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The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell.

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
Make
Invariably
Produces
Attempt
Produce
Hell
Heaven
Earth

More quotes by Karl Popper

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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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There is no history, only histories.
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Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
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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.
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The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us.
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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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A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations.
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The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.
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.
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I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth
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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
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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
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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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True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
Karl Popper
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Historically speaking all - or very nearly all - scientific theories originate from myths.
Karl Popper
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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
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. . . it seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.
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 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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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