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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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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
Survival
Intelligence
Value
Values
Idea
Ideas
Extinct
Allows

More quotes by Karl Popper

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Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
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We never know what we are talking about.
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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 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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If you know that things are bound to happen whatever you do, then you may feel free to give up the fight against them.
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Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. . . .
Karl Popper
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No particular theory may ever be regarded as absolutely certain.... No scientific theory is sacrosanct.
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We know a great deal, but our ignorance is sobering and boundless. With each step forward, with each problem which we solve, we not only discover new and unsolved problems, but we also discover that where we believed that we were standing on firm and safe ground, all things are, in truth, insecure and in a state of flux.
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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My thesis is that what we call 'science' is differentiated from the older myths not by being something distinct from a myth, but by being accompanied by a second-order tradition-that of critically discussing the myth. ... In a certain sense, science is myth-making just as religion is.
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There is no history, only histories.
Karl Popper
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I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society.
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True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
Karl Popper
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What really makes science grow is new ideas, including false ideas.
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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The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being.
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
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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
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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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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