227 Quotes by Karl Popper

Natural selection has destroyed the proof for the miraculous specific intervention of the Creator. But it has left us with the marvel of the creativeness of the universe, of life, and of the human mind.

The discovery of instances which confirm a theory means very little if we have not tried, and failed, to discover refutations. For if we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmation, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favour of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.

[...] while I felt that the Marxist attitude towards their theory was not at all admirable but was typically dogmatic and had all these properties which the Marxists usually said were characteristic of the churches. So I realized fairly early that Marxism was more of a church than of a science.

There can be no ultimate statements science: there can be no statements in science which can not be tested, and therefore none which cannot in principle be refuted, by falsifying some of the conclusions which can be deduced from them.

The most we can say of democracy or freedom is that they give our personal abilities a little more influence on our well-being.

As indicated by our example, methodological nominalism is nowadays fairly generally accepted in the natural sciences. The problems of the social sciences, on the other hand, are still for the most part treated by essentialist methods. This is, in my opinion, one of the main reasons for their backwardness.

We do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things — and above all on ourselves.

A theory that explains everything, explains nothing

what characterizes the empirical method is its manner of exposing to falsification, in every conceivable way, the system to be tested. Itsaim is not to save the lives of untenable systems but, on the contrary, to select the one which is by comparison the fittest, byexposing them all to the fiercest struggle for survival.