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Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper CH, FRS, FBA was an Austrian and British philosopher and
a professor at the London School of Economics. He is counted among the most
influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on
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Karl Popper:The history of science, like the history of all
human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy,
and of error. But science is one of the very few human
activities - perhaps the only one - in which errors are
systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected.
This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our
mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about
making progress there.
#Science and Scientists
Karl Popper:What we should do, I suggest, is to give up the idea of ultimate
sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is
mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all
we can do is to grope for truth even though it be beyond our reach. We may
admit that our groping is often inspired, but we must be on our guard
against the belief, however deeply felt, that our inspiration carries any
authority, divine or otherwise. If we thus admit that there is no authority
beyond the reach of criticism to be found within the whole province of our
knowledge, however far it may have penetrated into the unknown, then we
can retain, without danger, the idea that truth is beyond human authority.
And we must retain it. For without this idea there can be no objective
standards of inquiry; no criticism of our conjectures; no groping for the
unknown; no quest for knowledge.
#Critics and Criticism
Karl Popper:You can choose whatever name you like for the
two types of government. I personally call the type of
government which can be removed without violence
"democracy", and the other "tyranny".
#Democracy
Karl Popper: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. For this, indeed, is the main source of our
ignorance — the fact that our knowledge can be only finite,
while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
#Knowledge
Karl Popper:It is often asserted that discussion is only possible
between people who have a common language and accept
common basic assumptions. I think that this is a mistake. All
that is needed is a readiness to learn from one's partner in the
discussion, which includes a genuine wish to understand what
he intends to say. If this readiness is there, the discussion will
be the more fruitful the more the partner's backgrounds differ.
#Language
Karl Popper:If in this book harsh words are spoken about some of the
greatest among the intellectual leaders of mankind, my motive is not, I hope,
the wish to belittle them. It springs rather from my conviction that, if our
civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great
men. Great men may make great mistakes; and as the book tries to show,
some of the greatest leaders of the past supported the perennial attack on
freedom and reason. Their influence, too rarely challenged, continues to
mislead those on whose defence civilization depends, and to divide them.
The responsibility of this tragic and possibly fatal division becomes ours if
we hesitate to be outspoken in our criticism of what admittedly is a part of
our intellectual heritage. By reluctance to criticize some of it, we may help
to destroy it all.
#Talent
Karl Popper: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.
#Critics and Criticism
Karl Popper:Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers
stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped
leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can
help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of
leadership.
#Leaders and Leadership
Karl Popper:Not only do I hate violence, but I firmly believe that the fight against it is
not hopeless. I realize that the task is difficult. I realize that, only too often in the course
of history, it has happened that what appeared at first to be a great success in the fight
against violence was followed by a defeat. I do not overlook the fact that the new age of
violence which was opened by the two World wars is by no means at an end. Nazism
and Fascism are thoroughly beaten, but I must admit that their defeat does not mean
that barbarism and brutality have been defeated. On the contrary, it is no use closing
our eyes to the fact that these hateful ideas achieved something like a victory in defeat.
I have to admit that Hitler succeeded in degrading the moral standards of our Western
world, and that in the world of today there is more violence and brutal force than would
have been tolerated even in the decade after the first World war. And we must face the
possibility that our civilization may ultimately be destroyed by those new weapons
which Hitlerism wished upon us, perhaps even within the first decade after the second
World war; for no doubt the spirit of Hitlerism won its greatest victory over us when,
after its defeat, we used the weapons which the threat of Nazism had induced us to
develop. #Age and Aging
Karl Popper:We must plan for freedom, and not only for
security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make
security more secure.
#Freedom
Karl Popper:I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest
troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous
— from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows. For these troubles are the
by-products of what is perhaps the greatest of all moral and spiritual revolutions
of history, a movement which began three centuries ago. It is the longing of
uncounted unknown men to free themselves and their minds from the tutelage of
authority and prejudice. It is their attempt to build up an open society which
rejects the absolute authority to preserve, to develop, and to establish traditions,
old or new, that measure up to their standards of freedom, of humaneness, and of
rational criticism. It is their unwillingness to sit back and leave the entire
responsibility for ruling the world to human or superhuman authority,and their
readiness to share the burden of responsibility for avoidable suffering, and to
work for its avoidance. This revolution has created powers of appalling
destructiveness; but they may yet be conquered.
#Freedom
Karl Popper: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, for the sake of an
ideal of happiness that may never be realised. #Happiness
Karl Popper:The game of science is, in principle, without end.
He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call
for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally
verified, retires from the game.
#Science and Scientists
Karl Popper:We may become the makers of our fate when we
have ceased to pose as its prophets.
#Prophecy
Karl Popper:No rational argument will have a rational effect on
a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
#Attitude
Karl Popper:If we are uncritical we shall always find what we
want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, 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 favor of a theory
which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.
#Critics and Criticism
Karl Popper: Science may be described as the art of
systematic over-simplification. #Science and Scientists
Karl Popper:When we enter a new situation in life and are
confronted by a new person, we bring with us the prejudices of
the past and our previous experiences of people. These
prejudices we project upon the new person. Indeed, getting to
know a person is largely a matter of withdrawing projections;
of dispelling the smoke screen of what we imagine he is like
and replacing it with the reality of what he is actually like.
#Imagination
Karl Popper: 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. #Philosophers and Philosophy
Karl Popper:Although I consider our political world to be the best
of which we have any historical knowledge, we should beware of
attributing this fact to democracy or to freedom. Freedom is not a
supplier who delivers goods to our door. Democracy does not
ensure that anything is accomplished — certainly not an economic
miracle. It is wrong and dangerous to extol freedom by telling
people that they will certainly be all right once they are free. How
someone fares in life is largely a matter of luck or grace, and to a
comparatively small degree perhaps also of competence,
diligence, and other virtues. The most we can say of democracy or
freedom is that they give our personal abilities a little more
influence on our well-being. #Freedom
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