Quote

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

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
Better
Troubles
Ever
Fellows
Even
Clearly
Something
Spring
Dangerous
Greatest
Trouble
Impatience
Sound
Admirable

More quotes by Karl Popper

Image
Historically speaking all - or very nearly all - scientific theories originate from myths.
Karl Popper
Image
Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
Karl Popper
Image
The future is always present, as a promise, a lure and a temptation.
Karl Popper
Image
The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being.
Karl Popper
Image
[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
Image
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
Image
But some of these theories are so bold that they can clash with reality: they are the testable theories of science. And when they clash, then we know that there is a reality something that can inform us that our ideas are mistaken.
Karl Popper
Image
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
Image
I have insisted that we must be tolerant. But I also believe that this tolerance has its limits. We must not trust those anti-humanitarian religions which not only preach destruction but act accordingly. For if we tolerate them, then we become ourselves responsible for for their deeds.
Karl Popper
Image
Good tests kill flawed theories we remain alive to guess again.
Karl Popper
Image
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
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
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
Image
The old scientific ideal of episteme - of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge - has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever.
Karl Popper
Image
We never know what we are talking about.
Karl Popper
Image
The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us.
Karl Popper
Image
Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it.
Karl Popper
Image
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
Image
Simple statements are to be prized more highly than less simple ones because they tell us more because their empirical content is greater and because they are better testable.
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