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Every profession has an ideology and a drive for power that goes far beyond its achievements and it is the task of democracy to keep this ideology and this drive under control. Science is here no different from other institutions.

Paul Feyerabend

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Paul Feyerabend
Age: 70 †
Born: 1924
Born: January 13
Died: 1994
Died: February 11
Philosopher
University Teacher
Vienna
Austria
P. K. Feyerabend
Paul Karl Feyerabend
Democracy
Profession
Science
Drive
Keep
Tasks
Power
Achievement
Different
Institutions
Every
Beyond
Achievements
Goes
Ideology
Control
Task

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Humane science must be adapted to the requirements of a balanced and rewarding life.
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In a war a totalitarian state has a free hand.
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Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages. In a democracy it should be separated from the state just as churches are now separated from the state.
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All religions are good 'in principle' - but unfortunately this abstract Good has only rarely prevented their practitioners from behaving like bastards.
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So far Unitarian realism claiming to possess positive knowledge about Ultimate Reality has succeeded only by excluding large areas of phenomena or by declaring, without proof, that they could be reduced to basic theory, which, in this connection, means elementary particle physics.
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The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.
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Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.
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A Universal Good should reflect the reality of the individual benefits that are collected under its name, not the other way around.
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An anarchist is like an undercover agent who plays the game of Reason in order to undercut the authority of Reason (Truth, Honesty, Justice and so on).
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My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.
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Copernicanism and other essential ingredients of modern science survived only because reason was frequently overruled in their past.
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Teachers' using grades and the fear of failure mould the brains of the young until they have lost every ounce of imagination they might once have possessed.
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Taking experimental results and observations for granted and putting the burden of proof on the theory means taking the observational ideology for granted without having ever examined it.
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Events and developments, such as ... the Copernican Revolution, ... occurred only because some thinkers either decided not to be bound by certain obvious methodological rules, or because they unwittingly broke them.
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The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education.
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A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power. A tradition receives these rights not because the importance the cash value, as it were) it has for outsiders but because it gives meaning to the lives of those who participate in it.
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