Quotes from Karl Popper

Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted outside philosophy and they die if these roots decay.

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.

I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy,' and the other, 'tyranny.'.

It is wrong to ask who will rule. The ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. That is democracy.

If we wish our civilization to survive we must break with the habit of deference to great men.

There is no history, only histories.

The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us.

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.

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.

The growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement.

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.

A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations.

The moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not conflict with the principle of tolerance.

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

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

Evolution is not a fact. Evolution doesn't even qualify as a theory or as a hypothesis. It is a metaphysical research program, and it is not really testable science.

It is the rule which says that the other rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification.

The difference between the amoeba and Einstein is that, although both make use of the method of trial and error elimination, the amoeba dislikes erring while Einstein is intrigued by it.

Science is perhaps the only human activity in which errors are systematically criticized and, in time, corrected.

All we can do is search for the falsity content in our best theory.

The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error.

The initial stage, the act of conceiving or inventing a theory, seems to me neither to call for logical analysis nor to be susceptible of it.

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

The conspiracy theory of society... comes from abandoning god and then asking: "Who is in his place"