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

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
Keep
Till
Clearly
Quiet
Simply
Working

More quotes by Karl Popper

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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
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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
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Propose theories which can be criticized. Think about possible decisive falsifying experiments-crucial experiments. But do not give up your theories too easily-not, at any rate, before you have critically examined your criticism.
Karl Popper
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We never know what we are talking about.
Karl Popper
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We have the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should tolerate even them whenever we can do so without running a great risk but the risk may become so great that we cannot allow ourselves the luxury.
Karl Popper
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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
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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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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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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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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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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
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A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations.
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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Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
Karl Popper
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Good tests kill flawed theories we remain alive to guess again.
Karl Popper
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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
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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
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I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth
Karl Popper
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No particular theory may ever be regarded as absolutely certain.... No scientific theory is sacrosanct.
Karl Popper
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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