Karl Popper Quotes

Science is the practice of failing repeatedly but learning as you go.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

Much can often be learned by the repetition under different conditions, even if the desired result is not obtained.

Experimentation is an active science.

Science is not, despite how it is often portrayed, about absolute truths. It is about developing an understanding of the world, making predictions, and then testing these predictions.

An investigator starts research in a new field with faith, a foggy idea, and a few wild experiments. Eventually the interplay of negative and positive results guides the work. By the time the research is completed, he or she knows how it should have been started and conducted.

Think small. Don't pretend you know the answers. Experiment; get feedback. These are all the premises of 'Think Like a Freak,' really.

The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.

Facts are not science - as the dictionary is not literature.

There can be theory but, you know, the problem is you've got to be able to test it. So theories are one thing, testing is another.

One experiments and has to choose always the best results.

Science is not a thing. It's a verb. It's a way of thinking about things. It's a way of looking for natural explanations for all phenomena.

Nothing you'll read as breaking news will ever hold a candle to the sheer beauty of settled science. Textbook science has carefully phrased explanations for new students, math derived step by step, plenty of experiments as illustration, and test problems.

Is the button white or orange or green or yellow? Does it say 'sell', or 'sell now', or 'on sale' or 'for sale'? You test, you test, you test and most of the ideas you try fail and so I would argue I failed my way to success.

My background is basically scientific math. My Dad was a physicist, so I have it in my blood somewhere. Scientific method is very important to me. I think anything that contradicts it is probably not true.

Take the situation of a scientist solving a problem, where he has certain data, which call for certain responses. Some of this set of data call for his applying such and such a law, while others call for another law.

Science is curiosity, testing and experimenting.

The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

Ideas do not always come in a flash but by diligent trial-and-error experiments that take time and thought.

You can't prove any hypothesis, you can only improve or disprove it.

Everybody, as soon as they do a good experiment, their first thought in this lab is, 'That can't be right. I must have screwed it up. What did I do wrong?' And that's the best kind of scientist because they're filled with this self-doubt. And if I'm going to be honest, that's who I am. And it's what drives me.

The aim of natural science is not simply to accept the statements of others, but to investigate the causes that are at work in nature.

… new concepts arise from experiments and observations, and … the new concepts in turn lead to further experiments and observations.

The thing I love about making movies is the peace of mind that I know I don't have to be perfect the first time. I can be perfect the second time or the third time.

In science, you can say things that seem crazy, but in the long run, they can turn out to be right. We can get really good evidence, and in the end, the community will come around.