"True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it."
―Karl Popper
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"The best thing that can happen to a human being us to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears."
―Karl Popper |
"I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth"
―Karl Popper |
"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 |
"Whenever we propose a solution to a problem, we ought to try as hard as we can to overthrow our solution, rather than defend it."
―Karl Popper |
"I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme."
―Karl Popper
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"Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations."
―Karl Popper
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"The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong."
―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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"Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite."
―Karl Popper
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"The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell."
―Karl Popper
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"No number of sightings of white swans can prove the theory that all swans are white. The sighting of just one black one may disprove it."
―Karl Popper
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"I have learned more from Hayek than from any other living thinker, except perhaps Alfred Tarski - but not even excepting Russell."
―Karl Popper
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"Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted outside philosophy and they die if these roots decay."
―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 |
"Optimism is a duty. The future is open. It is not predetermined. No one can predict it, except by chance. We all contribute to determining it by what we do. We are all equally responsible for its success."
―Karl Popper |
"We do not know anything - this is the first. Therefore, we should be very modest - this is the second. Not to claim that we do know when we do not - this is the third. That's the kind of attitude I'd like to popularize. There is little hope for success."
―Karl Popper
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"It can't happen here is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere."
―Karl Popper |
"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
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"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 |
"The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us."
―Karl Popper
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"I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy,' and the other, 'tyranny"
―Karl Popper
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"It is not possible to write clearly enough to avoid being misrepresented by people who are sufficiently determined to do so."
―Karl Popper
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"Simple statements are to be prized more highly than less simple ones because they tell us more; because their empirical content is greater; and because they are better testable."
―Karl Popper
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"I have spoken to Einstein and he admitted to me that his theory was in fact no different from the one of Parmenides."
―Karl Popper
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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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"A theory that explains everything, explains nothing."
―Karl Popper
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"Criticism of my alleged views was widespread and highly successful. I have yet to meet a criticism of my views."
―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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"Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell."
―Karl Popper |
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood."
―Karl Popper |
"You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you."
―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 |
"A rationalist is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda."
―Karl Popper
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"Every solution of a problem raises new unsolved problems."
―Karl Popper
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"Rationalism is an attitude of readiness to listen to contrary arguments and to learn from experience... of admitting that "I may be wrong and you may be right and, by an effort, we may get nearer the truth."
―Karl Popper
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"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
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"Science is perhaps the only human activity in which errors are systematically criticized and, in time, corrected."
―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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"There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life."
―Karl Popper
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"We hate the very idea that our own ideas may be mistaken, so we cling dogmatically to our conjectures."
―Karl Popper
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