Quote

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

Karl Popper

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Karl Popper
Age: 92 †
Born: 1902
Born: July 28
Died: 1994
Died: September 17
Philosopher
Philosopher Of Science
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Vienna
Austria
Karl Raimund Popper Sir
Karl Raimund
Sir Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper
Science
Must
Finite
Ignorant
Necessarily
Infinite
Ignorance
Learning
Knowledge

More quotes by Karl Popper

Image
We do not know. We can only guess.
Karl Popper
Image
I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is [as] admirable and sound as it is dangerous – from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.
Karl Popper
Image
True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
Karl Popper
Image
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
Karl Popper
Image
The use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible.
Karl Popper
Image
We do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things — and above all on ourselves.
Karl Popper
Image
We have become makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.
Karl Popper
Image
A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations.
Karl Popper
Image
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.
Karl Popper
Image
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
Image
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.
Karl Popper
Image
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
Image
. . . it seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.
Karl Popper
Image
If you can't say it simply and clearly, keep quiet, and keep working on it till you can.
Karl Popper
Image
No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it
Karl Popper
Image
To give a causal explanation of an event means to deduce a statement which describes it, using as premises of the deduction one or more universal laws, together with certain singular statements, the initial conditions ... We have thus two different kinds of statement, both of which are necessary ingredients of a complete causal explanation.
Karl Popper
Image
Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
Karl Popper
Image
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
Image
A system is empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation... It must be possible for an empirical or scientific system to be refuted by experience.
Karl Popper
Image
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