Quotes from Karl Popper

All life is problem solving

We have become makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

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

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.

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.

Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.

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.

I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth

The Open Society and Its Enemies

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.

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

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.

The history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder.

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.

We hate the very idea that our own ideas may be mistaken, so we cling dogmatically to our conjectures.

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

Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification.

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.

No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it

All life is problem solving

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

A theory that explains everything, explains nothing

A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others - not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others