Quote

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

Karl Popper

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Really
False
Including
Grow
Grows
Science
Makes
Ideas

More quotes by Karl Popper

Image
I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth
Karl Popper
Image
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
Image
[To] interpret Parmenides as a Kant before Kant ... this is exactly what we must do.
Karl Popper
Image
In my view, aiming at simplicity and lucidity is a moral duty of all intellectuals: lack of clarity is a sin, and pretentiousness is a crime.
Karl Popper
Image
The influence (for good or ill) of Plato's work is immeasurable. Western thought, one might say, has been Platonic or anti-Platonic, but hardly ever non-Platonic.
Karl Popper
Image
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
Image
The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us.
Karl Popper
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
Karl Popper
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Good tests kill flawed theories we remain alive to guess again.
Karl Popper
Image
Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
Karl Popper
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you can't say it simply and clearly, keep quiet, and keep working on it till you can.
Karl Popper
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.
Karl Popper