Quotes by Karl Popper

“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve”

“We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell”

“Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”

“No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.”

“Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.”

“We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure”

“It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.”

“Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle / the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.”

“Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths”

“Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.”

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. But this, I hold, is an offence against every decent conception of mankind. It is hardly better than to treat the history of embezzlement or of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind. For the history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder.

Our knowledge can only be finite while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.

There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world.

Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology.

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”

“We all have an unscientific weakness for being always in the right, and this weakness seems to be particularly common among professional and amateur politicians. But the only way to apply something like scientific method in politics is to proceed on the assumption that there can be no political move which has no drawbacks, no undesirable consequences. To look out for these mistakes, to find them, to bring them into the open, to analyse them, and to learn from them, this is what a scientific politician as well as a political scientist must do. Scientific method in politics means that the great art of convincing ourselves that we have not made any mistakes, of ignoring them, of hiding them, and of blaming others from them, is replaced by the greater art of accepting the responsibility for them, of trying to learn from them, and of applying this knowledge so that we may avoid them in future.”