl Popper

#81. I was a bleeding-heart liberal, until I got a job.

John Popper

#82. Historically speaking all - or very nearly all - scientific theories originate from myths.

Karl Popper

#83. 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

#84. Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.

Karl Popper

#85. A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others - not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others

Karl Popper

#86. I have learned more from Hayek than from any other living thinker, except perhaps Alfred Tarski - but not even excepting Russell.

Karl Popper

#87. There will be well-testable theories, hardly testable theories, and non-testable theories. Those which are non-testable are of no interest to empirical scientists. They may be described as metaphysical.

Karl Popper

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

Karl Popper

#89. 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.

Karl Popper

#90. Some scientists find, or so it seems, that they get their best ideas when smoking; others by drinking coffee or whisky. Thus there is no reason why I should not admit that some may get their ideas by observing, or by repeating observations.

Karl Popper

#91. 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.

Karl Popper

#92. If you know that things are bound to happen whatever you do, then you may feel free to give up the fight against them.

Karl Popper

#93. The only way to test a hypothesis is to look for all the information that disagrees with it.

Karl Popper

#94. It is not possible to write clearly enough to avoid being misrepresented by people who are sufficiently determined to do so.

Karl Popper

#95. Man, some modern philosophers tell us, is alienated from his world: he is a stranger and afraid in a world he never made. Perhaps he is; yet so are animals, and even plants. They too were born, long ago, into a physico-chemical world, a world they never made.

Karl Popper

#96. The fundamental thing about human languages is that they can and should be used to describe something; and this something is, somehow, the world. To be constantly and almost exclusively interested in the medium - in spectacle-cleaning - is a result of a philosophical mistake.

Karl Popper

#97. It can't happen here is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere.

Karl Popper

#98. The defence of democracy must consist in making anti-democratic experiences too costly for those who try them; much more costly than a democratic compromise

Karl Popper

#99. All life is problem solving

Karl R. Popper

#100. The moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not conflict with the principle of tolerance.

Karl Popper