Karl Popper Quotes

Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.

Everything that can be said, can be said clearly.

Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

I am a firm believer that if you can explain it to a kid, you're on the right track.

With each project I'm always pushing for clarity.

Every man speaks and writes with intent to be understood; and it can seldom happen but he that understands himself might convey his notions to another, if, content to be understood, he did not seek to be admired.

We have not known a single great scientist who could not discourse freely and interestingly with a child. Can it be that haters of clarity have nothing to say, have observed nothing, have no clear picture of even their own fields?

If I am ever obscure in my expressions, do not fancy that therefore I am deep. If I were really deep, all the world would understand, though they might not appreciate. The perfectly popular style is the perfectly scientific one. To me an obscurity is a reason for suspecting a fallacy.

Uncommon things must be said in common words.

As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.

To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.

A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life.

Whoever knows he is deep tries to be clear, but whoever wants to seem deep to the crowd tries to be obscure. For the crowd supposes that anything it cannot see to the bottom must be deep: it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.

Complexity is the enemy of clarity

The simpler the message, the broader the meaning, in many respects.

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated.

Sometimes one has to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.

Any idiot can be complicated. It takes a genius to be simple.

If you cannot state a proposition clearly and unambiguously, you do not understand it.

Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear. Before using a fine word, make a place for it.

Clarity proceeds Mastery!

Clarity breeds mastery.

The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

It's really a trade-off: you're always having to decide whether you're going to say the more ambitious thing, and lose a little clarity - or are you going to say something really clearly, and sacrifice a little nuance? Get too obscure, and you sound like a pretentious asshole; go overboard with the clarity, and you sound like you're talking down to your audience, or like you yourself are a reductive simpleton.