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What really makes science grow is new ideas, including false ideas.

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
Including
Grow
Grows
Science
Makes
Ideas
Really
False

More quotes by Karl Popper

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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
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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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Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
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There is no pure, disinterested, theory-free observation.
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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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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While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.
Karl Popper
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It is part of my thesis that all our knowledge grows only through the correcting of our mistakes.
Karl Popper
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We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
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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We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.
Karl Popper
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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
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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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Good tests kill flawed theories we remain alive to guess again.
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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Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
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.
Karl Popper
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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
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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
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Better our hypotheses die for our errors than ourselves.
Karl Popper