Popper, Karl (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

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. 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 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

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

All things living are in search of a better world.
-- Karl Popper

The belief in a political Utopia is especially dangerous. This is possibly connected with the fact that the search for a better world, like the investigation of our environment, is (if I am correct) one of the oldest and most important of all the instincts.
-- Karl Popper

Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us. . . . We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. 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

If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it.
-- Karl Popper

When I speak of reason or rationalism, all I mean is the conviction that we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism. 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. The emphasis here is on the idea of criticism or, to be more precise, critical discussion. 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. He is well aware that acceptance or rejection of an idea is never a purely rational matter; but he thinks that only critical discussion can give us the maturity to see an idea from more and more sides and to make a correct judgement of it.
-- Karl Popper

Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations.
-- Karl Popper

Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.
-- Karl Popper

I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy,' and the other, 'tyranny.'.
-- Karl Popper

It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.
-- Karl Popper

It is often asserted that discussion is only possible between people who have a common language and accept common basic assumptions. I think that this is a mistake. All that is needed is a readiness to learn from one's partner in the discussion, which includes a genuine wish to understand what he intends to say. If this readiness is there, the discussion will be the more fruitful the more the partner's backgrounds differ.
-- Karl Popper

It seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.
-- Karl Popper

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
-- Karl Popper

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
-- Karl Popper

Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings.
-- Karl Popper

Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. . . .
-- Karl Popper

Our civilization...has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth
-- Karl Popper

Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
-- Karl Popper

Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle
-- Karl Popper

Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology.
-- Karl Popper

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
-- Karl Popper

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
-- Karl Popper

The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of skepticism with faith.
-- Karl Popper

There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions
-- Karl Popper

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

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.
-- Karl Popper

There is no history, only histories.
-- Karl Popper

The attempt to produce Heaven on Earth often produces Hell.
-- Karl Popper

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
-- Karl Popper

To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.
-- Karl Popper

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
-- Karl Popper

We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell.
-- Karl Popper

We have become makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.
-- Karl Popper

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

When we enter a new situation in life and are confronted by a new person, we bring with us the prejudices of the past and our previous experiences of people. These prejudices we project upon the new person. Indeed, getting to know a person is largely a matter of withdrawing projections; of dispelling the smoke screen of what we imagine he is like and replacing it with the reality of what he is actually like.
-- Karl Popper

Why do I think that we, the intellectuals, are able to help? Simply because we, the intellectuals, have done the most terrible harm for thousands of years. Mass murder in the name of an idea, a doctrine, a theory, a religion
-- Karl Popper

You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.
-- Karl Popper

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