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The question is not how to get good people to rule THE QUESTION IS: HOW TO STOP THE POWERFUL from doing as much damage as they can to 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
People
Damage
Rule
Question
Stop
Powerful
Much
Good

More quotes by 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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It is not intuitive ease I am after, but rather a point of view which is sufficiently definite to clear up some difficulties, and to be criticized in rational terms. (Bohr's complementarity cannot be so criticized, I fear it can only be accepted or denounced - perhaps as being ad hoc, or as being irrational, or as being hopelessly vague.)
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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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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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
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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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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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There can be no ultimate statements science: there can be no statements in science which can not be tested, and therefore none which cannot in principle be refuted, by falsifying some of the conclusions which can be deduced from them.
Karl Popper
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To give a causal explanation of an event means to deduce a statement which describes it, using as premises of the deduction one or more universal laws, together with certain singular statements, the initial conditions ... We have thus two different kinds of statement, both of which are necessary ingredients of a complete causal explanation.
Karl Popper
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We never know what we are talking about.
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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Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
Karl Popper
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The future is always present, as a promise, a lure and a temptation.
Karl Popper
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The conspiracy theory of society... comes from abandoning god and then asking: Who is in his place
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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[To] interpret Parmenides as a Kant before Kant ... this is exactly what we must do.
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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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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A theory that explains everything, explains nothing
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