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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

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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
Find
Thus
Observing
Science
Scientists
Others
Smoking
Seems
Admit
May
Observation
Best
Coffee
Whisky
Ideas
Scientist
Observations
Reason
Drinking
Repeating

More quotes by Karl Popper

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We have become makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.
Karl Popper
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What really makes science grow is new ideas, including false ideas.
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We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.
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We do not know. We can only guess.
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Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it.
Karl Popper
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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
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Thus science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices.
Karl Popper
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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
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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.
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It is wrong and dangerous to extol freedom by telling people that they will certainly be all right once they are free. The most we can say of democracy or freedom is that they give our personal abilities a little more influence on our well-being.
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The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us.
Karl Popper
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[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
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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
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I have spoken to Einstein and he admitted to me that his theory was in fact no different from the one of Parmenides.
Karl Popper
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Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
Karl Popper
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[To] interpret Parmenides as a Kant before Kant ... this is exactly what we must do.
Karl Popper
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Reason like science, grows by way of mutual criticism the only possible way of planning its growth is to develop those institutions that safeguard. the freedom of thought
Karl Popper
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The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell.
Karl Popper
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A theory that explains everything, explains nothing
Karl Popper
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A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
Karl Popper